I’ve written before about “sidewalk signatures” — the names impressed into the cement by the men (it was usually men) who originally poured the sidewalk years and sometimes decades before. Some companies even used metal markers pressed into the fresh cement, and I’ve commented that I found this intriguing and delightful.
How many people today are so proud of their work that they put their names on it, for all to see?
(Well, I mean people other than egomaniacs like me.)
Anyway, outside the Midtown Huey’s, just a few doors down on South Tucker, I noticed the name LOUIS ALEXANDER pressed into the sidewalk. It doesn’t carry a fancy inscription or company logo, but I do like the jaunty angle of the name. And from that name, we know that this sidewalk was poured some time in the 1940s, because a Louis Alexander shows up in the old city directories of that period, living on Boston Street with his wife, Sallie.
I’ll post others as I find them, as I stumble around the sidewalks of this city, peering intently at the cement, block after block.