This handwritten mark is on the south side of Vine Street just east of Ferguson. My research-to-payoff ratio on this one was very low. I was ultimately unable to find a plausible Taylor Bros. for this to be, though I did find a probably unrelated welding company by that name in the 1913 Pictorial Souvenir of the Police and Fire Departments, Lansing, Michigan and then lost an hour to reading through the advertisements therein (check out the ad for Sam’s Place if you want to see something wild).
Then I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what the deal is with the garage that this is in front of. It belongs to the house that faces Ferguson. I normally don’t spend too much time writing about private homes for fear that the residents might find it and feel gawked at (though if you live in a mansion in this neighborhood I think you have to expect it), but I usually try to find out at least a little about business addresses. The size of this garage made me think that it must surely have been a business at some point in the past. It makes no sense as a garage for a residence. It’s a three-car garage made of naked concrete block, and it’s comically disproportionate. It’s 748 square feet, and the house is only 1,071 square feet. (The house is also two storeys, so the garage has a substantially bigger foundation.) It must take up nearly the whole backyard.
The city’s property records say the garage was built in 1961 (50 years after the house) and I would guess the sidewalk marking could be from then. I went to the real estate cards from the 1950s and 60s that the library has scanned in their online local history collection, hoping that it would mention something about the garage. Instead it says that there is a one car garage. The card is undated, but handwritten over the top (as they did on these old cards) is “Sold 2-8-61.” The new owner must have built the garage.
I can’t find any evidence that the garage was connected with a business. Perhaps the new owner was a car enthusiast. A three-car garage is nearly unheard of in this part of town. (I’ve already mentioned another house that has one, but that house is four times the square footage of this one.)
I did find one business that has used that address, but more recently. The November 11, 2002, Lansing State Journal has a new business listing for “Gramma Bea’s,” giving the address of the house on Ferguson. I would be surprised if that street had non-residential zoning, so it may only have been an office address. I don’t remember it at all, but apparently there was once a Gramma Bea’s Deli in East Lansing, and its owner was a past owner of the Ferguson house (and the same person who filed the new business listing). Gramma Bea’s won the annual Lansing Lugnuts chili cook off with a vegetarian chili in 2001. On June 26, 2002, the Lansing State Journal reported on its 2002 “Best of the Best” awards. Gramma Bea’s had come in third in the vegetarian food category, but the notation “(closed)” appeared by its name. I don’t know what the new business listing in November 2002 was for, but I find that in 2004 a “Gramma Bea’s Properties LLC” was incorporated in Laingsburg by the same person who had owned the restaurant.
None of this really tells me about the garage or about the Taylor Bros., but I wasted my time learning all of that, so the least you can do is waste your time reading all of it.