francis – Capital City Sidewalks

Posted on March 18, 2023 by bunnyhugger

S. Francis Ave., White Hawk, 2022

I walked on the southern blocks of South Francis Avenue for the first time in a while and discovered, to my surprise, that a fair bit of sidewalk work had been done recently, all of it by White Hawk (who also did a lot of work on South Magnolia recently). Here is a representative example, which happens to be in front of a house I like, on the west side of the street. It would be at the northwest corner of Francis and Harton if Harton hadn’t been vacated at this point.

I like a couple of things about this property. One is the pleasant yard. It doesn’t look like much in the gray late winter, but it has nice shrubs and flowers, lawn ornaments, and a tidy split-rail fence. The other is the house itself, built (surprisingly) in 1942. It’s a small, boxy house, like many on the street, but it has been given just enough little details to lift it above its peers. It has shutters and trim details, and my favorite part, Tudor-like timbers on the sides of the attic level that give it a storybook flair. Its current paint job even has them in a contrasting color. It’s neat.

I wish the timber details were easier to see in the photo, but they’re obscured by the shrub.

Posted on July 14, 2022 by bunnyhugger

S. Francis Ave., Cantu & Sons, 1987

This is from the very last, sad-looking piece of sidewalk on the west side of the south end of South Francis Avenue, in the beleaguered Urbandale neighborhood. The sidewalk peters out at the southern end of the southernmost house’s lot. Unlike on the other side of the street which has had its sidewalk removed, it appears that the sidewalk may always have ended here, based on there being no trace of it in the 2007 Google Street View. The stamp looks off-center, but only because the sidewalk is sinking into the earth on the left.

Oddly, the vacant land south of here (at least part of which is occupied by an urban farm) is owned by the City of Lansing Parks and Recreation Department. A lot of parcels on the southernmost blocks of Urbandale are owned by the city or the county, but the puzzling part is what the Parks Department’s involvement is in this. I haven’t seen that in other city-owned lots. The boundary sketch of it in the city records show a fairly large piece of land that stretches way out to the west behind Foster Avenue, where it forms an L-shape around something labeled “DNR Polluted Site.” I’d like to know more about that, too.

Posted on April 30, 2022 by bunnyhugger

S. Francis Ave., Terry, illegible date

This stamp is on an orphaned driveway apron in front of one of the many vacant lots (now a community garden) near the south end of South Francis Avenue. It’s on the east side of the street, just south of where Harton Street would have passed through if it had not vanished from this block at some point. There is another driveway apron (also no longer attached to a driveway) one lot south of here that has the same stamp, but in worse shape.

I tried to uncover the date from under the layer of caked dirt, but it doesn’t look like it would be legible even if it were clean. It seems to end with a 1 but that’s the most that can be made from it with any confidence. I wasn’t able to find any plausible “Terry” that this could be, either.

Posted on April 12, 2022 by bunnyhugger

S. Francis Ave., White Hawk, 2022

I was surprised to walk down to the south end of South Francis Avenue and discover a large amount of sidewalk has been replaced on the west side of the street. The scattered blocks of new concrete – there must be a couple dozen or more – can be readily seen at a distance. The work was done by White Hawk, the same contractor who recently did a similarly large replacement project on South Magnolia. What surprises me about this find, though, is that a good bit of sidewalk from the east side of Francis has been removed as the lots have vacated. I expected they would just let the sidewalk on the other side keep deteriorating while they waited out the remaining residents, but I was clearly wrong.

Many of the lawn extensions (or “parkways” as the Lansing municipal code calls them) are also covered with straw, indicating grass reseeding. The edges of some front yards have this too. I’m not sure of the reason for this.

This particular stamp (one of very many similar ones) is from the west side of Francis south of Elizabeth. It’s in front of one of the many nearby community gardens, this one calling itself the Poppin’ Fresh Community Garden.

Posted on January 20, 2022 by bunnyhugger

Hall of Shame: S. Francis Ave., removed sidewalk

Following Monday’s entry, the theme of Urbandale shrinkage continues. Here is the end of the sidewalk on the east side of South Francis Avenue, the last block before the dead end. The sidewalk that until recently served the east side of the 700 block has all been dug up. There are no houses left on this side; the land is now an urban farm.

Looking over the property records, I can see that there were still five houses south of here in 2010. That year, four of the five seem to have taken the buyout from the city. That left one house on the very south end, which fell into tax foreclosure in 2016 and was demolished by the county in 2017.

The other side of the street, the west side, still has two houses left. I note that another house on that side took the buyout in 2010 along with their east side neighbors. It’s hard not to imagine a vulture standing there, waiting patiently for the two holdouts to succumb from death or taxes. I understand that the city has its reasons, and I don’t mean to attribute malice or wickedness. It’s just that there’s something very sad about looking at doomed houses. It’s just a matter of time. Sooner or later, there will be no 700-plus addresses on South Francis.

Posted on July 7, 2021 by bunnyhugger

S. Francis Ave., T.A. Forsberg, 1962

This barely-visible stamp is on the east side of South Francis Avenue between Michigan and Prospect. Although it’s not much to look at, I thought I would record it because I haven’t collected many from Francis and because it’s not going to be legible much longer. It’s just possible to make it out as a T.A. Forsberg stamp from 1962, and only because I can compare it to other Forsbergs I’ve seen.

Facing south on Francis, with the stamp on the nearest sidewalk block.

Posted on June 15, 2021June 15, 2021 by bunnyhugger

N. Francis Ave., DPW, 1925

This “second style” Department of Public Works stamp is on North Francis Avenue just south of the southeast corner of Francis and Fernwood. The stamp is unusually far off center, and is getting cozy with a large evergreen tree.

I had to lean right into the adjacent evergreen to take this photo.

The house by this sidewalk faces the 2500 block of Vine Street and was built in 1986. Few of the houses on the east side are that new, so I was curious if another house had preceded it here. I tried looking for a real estate card in the Belon Real Estate Collection at CADL. There are plenty of cards up through 1530 Vine, then there are only two more, one in the 2200 block and one in the 2400 block. This leads me to theorize that this part of Vine was still largely undeveloped in the 1960s (when the cards date from). Still, there must have been a sidewalk here at least back to 1925.

Facing north on Francis, with Vine in view.

Posted on May 28, 2021May 28, 2021 by bunnyhugger

S. Francis Ave., DPW, 1930

It’s not extremely old by Department of Public Works standards, but I thought I should get this one in while I can. It’s on the dead-end 700 block of South Francis Avenue, on the west side, probably just south of where Harton Street would be if it still existed there. Across the street from it, the other side of Francis has had its sidewalk recently removed, as with many southern blocks in Urbandale. The sidewalk extends half a block or so further south on this side due to two remaining houses.

This stamp is on a half-sized slab of sidewalk in front of what looks like a vacant lot. In fact, as I discovered checking the city property records, the property south of this point encompasses not two but three lots, plus the vacated section of Harton! (Decommissioned streets seem to hang around in property descriptions, which fascinates me for reasons I can’t articulate.) Historicaerials.com shows Harton still existing here in 1981 but clearly gone in 1994.

Looking north on South Francis Avenue, with the stamp plainly visible. Harton would have been in view here when it existed.

Looking more or less south. Not sure why there’s a little section of undersized blocks (including the featured one).

Posted on May 25, 2021 by bunnyhugger

N. Francis Ave., DPS, 1950

I mistakenly thought that this pair of Department of Public Service stamps – on the west side of North Francis Avenue between Vine and Fernwood – had the earliest date I’d seen for a DPS stamp, which is why I photographed it. Checking later, I discovered I have previously done one other 1950 DPS stamp.