I made this discovery while walking in and around Bancroft Park recently. It’s on the north side of Taft Street between Ohio and Indiana (Avenues, not States).
I know, you’re thinking, “Another Cantu stamp, big deal.” But look closer! It’s not a dime-a-dozen Cantu & Sons or even a Cantu & (singular) Son, but it’s Cantu simpliciter. While I know that Cantu Builders is the current name of the still-extant company, I had never turned up a stamp without Sons or Son. This is also the most recent Cantu stamp I’ve found, with the previous record-holder being one from 1993. I was beginning to think they didn’t do any sidewalk work after that.
I need to make some more trips into the north side and see what else I can find.
I decided to walk a bit in a different neighborhood, Old Town near Bancroft Park, to try to get some new stamps. I didn’t find anything entirely new there on a short jaunt, but I think this is another instance of the hard-to-read stamp on Elizabeth Street that I thought might read “Buonodono.” Unlike that one (which is undated) this one seems to bear a date of 1961.
It’s on Ohio Avenue near the northwest corner of Ohio and Taft.
Here’s the last of the few stamps I collected while visiting the streets near the Turner Dodge House. It’s one of those mysterious BdWL stamps (I still don’t know what that stands for and will be really excited if I ever figure it out) and it’s on Dodge River Drive at the southeast corner of Black Court.
The stamp is a long younger than the house it’s in front of, which faces Black Court and was built in 1924.
After collecting the stamps from James Street, I decided to walk a little way and see what else I could find, since I’m not very familiar with the neighborhood. I discovered a funny little curved stub of a street called Black Court between James and Dodge River Drive. It looked like the perfect street to find old sidewalks, but as I turned the corner I saw that I was too late. The sidewalks and curbs had clearly been reconstructed at the same time as the one on James, and so all the sidewalk stamps were Martin J. Concrete 2021. These are from the north side of the street in front of the house at the dead end.
Looking at the Google Street View, I can see that the previous sidewalk did not go quite to the curb like it does now. There was a tiny lawn strip, and the sidewalk was abnormally narrow. The curbs also looked shallower. It looks like a clear improvement, yet I have to admit I’m sorry that the new sidewalk lacks certain aesthetic qualities of the old. It used to end by curving gracefully up to the front walk of this house, instead of just truncating a little past it.
After visiting the Turner-Dodge House, I decided to walk around the vicinity a little in search of sidewalk stamps. I had walked this section of James Street looking for stamps in 2020 and didn’t find anything of note, but this time I found that the whole stretch of sidewalk had been redone, the sidewalk had been marked, and best of all, it was by a contractor as yet unknown in this blog.
Martin J. Concrete is based in Coopersville, as the stamp says, which is in the Grand Rapids metro area. Disappointingly, their Web site lacks a company history. They describe themselves as “a West Michigan based Concrete Road Contractor specializing in concrete road construction throughout the State of Michigan.” They also have a page showcasing various major sidewalk projects they have done as well as curb installation. That may be why they were hired for this particular job; the sidewalk here is one of those rare spots around the city (mostly, I assume, on the earliest streets) where there is no lawn extension, so the sidewalk is flush to the curb.
Sorry about the exposure. My camera’s light meter is broken and I don’t always remember to compensate for that.
The stamp uses a template I have seen very often in new sidewalk stamps. The city’s O & M department uses it, as well as numerous private contractors. It’s neat enough, but as a weird connoisseur of sidewalk markings I prefer them less standardized.
I was at the Turner-Dodge House for the Fairy Tale Festival on Saturday, and I noticed this H & C stamp on the sidewalk that leads from the rear of the house to the River Trail. It’s a little hard to read the date, but I think it is 2004.
The stamp in context (close to the bottom of the frame). You can see people leaving the Festival, as it has just ended.
And here’s the Turner-Dodge House, from whence the path leads.
Here’s another one from Drury Lane between Ballard Street and High Street, this time from the south side of the street. It’s very worn and the mud doesn’t help either, but I am pretty sure it is an E. Schneeberger stamp. There is also a paired stamp a few steps away, but that one was even harder to see due to slush.
