Yes, it looks like several Minnis & Ewer stamps I’ve done before, but this one is new, I promise. It’s on the east side of South Pennsylvania Avenue between Prospect and Kalamazoo. There are a lot of Minnis and Ewer stamps with the same date (8-10) in this vicinity.
Actually, there are a pair of them, roughly on either end of a residential lot. At the moment they are copiously decorated with mulberries that have fallen from a tree that shadows the sidewalk.
I didn’t forget you for long, fellow Minnis & Ewer fans. Check out this stamp on the east side of Jones Street between Prospect and Kalamazoo. Notice anything about it? I mean besides what a beautifully preserved stamp it is.
Exactly! It solves the mystery of the “910” date stamp found elsewhere on Jones Street. (The area near Jones and Prospect is a rich vein of Minnis & Ewer stamps.) I wrote that I had never seen a four-digit year in a Minnis & Ewer stamp, so I couldn’t figure out why “910,” and was puzzled how the “910” were perfectly clear and there wasn’t even the trace of a “1.” But in this stamp we see both a four-digit year and a fainter “1” suggesting that it had a tendency to print lighter. Of the Minnis & Ewer stamps I have found with a legible month, this is the oldest. It appears that they phased out the four-digit year stamp between July and August 1910.
Welcome back to Capital City Sidewalks, or as it will soon be known, the Internet’s premier Verner D. Minnis fan site. Today I have for you a very hard-to-read 1910 Minnis & Ewer stamp from the west side of Jones Street between Prospect and Eureka. I walked out to this spot today specifically to get this one for today’s entry, only to find that it photographed quite poorly due to a glaze of slush that fell on it this morning and was in the process of freezing over. At first I thought I should wait until I get better conditions for a picture, but I wasn’t able to find anything else of interest that wasn’t similarly buried. Besides, I thought to myself, I’m pretty sure by now my readers all know what a Minnis & Ewer stamp looks like. It’s another one with an illegible month, though I was able to make the year legible by scraping the slush out with my bare finger. On est grand par l’amour, et plus grand par les pleurs…
You’ll notice the heavy sprinkling of evergreen needles decorating the stamp. They were contributed by this impressive tree, seen here as I approached the stamp from the north.
I suppose all the needles must get tiresome, but I am always rather envious of houses that have majestic evergreens shading their front yards. All my trees are plain old Norway maples, except for the small ornamental cherry the previous owner planted behind the garden pond.
This stamp is on the west side of Jones Street between Prospect and Eureka. There are quite a few older stamps in the area south of Sparrow. I know this looks like just another case of “can’t pass up a Minnis & Ewer stamp,” but this one is different. See?
The month can be read, for a change (for some reason it’s often marred or too worn to read), but that’s not what’s odd here. What is up with the year? It appears to read “910.” All other dated Minnis & Ewer stamps I have found just render the date like “7 – 10” – never, that I’ve seen, including the first two digits of the year. That seems to rule out that it was “1910” and the “1” wore away. Besides, the rest of the numbers are clear enough, and there isn’t the slightest impression where a “1” would be. I just don’t know what’s going on here. Anyway, it’s almost certainly meant to indicate 1910, a very common date for Minnis & Ewer stamps in this neighborhood.
Good news! The wait is over and I am finally featuring the Minnis & Ewer stamp on the east side of Bingham Street between Eureka and Prospect that I teased back in January. You know, the one adjacent to the surprising-to-me 1927 DPW stamp. There’s nothing unusual about it, aside from being over 110 years old, but I will never pass up a Minnis & Ewer stamp.
The month is illegible, though with the snow brushed out it looks like a 6 or 8.
I took the establishing photo from further away than usual because I had to record something odd and a little funny. There is about a foot of completely uncleared sidewalk around the border between two houses, with cleared stretches on either side. I can understand there being a dispute about where the boundary is, but whoever cleared theirs second was being petty even by my standards. I want to know what history has led to this point.
I walked a bit around the neighborhood west of Hunter Park, and fortunately got a stamp photographed before the heavy snow started in the second half of my walk. I haven’t surveyed this neighborhood for sidewalk stamps very much yet, so I was delighted to find a Minnis & Ewer stamp I haven’t recorded yet, on the north side of Hickory Street between Pennsylvania and Jones.
Most Minnis & Ewer stamps are very clear and crisp. This is the most faded one I’ve encountered. It’s not entirely legible, and I could recognize it mainly by shape. I could not read the month, but at least I could make out the 11 for the year.
