writteninstone.photo

As I wrote last year, neighborhood walks during the pandemic kicked off my fascination with stamps and plaques found in sidewalks.

Stopping suddenly on a walk and straddling awkwardly to grab a squared-up photo of some concrete probably looks pretty strange, and makes for a bizarre hobby, but look at these!

A bright brass seal reads 'The Hinchman-Renton Co., Denver' is set in an aging, pebbled sidewalk “Laid by F.H. Heimbecher, Denver, ‘56” is set in an all-caps serif, enclosed by a diamond

I’d been collecting photos and throwing them up on Instagram, but over the end-of-year break I decided to build a whole dang website — Written in Stone, the sidewalk website nobody asked for!

Written in Stone, a website, showing an array of photos of sidewalk stamps and plaques

Side projects are always a fun way to learn something new, but I've been wanting to add more context to my growing photo collection than Instagram will allow by connecting dots between people and places:

An individual post page on Written in Stone, showing a Rogers Concrete seal with links to nearby stamps and other stamps by Rogers

I thought building Written in Stone would just be a fun way to take my hobby way too seriously to try some new front-end development tricks. But, between us, I am sincerely touched and amazed by the response I've gotten from people since launching ☺️

P.S. If you're a sidewalk stamp enthusiast — and I've been surprised to learn there are many of us — please let me know if adding your photos to Written in Stone is something you'd be interested in...