What the Sidewalk Says

Look down at the edge of a sidewalk square, close to the curb, and you will often find words pressed into the concrete. Most people walk over them for years without ever reading one.

The words are called a contractor's stamp. When a crew pours a new sidewalk, the concrete stays soft for a few hours. Before it hardens, somebody presses a metal plate into the wet edge. The plate carries the company's name, and usually the year the work was done.

The stamp is not decoration. Cities require it. If a sidewalk cracks apart two winters after it was poured, the stamp tells an inspector exactly which crew laid it and when. In many cities the company that poured it has to come back and fix it, at no charge, for a set number of years. Without the stamp there would be no way to know whom to call.

The years are the part people find surprising. Concrete lasts a long time. In older neighborhoods it is common to find stamps from the 1920s still holding up traffic, still readable, still naming a company that closed before anybody now living was born.

A few stamps carry more than a name. Crews have pressed in a handprint, a dog's paw, a date that mattered to somebody. Those were against the rules, and they are still there, because once concrete sets, it keeps whatever it was given.

So the next time you are waiting at a corner, look at the ground near the curb. The sidewalk has a signature, a date, and sometimes a secret.