I assume this is graffiti, though the name/date format and the placement almost suggests a handwritten contractor marking. But, for Little Christmas, please enjoy the well-lit house I found it in front of. It’s on the west side of North Hayford Avenue between Fernwood and Saginaw.
Ever since I saw the first one of these fire alarm/telegraph covers recently, suddenly I’m seeing there everywhere. I should start plotting them on a map and see if I can tell from that where the telegraph lines went. This one is half buried in mud at the moment and resides at the southeast corner of South Hayford Avenue and Kalamazoo Street.
I was walking past this telegraph/fire alarm utility cover on the northeast corner of South Hayford Avenue and Elizabeth Street, and I decided to try kicking dirt off it in order to read the rest of the manufacturer’s name.
It’s hard to see in the photo, but I was able to determine that the outer edge reads “Capital Casting Co., Lansing Michigan.” According to OpenCorporates, the Capital Casting Company was incorporated in 1905 and dissolved in 1986. Its registered address is given as 6869 West Grand River Avenue, which (if the numbering is the same) would be in the vicinity of the Capital Area Humane Society today. An article from the May 8, 1938, State Journal titled “Lansing has 65 little industries-from guns to automobile,” which Timothy Bowman has republished in his highly recommended local history blog, instead gives its address as 500 South Hosmer Street. Today that address belongs to Lansing Flooring Supplies, but the building is newer. A similar article on local industries from the February 4, 1973, State Journal does not mention Capital Casting.
This blog probably has the highest post-to-readership ratio out there, since I think only my husband reads it. Nevertheless, I feel like I have to start off by apologizing that this is not even slightly about sidewalks. It’s one of those tidbits I tag as “curiosities”: things around the neighborhood that make me wonder, “Now why ever was that built that way?” This one is a truly odd driveway belonging to a house on the west side of South Hayford Avenue between Marcus and Harton.
What’s odd about it is the fact that it aims straight at the front of the house. It seems a little unusual for a house in this neighborhood to have been built without a garage. Often if I check into the history of a garageless house I discover that a garage was torn down at some point, probably when it was allowed to get too derelict (as happened with the house next door to me). But even the ones without garages have their driveways sensibly located alongside the house, not running right up to the front door.
You would be forgiven for thinking it was just an abnormally wide front walk, but the placement of the driveway apron makes it clear that it is indeed intended to be the driveway. I can’t fathom what led to such a strange choice. My usual source for older photos of houses, CADL’s Belon Real Estate Collection, has nothing on this house; evidently it is one of the rare cases of a house that never changed hands during the time period the collection covers (early 1950s to early 1970s). According to the city records, the house was built in 1940.
This isn’t a sidewalk stamp and this time I don’t even have the excuse of it being on the sidewalk – it’s on the lawn extension (parkway, right of way, whatever you like to call it) at the northeast corner of Hayford Avenue and Elizabeth Street. It was just too cool not to share.
This is almost certainly a contractor’s stamp, but it’s hopelessly illegible. The size, shape, and placement are reminiscent of the “second style” of Lansing DPW stamps, but I don’t think it is one. The only letter I think I can make out – maybe – looks like an M. It might be the first letter, but that’s not clear. In any case, the letters that can be made out do not seem to fit with the “Lansing DPW” mark.
The stamp is on the east side of South Hayford Avenue between Michigan and Prospect, in the 100 block.
Very shortly after I started this blog, I was wondering how long I would need to consistently catalog sidewalk markings before I had earned the right to go off topic and start talking about something else I like: manhole covers. The answer is, evidently, about 14 months, because here it is, the first manhole cover of this blog. This beauty is on Hayford Avenue just south of the southwest corner of East Michigan Avenue and Hayford. The sidewalk here got redone recently due to a large new development, but the cover remained.
My recollection is that it is actually pretty common to see Bell System covers around Lansing. I assume they must date from prior to the breakup of the Bell System in 1984. Our local Bell was Michigan Bell. Its “Baby Bell” identity was Ameritech. Ameritech ended up becoming my ISP around 2000 when they brought DSL to my Lansing neighborhood. As a result, I acquired an Ameritech.net email address which has never gone away. It stayed through a couple of buyouts (as my ISP became SBC Global and then AT&T). Eventually I switched ISPs but the email address remains. It is now controlled by Yahoo, and I cannot fathom why someone is still paying for the domain, but it still works. I still give it out as my main email and it forwards to my “real” but less public email address. When I tell people my address now, I have to spell it. Often they don’t know what I’m saying and write something else down. It’s no longer a name people recognize around here. But I hang onto the address as a point of pride (how many people have had an email address two decades?) and will be sad when they eventually notice it still exists and delete it without warning. Apparently the forwarding shouldn’t even still work.
I did some more Urbandale rambling today, as I wanted to return to a stamp I had made note of, but found illegible, in the past. It’s on the east side of South Hayford Avenue between Elizabeth and Harton. Initially I didn’t find it any more legible today, but when I looked at it mediated through my camera suddenly I thought I made something out. It seems that sometimes having less information lets my brain find letters in the noise. It appeared to read “Kegle.” Could that be a name?
Yes it could, and it was. Kegle Construction Company Inc. advertised in the February 8, 1981, Lansing State Journal: “Kegle Construction Company has been serving the highway industry in Michigan since 1957.” The ad promises “Concrete Roads, Streets, and Parking Lots” and gives the address 3508 Wood Street (today home to Sanches Construction). The business was founded by Howard S. “Red” Kegle (who had previously run Kegle Dairy Company) and continued by his son, James F. Kegle. According to the May 21, 1978, Lansing State Journal, James was elected president of the Michigan Concrete Paving Association, meaning this stamp has a real pedigree. Sadly, according to an obituary posted at Find A Grave (titled “James F. Kegle, Road Builder, Weightlifter”), James died in 1984 at the unripe age of 44. Weightlifting was his hobby and he won many awards in competitions.
