Posted on by bunnyhugger

S. Pennsylvania Ave., DPW, 1941

This one is on South Pennsylvania Avenue, in front of the Marathon station at the southeast corner of Pennsylvania and Kalamazoo. It’s your basic, run-of-the-mill 1940s Department of Public Works stamp, very common around here.

Although I think of this gas station as being on Kalamazoo because it faces that way, I have learned that its street address is on Penn. It’s been a familiar sight for me for a long time, but I’ve never been inside it. I’m always headed out of town in the other direction when I stop for gas. Years ago, its canopy said MARATHON on one end and CONEY ISLAND on the other, and a sign on the side of the building dubbed it “Marathon Coney Island.” When my now-husband, then-sweetheart was first visiting me in Lansing, I drove past it while we were going somewhere, and in a bemused voice he said, “Coney Island?” I distractedly replied, “Oh yeah, I think they just have a food counter in there or something and that’s why it says that.” What I had completely forgotten is that as a New Jersey native he would be unfamiliar with the use of “Coney Island” to describe a specific kind of diner in Michigan. It occurred to me only a long time afterward that this would have sounded like a complete non sequitur. He didn’t ask for clarification at the time.

Sadly (in a way), the CONEY ISLAND banner is gone now, since it instead houses one of the locations of Jose’s Cuban Sandwich and Deli. I have had food delivered from there and it is very good. I just miss the big CONEY ISLAND letters.

The city’s online property records show that this building dates from 1964. I have a hard time imagining it as anything but a gas station, and yet I find Lansing State Journal ads from 1997 for Advanced Imaging Services Inc. at this location. Even more surprising, photos in the city’s property records seem to show that it only converted into a gas station around December 2004 (the city’s records show Advanced Imaging selling the property in July that year), and that it was vacant again by May 2008. I remember it as though it had always been the Marathon Coney Island until Jose’s moved in, but somehow it wasn’t even a gas station for the first several years I lived in town and I have no recollection of that now at all.

Posted on by bunnyhugger

E. Saginaw St., Illegible

My walk last night, since I started out from somewhere other than home, found me walking past a building I have driven by countless times but never passed on foot before: Schep’s Garage on East Saginaw Street, on the southwest corner of Saginaw and Foster. It’s a building I really like, brick with little decorative crenellations. According to the city property records, it was built in 1931. It obviously used to be a gas station, and they haven’t even removed the old lights where the pumps presumably used to be.

I was hoping to collect an interesting old sidewalk stamp in front of it, but there really weren’t any. I did find this marking, which is oriented so that it is right side up to a someone facing the business, i.e. sideways compared with most contractor stamps. It’s illegible except for a letter P, and I can’t tell whether it was a contractor’s mark or graffiti, though it looks more like the latter.

The marking isn’t visible here; it’s below and to the left of view.

State Journal advertisements of the 1940s place Pete Bailey’s Hi Speed Service in this location. An ad on April 15, 1940, says “Visit Our New Station Ionia and Capitol or Our Old Station at 2320 E. Saginaw St.” Bailey’s was probably the original occupant of the Schep’s building because on October 30, 1950, an ad in the State Journal reads, “FLOYD ‘PETE’ BAILEY Bailey High Speed Service 2320 E. Saginaw St., is observing its 18th year in service to the Lansing community. The firm, operated by Mr. Bailey, provides a complete mechanical service, including repair of ignition, tires, motor tune-ups, and repair and adjustment of brakes. Other services include lubrication, battery charging, and towing service. The firm also sells all Hi-Speed products, gasoline and oil, new tires and batteries.” The last reference to Bailey’s I can find is an ad on February 5, 1951.

Schep’s Garage’s Web site regrettably does not have a company history, but the earliest reference I can find to Schep’s is an advertisement in the State Journal on January 1, 1985. What was in the Schep’s building between the 1950s and 1980s is a mystery to me.