I was lucky enough to find a second sidewalk stamp during my recent mini-vacation, this one at Sylvan Beach Amusement Park, a thoroughly charming old park on Oneida Lake, New York. The stamp is in front of an ice cream stand, where I bought a Pepsi float that really hit the spot on a hot day. Sadly, the stamp is undated. The park has been in existence since the 1870s or 1880s (sources seem to disagree on this point) but the pavement is surely not that old. From the condition and style of the stamp, I would make a handwaving guess that it dates from the 1920s or so.

N.D. Peters & Co. does not seem to be in business today. The earliest reference I can find to the company is the 1910 Proceedings of the Board of Contract and Supply of Utica, which reports that N.D. Peters & Co was awarded a contract for the construction of artificial stone sidewalks in Utica, “being the lowest bidder therefor” with bids of 14, 15, and 16 cents per square foot for various sidewalks. In 1914, the Proceedings of the Board of Contract and Supply again reports that they were awarded a contract for the construction of artificial stone sidewalks. This time their bid was 16 cents per square foot on all proposed streets “except Book 3, Map 16, Block 17, Lot 2, Elizabeth street, on which they bid 50 cents per square foot.” I wonder why that one lot on Elizabeth Street was so expensive to pave. (I also have noticed in doing research for this blog that the style around the 1910s was not to capitalize “street” when used along with the name of a street, which looks odd to my contemporary eyes.) A 1913 Utica city directory locates the business on Kossuth Avenue.

I’m not exactly sure when N.D. Peters went out of business. OpenCorporates gives its dissolution date as 2001, but that doesn’t always mean the business was still functioning by then (or even that it necessarily ceased to exist in some form). They were at least still around by 1999, when they were found by the National Labor Relations Board to have violated someone’s union contract by failing to recall him after a layoff.