Oakland Underfoot

Memphis is full of sidewalk stamps. I gathered these marks around the old downtown over the course of a few days without hardly trying. Zellner‘s was just the first, on Main Street. They’re still in business a century later.

Ben M. Hogan was a general contractor in Little Rock and Memphis from the early 1930s to his death in 1964.

H. F. Vann’s company served the Memphis area from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s. They were Vann & Sons until 1960, then Vann for a year, then Vann & Son.

Tri-State Construction Co. was incorporated in 1918 and lasted at least until 1951. It’s a generic name that’s hard to trace.

Milton Israel Angel appears in the papers as a builder from 1955 to 1980. He was prominent in Memphis’s Jewish community. His obituary has details of an interesting life.

I haven’t looked into this firm, which has a hard-to-search name.

You’ll note that “Laid By” is the norm in Memphis, whereas “laid by” marks are scarce and old in Oakland, chiefly around Fruitvale.

Linden and 21st Streets

The Oakland Water Company was founded by William Dingee in 1893 and competed vigorously — sometimes viciously — with Anthony Chabot’s Contra Costa Water Company. The infamous water war ended in 1898 when the firms merged under Chabot’s name but with Dingee in charge. It was just one episode in a cascade of bankruptcy and failure that ended with public ownership of the water system by East Bay MUD in the 1920s.

Signs of the old private water companies are rare in Oakland streets. EBMUD is interested in preserving them when feasible, and this is a prime candidate.

On a recent trip I found sidewalk stamps in two towns on Maui and various street infrastructure in Honolulu.

Honolulu has steel street lids for different utilities:

HECo is the Hawaiian Electic Company. They left the only actual concrete stamp I saw.

On Maui, this old WPA stamp was in Kahului.

And this one was in Makawao.