I haven’t been able to determine a date for Kegle going out of business, so I don’t know if the company survived James’s death. Unfortunately the stamp is undated.
This is the latest DPS (Department of Public Service) stamp I have found, and the only DPW/DPS/etc. stamp I have found from the 1960s. It’s on a stretch of sidewalk in front of Urbandale Farm, on the east side of South Hayford Avenue between Horton and the dead end. Hayford has lost the last stretch of sidewalk on the west side of the street to the Urbandale demolition project, but most of the east side’s sidewalk is still intact since there are three houses still hanging on to the south of Urbandale Farm.
Urbandale Farm was the first big urban farm project in Lansing. It sits on a site that once held the Hayford Street Pumping Station. Yes, Hayford Street. When I first ran into references to Hayford Street in the Lansing City Code, I thought it was a careless error. But this photo of the old pumping station, clearly marked “Hayford Street Pumping Station,” tells me otherwise. The photo, dated 1985, comes from the Caterino Real Estate Image Collection at the Capital Area District Library. David Caterino, from the 1960s through the 1980s, used to drive around and take photos of notable structures, often because he had reason to think they were about to be demolished. Indeed, there is a photo of its demolition on page B1 of the Lansing State Journal, May 20, 1986. The caption reads,
LANDMARK FALLS
Lansing’s Hayford Street Pumping Station, built in 1932, fell to a wrecking company crane Monday. It is to be replaced by a new station on Mifflin Street on Lansing’s east side.
Mifflin Street, you say? If that isn’t an error, then Mifflin has also ascended from being a mere Street to a lofty Avenue sometime after May 1986. At the moment, all the streets from Clemens east to Mifflin (which includes Hayford) are Avenues. I need to get old official maps to figure out whether some of the others are also former Streets and when they changed.
The Hayford station was apparently desperately overdue for replacement at the time. It all too often broke down, causing around 40 nearby houses to flood with sewage. It’s just a shame that the new one (a baleful box on a hill at the south end of Mifflin) doesn’t have the sense of style and propriety that the 1930s edifice did.
As threatened long ago and alluded to again recently, I am starting a new recurring feature, the Hall of Shame. My original conception of it was to point out newly-laid sidewalk that was out of compliance with marking requirements, but I am going to broaden it to include anything sidewalk-related I feel like disapproving of.
Lansing is much better with sidewalks than Lansing Township. In fact, one way to tell that you have wandered out of Lansing proper is that the sidewalks have vanished from under your feet. Nevertheless, Lansing still leaves something to be desired, in that the city seems to think that only blocks (or sides of blocks) that have houses on them strictly need sidewalks. Side streets that only have driveways on them usually have no sidewalks. I assume they were just never built there. That doesn’t surprise me, even if I don’t like it. What did surprise me was discovering, now that the snow is off the neighborhood and I can see it properly, that the city has actually been removing sidewalks from depopulated blocks.
The first example I ran across was the southern end of South Hayford Avenue. I’m not sure when the sidewalk was removed but the earth underneath still looks pretty fresh, and a photo in the city’s property records seems to show the sidewalk still present in June 2020. I’m sorry I didn’t know this was going to happen so I could have catalogued all the doomed sidewalk stamps. Speaking of stamps, here is the last one on the west side of the block, a very worn Cantu & Sons.
There are two more sidewalk blocks past this one, and then it ends abruptly, presumably at the edge of the property. Beyond it is the muddy ghost of the old sidewalk.
The obvious rationale for the sidewalk’s removal is that all the houses that were south of here have been demolished. There is now an urban farm there on the right. Hayford has a heavy concentration of them, making the street look almost rural. So why do I disapprove of removing the no-longer-needed sidewalk?
Because I reject the idea that only houses need sidewalks. This is still a public street, and anyone ought to have the right to walk down it for exercise, to amuse their dog, to admire the urban farms that the city wants us to take pride in, or for any other harmless reason. Tear down the houses if you must, but there should still be a public right-of-way.
Perhaps I’m too cynical, but removing the sidewalk strikes me as a gesture of subtle hostility toward the neighborhood. It is well known that the city would rather the Urbandale neighborhood not exist because of its susceptibility to floods and concentration of people of less means. Ever since the great Lansing flood of 1975, the city’s long-term plan for Urbandale has been to phase it out of existence, but efforts have been stepped up over the last decade or so. The city states that one of the goals of the Flood Mitigation Plan is to “keep neighborhoods strong and intact,” and yet it also states that “all property that is acquired is permanently deed restricted so that it cannot be developed again in the future.”
The city, the county, or the Garden Project own about half of the properties on the 700 block of Hayford. Most have been turned into farms or gardens, which is their favorite way of dealing with blight (although to my eyes it’s no more aesthetic to have a neighborhood full of sheds, barrels, and plastic-sheeted greenhouses than tired homes). A few are still standing, though that might mean they just haven’t gotten the funds for demolition yet, or maybe they’re waiting for the renters to move on voluntarily. Many properties eventually fall into the county’s Land Bank due to foreclosure. The city also has a program to buy properties directly, funded partly by a FEMA grant.
The east side of Hayford also has lost some of the end of its sidewalk. It’s a smaller amount, but more awkward, since it just cuts off after the last house’s front walk instead of continuing to the property line.
After taking these photos I walked to the end of Foster and found that it has even fewer remaining houses on its last block, and so an even larger amount of sidewalk has been recently removed.