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.

New Orleans has a lively streetscape, which you see a lot of because you need to watch your step in the old central city. This is a sampling of what’s there, gathered casually during a recent stay. I did not see any concrete sidewalk stamps, but they do exist.

This beautiful water meter box cover was designed by the manufacturer to replace the classic version first introduced in 1921. (The classic version serves as the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board‘s logo.) The little dome covers an antenna that transmits data to the meter readers.

A sewer cleanout cover installed by the Sewerage and Water Board, which was established in 1899.

New Orleans Public Service, Inc. was in charge of power, gas and transit from the 1920s to the 1980s, when the transit segment was taken over by the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (the RTA) and the power and gas segment became Entergy New Orleans. Today the NOPSI Hotel occupies its old headquarters near City Hall.

This would be the Western Union Telegraph Company.

I’m striking out on CELP Co.

Same thing with E. E. Co.

Don’t know what PTC Co. is or was.

Finally, DRAIN lids are everywhere, along with WATER and SEWER lids.

I had about an hour to walk around downtown from the El Paso train station. The sidewalk stamp right outside was the only one I found, but there was plenty of street stuff. J.A.R. Concrete did business for 65 years, but went bankrupt in 2023.

El Paso Foundry & Machine dates back to the 1890s, but I can’t find anything about its current existence.

It seems like an interesting city, and a fellow passenger, an El Paso native coming back for a visit, praised it to the skies.

All I know of Salinas is what I saw at the train station, where the Coast Starlight stopped for a “fresh air break” for all the smokers to light up. The Amtrak station appears to have been renovated, and it has a little rail museum. Plus this mark, dated August 2020. Cen-Cal Construction is a modest sized firm, without a website, that was founded in 2011.

305 N. Harbor Boulevard

Right near the San Pedro cruise-ship berths, way down at the edge of this huge city, I found proof of concept that L.A. has sidewalk stamps.