Here’s an even closer view of the stamp.
Another interesting thing about this stamp is that the house it is in front of is the only house that currently has an address on Drury Lane. Drury is a small, one-block street to begin with, and it has several vacant lots. The only other house that appears to face the street rather curiously has a Ballard address, as previously reported. So the occupants of this house have the unique pride of a Drury Lane address. Personally, I think it would be neat to be the only house with an address on a specific street.
The stamp is on the closest (full) sidewalk block.
This one is just a couple of paces further west from Wednesday’s, on the northeast corner of Drury Lane and Ballard Street. Though Cantu & Sons stamps are extremely plentiful, this is the first Cantu simpliciter I have found. I would estimate its age at 1980 or earlier, because the earliest Cantu & Son (singular) stamps I have found were from 1980, and the earliest Cantu & Sons (plural) were from 1984. This one appears undated, which is unusual for Cantu.
There’s something else odd about this spot. The house it’s in front of, an exceedingly plain little box, has a Ballard street address, but unambiguously faces Drury, which breaks the usual numbering rules. There is no door on the Ballard side at all. My guess is that the property acquired the number of the first house built there and kept it even when a newer house was built that faced the other way. This one was built in the 2000s, making it a very new house for the neighborhood. I wonder why the builder chose to make it a Drury house instead of a Ballard house?
I had never been to Drury Lane before to the best of my recollection, but sometime while doing some scouting for the blog I noticed its existence on the map and had been fascinated by it ever since. It’s so tiny (a block long) and yet has such a grand name. Timothy Bowman’s local history blog reports (from a 1940 State Journal article) that it was named after Drury L. Porter, son of the subdivision’s developer E.E. Porter. That’s as may be, but I would be very much surprised if it weren’t called “Lane” in order to evoke the famous Drury Lane of London. Unless, of course, Drury’s middle name was Lane, in which case he was the one with a London namesake! It actually used to be two blocks, with the western block (past Ballard) connecting to Walker Street, but (per HistoricAerials.com) the other block disappeared, houses and all, between 1970 and 1981. Now it ends at Ballard, with the former Demmer Corp. North Lansing Plant (now owned by Loc Performance Products Inc.) beyond. I wanted to see it, and find any stamps on it I could.
I parked on the slushy road (their plowing seems to have been even less effective than ours), got out of my car, and as soon as I stepped onto the sidewalk I noticed the telltale signs of a stamp among the slush. I pushed the slush aside and could see what is certainly a marking, but a largely illegible one. It looks like it might start with “Lansing,” which makes me suspect Lansing DPW, except that it doesn’t seem to match the style and has a placement near the middle of the block that I have never seen used by the DPW before. It also appears undated, but it could just be that any date has been obliterated.
This is the northeast corner of Drury and Ballard. Drury used to continue another block.
I was in Old Town for Christmas shopping today and took a quick shot of an unfamiliar contractor’s stamp in front of Pleats Interior Design, on the north side of East Cesar E. Chavez Avenue (Historic Grand River) between Turner and Center. I can find some residual directory listings for Dan’s Concrete which suggest it was based on Harris Street in Lansing’s north side, but it doesn’t seem to be in business now and I can’t find out anything about it.
Everything in Old Town is now a gallery, a boutique, or a tattoo parlor, but in times past it was more down to earth. The nice-looking brick storefront occupied by Pleats seems to have been a grocery store called Affeldt’s (“Ask your neighbor – she knows!”) in the 1930s, then Rulison and Sons Supply Company (“We Do HEMSTITCHING”) in the 1940s and 50s. In the 1980s it was home to Minor Creations, a lingerie manufacturer. A January 10, 1993 classified ad sought an industrial cutter for a garment factory, able to lift heavy bolts of cloth; no company name was given, but I assume it was still Minor Creations. To my surprise, Minor Creations (warning: not entirely SFW) still exists and is now based in Okemos. They seem to now call themselves a dancewear rather than lingerie manufacturer. And, times being what they are, they also sell masks to match your tiger striped sexy garb.
Sorry, you can no longer go in and watch lingerie being made, but they would probably sell you some very sexy throw pillows.
