may – Capital City Sidewalks

Posted on November 20, 2021 by bunnyhugger

Horton Ave., DPW, undated (?)

Back in the Capital City now, on the west side of Horton Avenue between Jerome and the dead end, I found this worn, old Department of Public Works stamp. I’ve actually passed it many times before, but the waning light (oh, that early sunset, this time of year!) was raking everything at such a perfect angle that I thought I might be able to make out the illegible date this time.

Now that I have seen it in good light, I think the date marking there is actually a month, May, similar to this stamp nearby which is also labeled “May” with no apparent year. Strange.

It was a beautiful evening for looking at sidewalk markings, anyway. Look at this light.

Posted on March 13, 2021 by bunnyhugger

Horton Ave., DPW, undated (?)

This is one of those curiosities that pepper this blog, quirky stamps that I can’t quite explain. It’s on the east side of Horton Avenue between Jerome and the northern dead end. It’s an old-style Department of Public Works stamp, and it appears to have a month (May) but no year.

In the early days, the DPW stamped a full date: month, day, and year. By the 1920s they switched to stamping just the month and year, and sometime between 1924 and 1927 they switched to year only. You might think that the year has just worn off, since the stamp is generally quite worn. But that is hard to believe. There isn’t any leftover impression of it at all, for one thing. Even stranger is the placement of “May,” centered below the name. In the month/year and month/day/year stamps, the month is off to the left, not centered. It really does look like they just stamped “May”!

Posted on September 21, 2020October 6, 2020 by bunnyhugger

Eureka St., DPW, 1924

Here’s an old DPW stamp, on the north side of Eureka Street between Lathrop and Clifford, and for a change I can read the month on it: May.

Figuring out when they quit stamping a month with the year will be interesting. It looks like they had already quit stamping the exact date, which they did at least through most of 1918.