This stamp is at the edge of the street, on the driveway belonging to Innova Salon and Day Spa, on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Allen and Shepard. L & L stamps are plentiful; I am more interested in the building this is in front of. Like several of the businesses in this stretch of Michigan, it is a big old house that has been converted into retail.

It has an impressive second floor porch, and the surprising part is that it isn’t original to the house. Google’s street view of the house taken in 2007 shows it with no porch on the second story (and thus looking like a more standard-for-the-neighborhood American Foursquare). No windows on the second story either; they apparently got covered over at some point in its retail history. The street view from 2008 shows it being renovated, with windows reappearing on the second floor and the previous first-floor storefront addition now absent. It looks much handsomer now than it did before the renovation.

I’m not sure when it went from residential to retail, but it spent a few decades as MacLaughlin’s Piano Mart (later MacLaughlin’s Piano and Organ Mart). On November 30, 1980, a Lansing State Journal ad reads, “DOUG BROWN MUSIC (formerly MacLaughlin) – serving Lansing over 30 years.” By 1997 the address was home to Print King. There really does seem to have been a time when this stretch of Michigan Avenue was the print shop district. I can think of at least four former print shops in the vicinity. A photo in the city’s property records dated March 2001 shows the Print King signage in place but a “FOR SALE” sign in the window. The 2007 Google street view shows Rapid Appliance Service here instead. Innova Salon moved in soon after.