With their removal went a special feature found on some early 20th Albion concrete sidewalks.
Albion once had wooden sidewalks until 1900, when they were banned in favor of concrete ones. Albion’s first concrete sidewalks were laid in town beginning in 1901, when contractor George E. Dean (1872 -1932) poured numerous concrete walks in residential areas our town. These had his imprint “GEO. E. DEAN 1901” at the beginning of each section of walk he laid. Just a few remain today, which are usually short sections that haven’t buckled or crumbled. A tell-tale identifier of his walks is that they had “dots” in little square patterns across the surface.
After Dean, during the 1910s concrete walks were laid locally by the Lohrke Brothers, and the firm of Durkee & Beilfuss. Other contractors came along, too during the 1920s. One of them included a special feature at each street intersection: It impressed the square at each street intersection with the street names right in the concrete itself!
Now a hundred years later, you won’t find many of these still around in Albion, but there still is one on the northeast corner of Crandall and Adams St. in the southwest portion of our city. The lettering is about 3 ½ inches high. The contractor would press the letter mold into the concrete with the street name and the suffix “ST.” afterwards. One name would be parallel to the street itself, and another would be parallel to the intersecting street. This was helpful for intersections where street signs were removed or didn’t exist, and was very helpful to pedestrians who walked on the sidewalks. Note: Two more named-squares are also located at the intersection of Crandall and S. Eaton Streets.
From our Historical Notebook this week we present a picture of the “street-named sidewalk square” for Adams and Crandall. I’ve used shaving cream and a squeegee to provide photographic contrast. Kids, don’t try this at home. Notice that for ADAMS, the contractor started too far right in the square and ran out of room. As a result, the suffix “ST.” had to be curved around the corner. The contractor was grammatically correct however, by adding the period after the abbreviation “ST.” The CRANDALL side imprint was recently uncovered after years of being overgrown by the grass on the edge of the sidewalk. I remember there used to be a sidewalk square at the intersection of Dalrymple and Mechanic Streets, and the suffix at the end of Dalrymple stated “BLVD,” for Boulevard, which was the original suffix designation for Dalrymple when it was platted.
How many other intersections in Albion still have “street named” sidewalk squares? Check your corner! If you have one of these in front of your house, please be sure and trim away the grass covering the sidewalk, and sweep of the dust or dirt covering the lettering. In future sidewalk projects in town, an effort should be made to plan and keep these intact if possible.
