I found this very plain stamp on a front walk on the west side of Rumsey Avenue between Michigan and Jerome. Unfortunately, it’s undated. I think there may be some other Bowden marks on driveways nearby so I need to return to the area and see if I can find a dated one next time.
This is my first Bowden stamp, and I can’t seem to figure out who that is. I can find evidence of a Bowden Construction in Mason, but they seem to be a roofing contractor, so that doesn’t really make sense.
Here’s a new stamp for the blog. Unfortunately I can’t tell you much about it that isn’t right there on the tin. Don Plantz Concrete, LLC, has no Web site that I can find, but OpenCorporates says it was incorporated in 2018 in East Lansing, and it seems to still be active.
This stamp is on the driveway of a house on the west side of Rumsey Avenue’s northernmost block.
I don’t know whether to put this one in the Hall of Shame – because it is newly installed walk that lacks the correct markings – or the Hall of Fame – because it’s newly installed walk in a place that didn’t have any before and needed it. So I’ll take the average, and leave it in the heap with the rest of the ordinary entries. It’s an extension of the sidewalk at the north end of Rumsey Avenue, on the west side of the street.
The sidewalk used to stop at the end of the street. There is a long, narrow green area that runs east-west from Marshall Street next to Lansing Catholic High School to the Don Johnson Fieldhouse, passing the dead ends of Rumsey and Ferguson. People often use it to walk their dogs. Recently, an asphalt path was added to the strip, making it a good route for bicyclists and pedestrians. This sidewalk extension connects Rumsey to the new path. I’ll be using this route to walk to my polling place soon, which is being moved to the Fieldhouse from the Pilgrim Congregational Church, where it’s been since the previous location to that, Bingham Street School, was demolished.
Here is a mystery from the west side of Rumsey Avenue between Jerome and Vine, in the Eastfield neighborhood. The name is illegible but the layout looks like it might be an arch. I don’t recognize the style as matching one of the usual suspects, and it’s also placed strangely, close to vertically centered, but off on the right side of the block.
This stamp is on the west side of Rumsey Avenue just north of Michigan, next to the Church of the Resurrection complex and amidst several E.R. Premoe stamps that have been featured before.
The date is a bit jumbled but I believe it to be 1990, due to its similarity to a 1990 Eastlund stamp that I have seen on Kalamazoo near Leslie.
This is a contractor I haven’t covered before. The pair of stamps is on the east side of Rumsey Avenue between Jerome and Vine.
Shenandoah Construction is based in Mason. According to Angieslist, they were founded in 1990 and “emphasize concrete flatwork in the summers.” I am unsure whether they are still in business. They have a Facebook page, but the most recent posts were two years ago and their Web site is defunct.
Rumsey Street is the “other Allen,” what Allen is called north of Michigan Aveue. For some reason, a lot of the streets between Clemens and Pennsylvania change names as they cross Michigan or don’t make it across at all. Things get a lot more regular from Clemens on east.
This slab is on the west side of Rumsey between Vine and Jerome. I read it as “C & F Const Co” but I can’t find any information about a business by that name in that time period. Interestingly, there are several other 1960 slabs on Rumsey but they instead come from the equally mysterious Gossett company. Encountering them on tonight’s walk did give me the chance to see some clearer examples of Gossett stamps and from them I am leaning toward “C. Gossett” rather than “O. Gossett” as the correct name.
Update 9/19/20: I can confirm that it is “C & F” as I have found several other like it (but clearer) on Fairview Avenue just north of Michigan.