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Update: previously illegible Regent St., C.D. Chamberlain, 1950

I have walked past this stamp so many times, and periodically I start thinking I can almost read it, especially at night under the streetlight. What threw me is that the first two letters looked like “CD” but the entire stamp looked like one word, rather than initials and a surname. I could also tell that the last four letters were -LAIN and I kept thinking it was some variation of McClain or McLain, but those leads were not fruitful.

Tonight I walked past it and suddenly thought if I stopped and stared, this time I would get it. And what do you know? I did. My brain suddenly organized the shadows into “CD CHAMBERLAIN” – though the spacing is so close it still looks like one long word.

Can you see it now? Suddenly I could!

The stamp is on the west side of the 100 block of Regent Street, south of East Michigan Avenue, alongside the former Pagoda Restaurant. There are two of them, but this one is the more legible.

The first thing I did was go to Find A Grave and check for a C.D. Chamberlain. I found Claude D. Chamberlain, 1914-1998, which seemed promising. Turning to the (Lansing) State Journal, I found lots and lots and lots of references to Mrs. Claude D. Chamberlain in the Society pages in the 1950s and 60s. Mrs. Chamberlain was very active with several organizations, including the American Association of University Women, the St. Lawrence Hospital Auxiliary, and the Lansing Fine Arts Council. I also found her obituary; her name was Jean, and she died in late 2015 at the age of 98. Her name (as “Mrs. Claude”) appeared in the State Journal so much that it interfered with my trying to find anything out about Claude. I was unable to find his obituary, or anything about his life. Eventually I found a single reference to him that justifies identifying him as probably the C.D. Chamberlain of this stamp. On March 31, 1957, the name “Claude D. Chamberlain” appears in a list of “Blue Ribbon Builders” associated with some upcoming open houses.

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Update: E. Schneeberger

I had a breakthrough on my walk yesterday. I passed a stamp on Vine – one I have featured before – from a contractor who has previously plagued me because all of their stamps have been too worn for me to quite read the name. I tagged them “Schullberger” even though that didn’t seem like a name I could turn up in records, just to keep them together. But as I walked in bright, late afternoon light yesterday, the angle of the sun really drew this one out and I suddenly realized it was most likely “Schneeberger.”

I can’t find anything definite, but I have a couple of leads. All of the Schneeberger stamps I have found are from the 1920s. On March 24, 1922, the Lansing State Journal reported that Edward Schneeberger of New York Avenue had a tire stolen from his car. This was probably the Edward Charles Schneeberger (1872-1942) who is now buried in Mount Hope Cemetery.

I also find references to the Schneeberger Builders bowling team in the league bowling results pages (often a friend to this blog) between 1950 and 1970. I don’t know if this is a descendent of E. Schneeberger’s business, but it’s certainly possible.

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Update: Regent St., previously illegible DPW stamp, 1942

I’ve had my eye on this Regent Street Department of Public Works stamp (on the east side, 400 block, between Elizabeth and Kalamazoo). I previously posted it as having an illegible date, Periodically, it has almost become legible, due to the right lighting or a bit of water pooling in the indentations. Recently, I had decided it was possibly a 4 after the 19, but still could not read the final number at all. Then, suddenly, as I walked the block this evening…

Plain as day, thanks to fall rains washing away the right amount of mud and leaving the right amount of silt behind.

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Minnis & Ewer “Curb Walk” Update

Joseph pointed out, in a comment on my recent allegedly undated Minnis & Ewer “curb walk,” that it was not undated. The date was just very faint, surprisingly so in contrast to the very deep impression of the name. I made a point to walk past it again today during the late-afternoon sun that does such a good job bringing out previously illegible marks and it was very clearly dated “6-11”, June 1911.

I am led to wonder whether all the “undated” Minnis & Ewer stamps I have seen around town were originally dated and I either overlooked the date for being so much fainter than the name, or else it has just worn off for the same reason. I will have to revisit some of them and see what I can see.

Meanwhile, I was wrong to say this was the only “curb walk” on the street. There is another one almost but not quite across the street from it. I will cover that one in a future update.

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B.F. Churchill Update

The wet pavement and streetlights conspired tonight to make a lot of details more visible. Most notable is that upon passing my old friend the B.F. Churchill stamp it leapt out at me that of course the date on it is 1908. I just hadn’t been willing to see it because it didn’t seem consistent with my research. How did he go from having his own cement finishing business in 1908, to being a dray line operator in 1915, and then working for Reniger Construction in the 1920s? I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised when J.P. Sleight was both a dairy farmer, a coal supplier, and a sidewalk builder.

If I am correct in my new assessment, it’s the best condition sidewalk I’ve seen among the pre-1910 stamps. It should be here a long while to come.

It was hard to get a photo that showed the play of light as I saw it. This is the best I could do.

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McNamara Construction Update

I have discovered that my employer has access to online records of The Lansing State Journal for the frustratingly limited years of 1980-2011. I thought I would see if I could find anything about the closure of McNamara Construction. Instead I found, in a roundabout way, the answer to my previous question of whether their baseball team pulled off a perfect season in 1971.

In the sports section of August 7, 1986 (page 5C), there is an article announcing the return of Tim May to coaching (women’s basketball and men’s baseball) at Battle Creek High School. The article notes that Tim May had been on two championship McNamara Construction teams, including McNamara’s 1971 20-0 season.

I am surprised to find that on page 6 of the August 27, 2000, Homes section, an advertisement from Forsberg Real Estate Company offers a plot, “Build to suit. Come over and see the quality of McNamara Construction. Ranch and 2-story plans available…” I’m puzzled by this as McNamara dissolved as a corporation in 1986 and sold their property on Waverly to Valvoline in 1988. I do find in the June 17, 1988 paper (page 3B) that the city had been engaged in a legal battle with McNamara Construction since 1985 over the use of a property on West Holmes Road as “a sewer contractor’s storage yard” which residents nearby called a junk yard. In the early 1980s they had lost a suit against McNamara to force cleanup of the property as a jury said it was not a junk yard. So apparently McNamara Construction was around for a while after the corporation ended, but I can’t say how long.