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N. Aurelius Rd., East Jordan Iron Works manhole cover

This manhole cover is in the sidewalk (if you can call that asphalt mess a sidewalk) that accompanies North Aurelius Road as it climbs over the railroad tracks. It’s on the west side of the street, roughly between Walsh and Perkins.

All over Michigan, when you see a manhole cover or a sewer grate, the odds are good that it will display the name of the East Jordan Iron Works. They were founded in 1883 as the Round and Malpass Foundry and made cast iron parts for the lumber industry, ships, machinery, agricultural equipment, and railroads. East Jordan is in the northwest of Michigan, so the connection with the lumber industry is unsurprising. In 1885 their name changed to the East Jordan Iron Works. Since 2012, they call themselves just plain “EJ,” which I find a little disappointing. Their corporate headquarters are still in East Jordan, but they are now a multinational company, having acquired a lot of other foundries over the years. In 2017 they built a new foundry after almost 135 years in their original location, which is amazing. Happily for the town, I’m sure, they built the new one just 14 miles away from the original.

EJ has a detailed company history and timeline on its Web site. I wish all companies did this.

The Potter-Walsh neighborhood can be seen to the west of the Aurelius overpass.

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Leslie St., sidewalk split

No stamp here, just an oddity. The sidewalk at the southwest corner of Leslie and Malcolm X Streets splits. What is presumably the original sidewalk heads inconveniently away from the intersection, so a new strip (asphalt, not proper sidewalk) has been added that better follows the curve of Malcolm X.

I assume that the concrete sidewalk follows the original alignment of Malcolm X, when it was Main Street, and before it got moved around during the construction of I-496. The house directly across Leslie, which the concrete sidewalk seems to aim at, was only built in 2005.

This isn’t the only oddity in the vicinity. The nearby houses violate my sense of orderliness, as they don’t follow Lansing’s code for house numbering (which is usually very well observed). For some reason, house numbers to the south jump abruptly from 910 to 948. Blocks usually top out at 37.

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Parker St., DPW, 1980

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.

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Regent St., P. Beasley, undated

This stamp is on what I call the “other” Regent Street, the blocks south of I-496. It’s on the east side of the street between Walsh and East Malcolm X.

It’s very faint, but you can just make out the “P.”

It appears undated. The only other P. Beasley stamp I’ve found is dated 1960, so it might be from around that time period.

Looking north on Regent, with the intersection of Malcolm X in view. The stamp is on the nearest full slab.
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Shepard St., Cantu & Sons, 1984

I made a foray into the Potter-Walsh neighborhood today and found this stamp on the west side of Shepard Street between Malcolm X and Walsh. Yes, I know, this blog is lousy with Cantu stamps, but it’s a variation I haven’t shown before, one that seems rare in the neighborhoods I normally walk.

This variation is the only one so far that includes a city, East Lansing. The current company, Cantu Builders, is located in Lansing. They apparently had added a second son to the business by 1984. The earliest stamp variation I’ve found is from 1980 and reads “Cantu & Son”, singular.

Looking south on Shepard. To the west is a vacant lot, possibly part of the Consumers Concrete (formerly Martin Block) property. I wonder what that driveway’s purpose used to be.

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Regent St., United, 1988

“Another Regent Street stamp?” you say. Ah, but it’s the other Regent Street this time, the Regent that resumes south of I-496, in the Potter-Walsh neighborhood. This stamp is on the west side of Regent between Perkins and the southern dead end, along with a couple of others from the same company that are less legible.

I walked over the Aurelius Road overpass to take a last few photos of the railroad bridge before construction begins in earnest. The sidewalk has been officially closed for a day, but I figured not too much had probably happened yet and I could get away with one illicit trip onto the bridge. As a side trip, I went down the sidewalk that cuts from Aurelius to Clemens, into Potter-Walsh, and took these photos.

Looking north on Regent. The other two United stamps in the vicinity are near the other end of this house’s lot.

Unfortunately I can’t be enlightening about who United was. A few contractors with some variation of the name “United” show up in searches, but none located in mid-Michigan and none with a specialization in concrete.

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Bensch St., DPW, 1980

I went further afield than usual in search of Christmas lights and ended up walking past the freeway into the Potter-Walsh neighborhood. This is an ordinary 1980s DPW stamp on the east side of Bensch Street between Walsh and Perkins.

I chose this one mainly so I could treat you to some more lights in honor of the holiday. Happy new year from Capital City Sidewalks! I hope you find this one better than the last. And if somehow 2020 was a good year for you, I still hope 2021 is even better yet.

The featured stamp is in front of this very festive yard.
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N. Aurelius Rd., L & L, 2002

This L & L stamp is on a walking path that cuts down from the west side of North Aurelius Road to Clemens. To the north of this, Aurelius “becomes” Clemens and crosses I-496 as an overpass. To the south, it is an overpass over the railroad tracks. In the early 2000s there was a project that both reduced the number of lanes on Aurelius to try to calm traffic, and made the overpasses more pedestrian-friendly. I would guess this sidewalk installation was part of that.

Looking down from Aurelius toward Clemens. Most people say that Clemens “turns into” Aurelius as it goes south but in some sense that isn’t true because they do exist side by side for a couple of blocks.

I refer to the streets here as “the other Clemens,” “the other Regent,” and so on, or sometimes “the alternate universe streets,” because they seem to be in a different world from the streets of my neighborhood despite sharing their names. It’s always hard to believe that they are just down the way as the crow flies, and once upon a time they would have been been one unbroken street. That ended with 496.

Looking back up to Aurelius.