Since I ran out of time to do research on my post from last time before I needed to go to bed, I thought I would go back and see if I could find anything more out about E.E. Lockwood. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much luck. The only thing I found was a line among the two-star sponsors of the 1953 Okemos High School yearbook, the Tomahawk: “E.E. Lockwood and Sons, Cement Contractors.” So Lockwood was still in business (and beginning to hand off to his son) by 1953, but the trail goes cold for me after that. Now to go read more about one of the other sponsors, Palomar Roller Gardens.
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.
