Posted on by bunnyhugger

S. Foster Ave., E.E. Lockwood, 1937

I noticed this very worn stamp on a driveway apron in front of a house on the west side of South Foster Avenue between Michigan and Prospect. It’s fairly wordy, suggesting it may give a city as well as a name, although it may just say “cement contractors” or something.

I looked around to see if there is a matching one and there is, or at least I think so, on the sidewalk nearby. Unfortunately it’s no more legible.

I was getting ready to put this post through when I decided to take one more look at the name to see if I could make it out. It was bothering me how close I was to being able to read it. I started thinking I saw “Lookwood” but decided that didn’t really sound like a name. What about Lockwood? I thought that sounded more like a plausible name. A Google search for “Lockwood concrete lansing” turned up the October 19, 1934 issue of the East Lansing Press, courtesy of Central Michigan University’s Digital Michigan Newspapers collection. There on page six I found this:

220 M.A.C. Avenue is now part of a big commercial building with condos on the upper floors. It would have been located about where CVS is today. Although I was in town when that block was redeveloped, I can’t seem to shake loose a memory of what it looked like before or what was there.

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E. Kalamazoo St., Graffiti, 1995?

There is a large and somewhat mysterious vacant lot on the northeast corner of East Kalamazoo Street and South Foster Avenue. The Kalamazoo side of it is lined with a row of handsome evergreens, and that’s where you can find this series of three graffiti-covered blocks. I assume the number on one of them represents a date, ’95, but I can’t be sure. They are facing sideways from the perspective of a pedestrian, as though meant to be read by the evergreens. Here they are, presented from east to west.

I guess Woz had a lot of free time in the 1990s.
Mondo Pavement is one of the least remembered of the mondo films.
Looking east, along the row of trees that unnecessarily screen an empty plot of grass from Kalamazoo traffic. There must be a story here.
Posted on by bunnyhugger

The City Code on Marking

Since starting this blog, to my own surprise, I have not missed a single day of posting a new sidewalk stamp. I have a rule that I can only post a stamp I photographed that very day, most often on my daily walk. Thus my blogging and my daily walking habits reinforce each other. Today, however, I will have to have my first off day, as I am going in for surgery and probably will not be in a condition to walk afterward. In fact, I am not sure when I will be able to resume.

So today let me show you something I have saved for just such an occasion: the City of Lansing Municipal Code on sidewalk markings. Early on I had wondered whether contractors mark sidewalks out of some kind of legal obligation, or whether it is just advertising. It turns out it is the former (and probably has the latter as a bonus). Under 1024.10 (d), “Marking,” it states:

Marking. Any person constructing sidewalks or approaches in any right-of-way shall mark each walk or approach with his or her name and with the year in which such walk or approach is built. Letters and figures used in marking shall be not less than one and one-half inches in height and shall be placed in such position on such walk or approach as the Director of Public Service may specify.

City of Lansing Municipal Code, 1024.10 (d)

So all those undated markings? Or worse, the obviously new slabs with no markings at all? Scofflaws.

Also, I wonder if “approach” is what I have been calling a “curb walk.”