There is a second one, even more worn, in front of the next house to the east, which might be the other half of a pair. Supporting this is that it faces in the opposite direction. I haven’t observed any obviously paired Minnis & Ewer stamps before, but it might just reflect how many of them have been lost over the years.
This one, on the south side of Kalamazoo Street between Pennsylvania and Bingham, has been on my list for ages. Back in October, I wrote about another Minnis & Ewer stamp nearby (with the same date, if I’m reading it right) and mentioned that on my way to it I passed this one and would feature it another time. There is also a third, undated one in the vicinity, which I featured in August. Assuming that one was also done around the same time as the other two – August 1910 – I photographed it during its 110th anniversary month.
I think this says “8-10,” anyway. It looks like the clearer 8-10 stamp around the corner on Pennsylvania. I never stop admiring the crispness of these very old Minnis & Ewer stamps.
After my recent embarrassment at having a commenter point out that the “undated” Minnis & Ewer curb walk actually has a (faint) date, I resolved to take a closer look at other Minnis & Ewer stamps. On my walk tonight I passed one I had previously blogged about on Kalamazoo. I took a closer look and I am still confident it is undated (or at least that the date is completely worn off). But a short way further on I saw another one that did have a date, worn but readable. So much for my previous claim that “all the ones I’ve seen are undated” – apparently I was not looking hard enough. I was going to use that one for tonight’s entry, but something unexpected happened. I turned the corner northward on Pennsylvania and found another Minnis & Ewer stamp, this one with a very clear date. So that one will be tonight’s entry. (I’ll probably feature the other one another time.)
That date, August 1910, makes this the oldest dated Minnis & Ewer that I have found so far. It is on the east side of South Pennsylvania Avenue between Kalamazoo and Prospect.
It seems I generalized too quickly about Minnis & Ewer leaving stamps undated. This is a beautifully preserved stamp for being 110 years old and the slab is in good shape too.
Joseph pointed out, in a comment on my recent allegedly undated Minnis & Ewer “curb walk,” that it was not undated. The date was just very faint, surprisingly so in contrast to the very deep impression of the name. I made a point to walk past it again today during the late-afternoon sun that does such a good job bringing out previously illegible marks and it was very clearly dated “6-11”, June 1911.
I am led to wonder whether all the “undated” Minnis & Ewer stamps I have seen around town were originally dated and I either overlooked the date for being so much fainter than the name, or else it has just worn off for the same reason. I will have to revisit some of them and see what I can see.
Meanwhile, I was wrong to say this was the only “curb walk” on the street. There is another one almost but not quite across the street from it. I will cover that one in a future update.
This is a first for the blog, but one that I have been planning on dropping in eventually. This neat and clear Minnis & Ewer stamp looks like it could have been left there last week, but it could very well be over 100 years old, based on the age of the only dated Minnis & Ewer stamp I have found (1911). That in itself makes it interesting, but the real reason I am posting it is because it represents something I find curious and don’t yet understand, the existence of bits of pavement leading from the sidewalk to the curb. This one is on the 200 block of Regent Street, between Michigan and Kalamazoo, on the east side of the street.
I grew up calling the strip of lawn between the sidewalk and the curb “the extension” as that was what my parents called it. I still use it, but have come to realize no one else around me does. Google has let me know that this is because it is not just specific to Michigan but pretty well localized to Ann Arbor, where I grew up. It appears in the city code of a few towns in Michigan but only Ann Arborites actually seem to use it in conversation.
I don’t know what to call these bits of sidewalk that appear on extensions erratically around my neighborhood. I have used the keyword “curb walk” just so I can find this entry again later, but that’s something I just made up as a placeholder until I come up with something better.
I originally thought, when I saw a bit of pavement like this, that the owner must have had it installed so they had somewhere to set out their trash bin for collection without messing up the grass. On consideration this does not seem to entirely explain it, both because of how old this one likely is (though perhaps contemporary to the old house it’s in front of) and because on some streets they appear at regular intervals as though they were considered a functional part of the sidewalk when it was constructed. This is not one of those places and I believe this is the only one on the block. I rather wish I had one, especially if it had a cool old stamp like this. I would set a planter on it (but not on the stamp).
Update 10/11/20: Joseph has pointed out that there is a date on this one. I revisited it with better light and was able to see that it is dated “6-11” – June 1911.