This stamp is on the ramp that connects North Aurelius Road to East Malcolm X Street, on the west side of Aurelius. This is the only way to get from Aurelius to Malcolm X now that they have removed the ramp that used to serve the northbound traffic.
There are a lot of L & L 2002 stamps in the vicinity of the Aurelius overpasses, probably all the result of the project that reduced Aurelius from four lanes to two.
The street sign makes the claim that this is the 1900 block of Malcolm X Street, which really stretches the definition of a “block.” It’s more of a service road between the two streets than a proper part of Malcolm X. Then again, very little of Malcolm X Street can be called “proper” given how disjointed it is.
I would say this might be the most forlorn stretch of sidewalk in Lansing, except I’m not sure I should dignify this narrow strip of asphalt by calling it a sidewalk. It’s along the former ramp that serviced East Malcolm X Street from northbound Aurelius Road. It must have been laid along the ramp with the intent of serving as a sidewalk, yet I don’t know why. Until I walked on it to take these pictures, I had never walked down there myself and was surprised to discover it even had a sidewalk. It makes a sharp turn under the overpass and eventually comes out in the Potter-Walsh neighborhood. There are at least two better and shorter ways for a pedestrian to get to Potter-Walsh from here, and walking so close to the ramp when there was any traffic on it must have been unpleasant to say the least.
Looking north along the ramp. The raised area on the left is Aurelius Road.
I walked it, though, and since I’m a rules-abiding person (probably to a fault) I got a little thrill from this laughably minor transgression. This ramp has been amputated from Aurelius Rd. and, despite still having street lamps beaming down on it at night, it now has no purpose. When they rebuilt the railway overpass recently, they also quietly decommissioned the ramp. The southern end of it, where the ramp splits off from Aurelius, has been removed. The rest has been left alone, with a surprisingly neat curb capping its new end.
And looking back south, from whence I came. The curb they put in to (needlessly?) cap off the start of the road is visible in the distance.
When I moved to town and for a while after, there was a sign on northbound Aurelius directing downtown traffic to use what was then the Main Street ramp. I was mystified by this when I first saw it. What crazy person would use that spooky alley to get downtown when you could just go up to Michigan and turn left? And why the heck is that nothing road called “Main Street”?
What I was looking at was the remnant of some previous attempt to stop traffic on Aurelius, which was then a four-lane road, from blazing right into a residential neighborhood at highway speeds as Aurelius became Clemens Avenue. This had been a sore point for Clemens residents for a long time by then. The ramp was an attempt to funnel downtown-bound traffic away from Clemens. As far as I can tell, no one was fooled. I’m not sure when the sign went away but it might have been when they tried the next (and possibly more successful) traffic calming measure: around 2002, they reduced Aurelius to two lanes and lowered the speed limit.
I guess they must have decided that the ramp was a failed experiment and took the bridge reconstruction as an opportunity to remove it. Northbound traffic headed for Malcolm X can still get there by the more direct route, taking a left turn a little way further north.
I had hopes of getting out to a stamp on my “to do” list for today’s entry. It’s one I spotted on a walk quite a while ago, on Hickory Street. It looked old and possibly novel, but it was too muddy to read. I thought if I got lucky someone might have shoveled the sidewalk, leaving a bit of snow in the stamp, because sometimes that makes the old ones more legible. Unfortunately, my plans came to nought due to having a very poor night’s sleep that meant I had to nap this afternoon and left me walking after dark again. So instead, I’ll just have to give you a bit of sidewalk news I ran across recently.
A segment of I-496 (the Olds Freeway) between Lansing Road and the Grand River will be undergoing a big reconstruction project that will start in April and run through the rest of 2022 and into 2023. 496 will be completely closed from June to November of this year. The reason I took notice of this for the sidewalk blog is this statement in an article from WLNS.com: “The project aims to widen I-496, resurface sidewalks, and upgrade ramps along the I-496 service drives between M-99 and Grand River.” (This is a somewhat confusing statement as it suggests Grand River Avenue, but 496 doesn’t touch Grand River. They meant the Grand River, as in the body of water.) By “the I-496 service drives” I have to assume they mean (at least in part) Malcolm X Street. Two important points for sidewalk fans. First, those new sidewalks had better be stamped, although the city’s recent track record with enforcing the sidewalk marking code has been very poor. Second, I had better get out there before April and start taking some sidewalk photos.
This is the sidewalk block at the southeast corner of Parker Street and East Malcolm X Street. I’ll call it Parker since the house at this property faces Parker.
It’s of interest for two reasons. First, I have seen two stamps on one block before, but never three (driveways excepted). I think they were trying to make it clear which park of the sidewalk they were marking out, fearing the intersection would make it ambiguous whether they had paved Parker or Main (as it was then called). And speaking of Main, here is the other reason this spot is interesting. Look at the street sign that is at this corner.
Main St. was renamed Malcolm X St. years ago… except, apparently, the 1200 block.
Did they forget to change the sign when Main changed its name to Malcolm X in 2010? Or did this little stub end of the street somehow escape the official name change? I’ve been to this spot before when cataloguing the famous Schneeberger & Koort stamp, the one that brought the wonder of the Bum Walks Controversy into my life, but I did not notice the sign at the time.
My husband found this stamp first, and showed me a photo of it. It’s on the south side of East Malcolm X Street just west of Parker Street, on a little spur of Malcolm X. Much of Malcolm X (née Main Street) has become various I-496 service roads, and in places splits away from itself (while somehow still technically being “the same road”). It’s really a mess, in map terms. This stub is at the end of a block-plus of what must be the original neighborhood street. West of this point one can continue on the sidewalk, but it is a dead end for vehicles. I haven’t walked these blocks before, despite them being within my usual walking-from-home radius, mainly because the area around 496 gets very pedestrian-unfriendly (deserving of its own Hall of Shame entry).
I was really excited when my showed me the photo of this stamp because of the name Schneeberger. I had previously found several E. Schneeberger stamps from the 1920s, but had been unable to read the name on them until finally having an epiphany while walking past one in favorable light. My husband jokingly referred to the second name as “Oort,” knowing there was a preceding letter but finding it illegible. I decided it looked like a very faint K and did a search for “Schneeberger & Koort.” That got one exactly one hit, but oh what a hit. It’s easily the greatest article about Lansing sidewalks I have seen. It deserves, and shall have, its own entry.
Facing the western semi-dead-end of Malcolm X Street. Past the barricade is… also Malcolm X Street.
Unfortunately, beyond the above State Journal article from 1914 which references them, I was unable to find anything about Schneeberger & Koort. I assume it’s the same Schneeberger who went into business on his own later, or a relative. It’s also unfortunate that this stamp is undated, but I would guess it pre-dates the Schneeberger solo stamps and might be from around the time of the State Journal article.
