As the news broke yesterday evening that 126-year-old Sparrow Hospital will be acquired by the University of Michigan’s health system, I decided to mark the end of an era by walking to Sparrow and recording a sidewalk stamp. It’s one I first noticed a long time ago and kept putting on the back burner and then eventually forgot about. I checked and re-checked my spreadsheet (yes, I have a spreadsheet), since I was having trouble believing I had never done it. It’s in front of the Sparrow Professional Building on East Michigan Avenue, which is across the street from the main Sparrow building, connected to it by a skywalk. The new sidewalk likely dates from a big expansion project that Sparrow started in 2003.
Granger Construction is based on Aurelius Road on the south side of Lansing and health care construction is one of their areas of expertise. Their Web site disappointingly does not include a company history.
The stamp is at the bottom of this image. Its twin is just before the crosswalk.
Sparrow has had this Christmas decoration on its roof every year as long as I’ve lived in town. It’s gotten more colorful, though, and I assume was fitted with LEDs at some point.
This is my first stamp from the north side, so it’s a shame that it’s nothing too remarkable. It’s on the east side of North East Street between Gier and Call Streets. We’ve seen plenty of BdWL stamps before, and I am no wiser about what that stands for and who it is. I was here today checking out the going-out-of-business sale of Vet’s Too; the owner is retiring.
Vet’s Too is next door to, and shares a parking lot with, Vet’s Ace Hardware, widely regarded as the best hardware store in town. I admit I sometimes call it the “scary hardware store” not because it’s bad but because it’s too good. It’s crammed floor-to-ceiling with the greatest variety of hardware I’ve ever seen, and the effect is overwhelming.
Looking north toward Vet’s, with the stamp in the second-from-front block.
Vet’s Too is a boutique of clothes, jewelry, decor, and gifts, and I had never been in it before. The wonderful glass block windows give the building a distinctive 1950s appearance, despite the unfortunately drab gray paint. It was certainly here when the BdWL stamp was placed (the online property records say it was built in 1952), but I don’t know what it was. My searches are strangely failing to come up with references to the address before 1972.
This north-facing door is the main entrance to Vet’s Too, but it looks like it might not have been the original main entrance.
By 1972 it was an X-rated theater called the Pussycat Theater. (I learned in the course of this that Pussycat Theater was a verycommon name for such movie houses in the 1970s, including a famous California chain.) Ads for the theater continue to appear in the Lansing State Journal until at least 1985, but I am not sure when it closed. I did find some forum chatter with someone’s recollections suggesting it closed between 1997 and 2001.
On the left is the west-facing door. The corner-cut really looks like a door should be there, but it’s just a window.
My husband found this stamp first, and showed me a photo of it. It’s on the south side of East Malcolm X Street just west of Parker Street, on a little spur of Malcolm X. Much of Malcolm X (née Main Street) has become various I-496 service roads, and in places splits away from itself (while somehow still technically being “the same road”). It’s really a mess, in map terms. This stub is at the end of a block-plus of what must be the original neighborhood street. West of this point one can continue on the sidewalk, but it is a dead end for vehicles. I haven’t walked these blocks before, despite them being within my usual walking-from-home radius, mainly because the area around 496 gets very pedestrian-unfriendly (deserving of its own Hall of Shame entry).
I was really excited when my showed me the photo of this stamp because of the name Schneeberger. I had previously found several E. Schneeberger stamps from the 1920s, but had been unable to read the name on them until finally having an epiphany while walking past one in favorable light. My husband jokingly referred to the second name as “Oort,” knowing there was a preceding letter but finding it illegible. I decided it looked like a very faint K and did a search for “Schneeberger & Koort.” That got one exactly one hit, but oh what a hit. It’s easily the greatest article about Lansing sidewalks I have seen. It deserves, and shall have, its own entry.
Facing the western semi-dead-end of Malcolm X Street. Past the barricade is… also Malcolm X Street.
Unfortunately, beyond the above State Journal article from 1914 which references them, I was unable to find anything about Schneeberger & Koort. I assume it’s the same Schneeberger who went into business on his own later, or a relative. It’s also unfortunate that this stamp is undated, but I would guess it pre-dates the Schneeberger solo stamps and might be from around the time of the State Journal article.
