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S. Howard St., new sidewalk but doomed houses

Four houses in a row have been condemned on the west side of South Howard Street between Michigan and Prospect, and I took my camera out there to document them before their eventual demolition. I found a pristine new section of sidewalk in front of them, still marked off with orange cones. Properly speaking this should be a Hall of Shame entry since the sidewalk is unstamped, despite Lansing Township code requiring it, but given Lansing Township’s shoddy record with sidewalks I think I have to consider any sidewalk installlation to be a win.

A sign in front of the houses talks about a hearing to change the zoning for a planned development, and the scuttlebutt is that it is going to be condos. Oddly, the sign gives the current zoning as commercial. The recent sales record sheds some light on this, as until recently they were owned by the Indian Trails bus company. Indian Trails also owns the parking lot at the corner of Michigan and Howard. It was previously a used car lot, and since Indian Trails took it over, it has gotten weedy and overgrown, since all they have used it for is to occasionally park a few of their Michigan Flyer airport buses. In the 2010s sometime all the houses in the 100 block of South Howard were demolished, leaving a vacant lot between the Indian Trails lot and the four doomed houses. I don’t know the full story, but can only speculate that Indian Trails had some plan for these blocks that never went anywhere.

When these 1920s houses are demolished, it will leave only five houses and a couple of businesses remaining on South Howard. The real estate listing cards in the Belon Real Estate Collection from CADL’s digital local history collection reveal that from the early 1960s to early 1970s, nearly every time a house was listed on South Howard it was marked “value in land only,” meaning the houses were worthless and probably best demolished. This was underlined by the way they generally did not bother filling in the year built for the houses, but marked them simply as “OLD.” Yet they kept surviving anyway, until recently.

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Rumsey Ave., Bowden Const., undated

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.

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Elizabeth St., [?] Buonodono?, undated

I found this faint stamp on a walk leading from the back door of a house facing Allen, on the southwest corner of Allen and Elizabeth Streets. The walk extends diagonally northwest toward Elizabeth.

I can’t make out the name exactly although I think it is [initial] [initial] Buonodono, maybe R.D. I haven’t been able to figure anything out about the contractor. It is undated, but the house was built in 1923 so perhaps it dates to then.

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S. Homer St., Cioffi & Son, undated

This undated stamp is from the west side of South Homer Street between Prospect and Michigan, in front of A & J Transmission. I previously found a stamp with the name just reading “Cioffi,” dated 2021, in the Sycamore Park neighborhood (near Potter Park). At the time I wrote, “The only Cioffi Construction I can find is based in Akron, and I can’t imagine that one would be doing work in metro Lansing.”

So much for my lack of imagination. Indeed, a Cioffi out of Akron is laying sidewalks in Lansing, but this time it’s Cioffi and Son. Did a son join the business, making this the later stamp? Or did the father retire, making this the earlier one?

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E. Michigan Ave., Bond Basile, undated

I might have walked past this one without taking notice a hundred times. It’s on the slab right in front of the IQ Fit building on the south side of East Michigan Avenue, between Francis and Mifflin. The concrete is in especially bad shape here, patched repeatedly with asphalt, so it is lucky that this stamp survives. It is undated, but could date to the construction of the adjacent building in 1959.

I have actually encountered this stamp just one other time, on the front walk of a house on South Pennsylvania, though only the word Basile was legible. Looking back at that one, the placement does suggest another word was probably worn away in front, so it probably also read Bond Basile. Unfortunately, I know nothing of the contractor, despite searching.

The stamp is on the nearest block that touches the vertical siding, facing the road.
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Vine St., KLM Lum graffiti, undated

I found this neat, unobtrusive graffiti on the south side of Vine Street between Ferguson and Custer. It’s alongside a house that faces Custer. I initially speculated that it was two sets of initials from two people in the same family, with a last name starting with M.

Checking the property records online, however, I found that in 2009 the house was sold by someone with the last name Lum. So either someone in the house was named K.L.M. Lum, or KLM were the leading initials of three members of the house (perhaps the children). The owner’s name I see in the records did not start with K, L, or M.

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Prospect St., William Haskins, undated

Here’s a nice William Haskins stamp from a driveway apron on the south side of Prospect between Clifford and Lathrop. Sadly, like all Haskins stamps I’ve found, it is undated. I haven’t yet been able to find anything out about this contractor, who has a smattering of stamps around the east side.

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Sylvan Beach Amusement Park, N.D. Peters & Co.

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.

I love that arc layout, which was also popular among Lansing contractors.

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.

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S. Clemens Ave., Eastlund Concrete

This Eastlund Concrete stamp is on a driveway apron on the east side of South Clemens Avenue between Kalamazoo and Marcus. There are at least two driveways on this block with the same stamp, suggesting the driveway construction wasn’t just a homeowner’s choice but was probably related to the city doing something that tore up the roadside. Unfortunately, neither is dated.

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Rumsey Avenue, new unsigned sidewalk

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.

In this photo I’m facing south, and standing on the new asphalt path.

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.