I finally got a chance to walk up to Jerome and Horton to see the bum walk people have been complaining about on the Eastside Facebook group. Several curb cuts along Jerome on Horton and nearby streets have been reconstructed recently, and it does not appear that any of them were stamped by the contractor so that they could take credit (or possibly, in this case, discredit) for their work.
The northwest corner of Jerome and Horton.
I’m not a sidewalk expert and it’s possible there is nothing wrong with these. The complaint that’s being made is that the approaches are too low, resulting in water pooling around them during heavy rain. To my eyes it did appear that they were lower than the drain at this corner, but again, I can’t be sure. Marking this as a Hall of Shame entry is more to do with the failure to mark them as city code requires.
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.
Here’s a mysterious date marking from the east side of Clifford Street between Kalamazoo and Marcus. The typeface and corner placement strongly suggest it was done by the BWL, but they usually stamped their name into the lower left corner of the same slab, so I’m not sure why it is absent here. Possibly the sidewalk used to be wider.
Sorry for the blurry photo; I’m still getting used to my new phone.
Here is a faded date with no name, or possibly one that had a name that is no longer visible. It’s at the southwest corner of South Magnolia Avenue and Marcus Street, on Marcus. I’m interested in it because I have found relatively few 1949 stamps, and because the typeface makes me think of a DPW stamp. I’m trying to narrow down when the DPW because the DPS and right now the earliest DPS stamp I’ve found has been 1950, but there is a possible 1947 one that is difficult to read.
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.
Sometimes I pick an unfamiliar block semi-randomly and divert to it on my way home from work to look for sidewalk stamps. This time I picked Downer Street between Woodruff and Hopkins. There wasn’t much of interest there, but I did find this driveway on the west side of the street. It has a year, 1975, stamped in each corner, but no contractor name. There is a matching driveway stamped with the same date in the corners on Elizabeth Street, undoubtedly the work of the same anonymous contractor.
I like two things about this front walk on the north side of Elizabeth Street between Shepard and Leslie: the very crisp, angled “1975” in either corner of the front step, and the way the walk forks instead of coming straight forward to the street.
I dislike just one thing about it: the lack of the contractor’s name.
Another disappointment, I’m afraid, though at least I aimed the photo to show you some of the Christmas lights I get to enjoy on my walks. These brand new sidewalk blocks are on North Fairview Avenue, at the southwest corner of Fairview and Vine. I passed by here several days ago when the new sidewalk was under a tarp, presumably curing, so I made a point to go back in case I got to see a brand new stamp. I didn’t have high hopes, though. Almost none of the new sidewalk construction I have seen this year has been stamped, with the exception of the Leavitt & Starck sidewalk alongside Allen Place.
The sidewalk in front of the Allen Place project (on the north side of East Kalamazoo Street between Shepard and Allen) continues to develop, and (as threatened in a previous entry) I think I can now formally induct it into the Hall of Shame. There is no sign any of the new sidewalk is going to be stamped, despite it being required by ordinance in Lansing. What would Alderman McKinley say?
I’m curious about the new jog in the sidewalk. It was previously a straight path here. I wonder what the swerve’s purpose is. I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.
I happened to walk past and catch sight of workers smoothing out some brand new concrete in front of the Allen Place project, continuing my observations on the progress of Allen Place’s sidewalk. I didn’t see any sign of stamping yet, sorry to say. I’m afraid this is almost certainly going to end up a Hall of Shame candidate.
