The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-08-06
STREET MAKING
 IN UNITED STATES First Street Paving in New
 York City THE FIRST CORRESPONDS "Goede Vrouw' Van cortlandt Could Not Bear Dust In Her Immaculate
 House and the Brewery
 Road Is Paved.
THE FIRST CORRESPONDS
BY FREDERIC J. HAsKIN.

from her husbands brewery road blow
 into her immaculate house, cobblestones
 were spread along the way and
 New York received it's first street
 paving Thus d style was set which was
 followed everywhere in later years. 1t
 was in 1857 that the energetic frau had
 the cobblestones put down, and the coune
 try people came from miles around 10 sec
 the wonderful sight. With this change
 in the road Brewer street became Stone
 street. and so remains until this day
 Stone street was the precursor of hun
 dreds of cobblestone streets that have
 jolted the bones of mankind and the
 mechanism of wagons for many years,
 but which have also made dreamed-of cities a realization and transportation and travel possibility when spring thaws
 had loosened the roadways. Cobblestones
 were easiest to get and have had a long
 popularity. Irregular rocks. roughly lev
 eed and set flat were the next choice of
 street builders. and the third choice ia stone materials fell on fiat sections of
 trap rock or granite. These made rough travel until worn smooth, and then in
 wet weather became skating rinks for
 unsuspecting horses. Macadam and tel ford are not practicable for city uses, so stone, cement, wood, brick, asphalt and
 even rubber have all been tried with
 varying degrees of success.
 In paving streets as in roads, the con
 venience of the material and the cost of ftc datarrDire what each
 city shall use. New England takes the
 great slabs of trap rock that are in
 reasonable shipping distance of almost
 every community, the west resorts to
 bricks from convenient clay lands, and the south has made success of wooden blocks. However, cobblestones and as
 phalt are the most popular and widely
 used materials the country over. The District of Columbia has made more va ried and expensive tests in determining the efficiency of paving materials than any other political division in the world. Sometime in the seventies, within perloI of three years, over s, OO0 was spent on
 wood tests alone. Every patent pavement
 calling for wood or treated wood was conscientiously tried. Wedge-shaped,
 square, polygonal, round and irregular
 
 relative merits of dressed and natural
 pine, spruce and juniper were given far and judlcious consideration. Imitation as- phalt proved failure when tried, and finally the commissioners decided on stone and asphalt as the most durable
 and generally satisfactory materials. Like gooG many other things, asphalt
 came into it's greatest use by accident. s,, ha oil f ho
 asphalt was being hauled to Paris to be
 used In lining tanks and reservoirs. It
 dripped from the wagons on the road
 all the way and where 1t fell it hardened into smooth surface Passersby were at tracted by the incident, and advocated its use a paving material It was
 tried with success In Paris in 1854, in Lon
 don in 1869 and in Berlin in 1873. There
 is a tradition that Louis XV had a road
 made of quartz and a mastic of coal tar opposite St. Roch's church in Paris, but
 no authentic record of this has been found.
 In the United States q combination of tar and concrete was tried Tn 1869. and the following year Newark. N. J., laid the first asphalt pavement in this coun- try, placing 1t in front of the city hall. In the next twenty-eight years S0,00O,000 square yards were laid in the United States. We have never suffered so much doubt over it's efficiency as have the people of Europe During the seige of Paris the German soldiers took up the asphalt agreements and used them for
 fuel. This caused the general impression to prevail that any street might be ! liable to catch on fire and burn beyond the control of all fire departments. So for awhile street builders had to demonstrate the non-combustible nature of the ma terial by laying a bit of pavement on some street and building fires on 1t. Eng land soon became convinced that there
 was no danger and had much of it put down. The pavement around the Bank of England where the worlds heaviest traf- i fc Is, has stood the constant wear of twenty-odd years.
 The asphalt used over here differs in it's prepartion from that used abroad Europe
 uses it almost as finely powdered as 1t comes from the mines In America Il large percentage of sand is used. Follow ing Newark's experiment New York put
 down a block of asphalt in 1S73 and Tn 1901 let contracts for SIP, GOO GOO worth in addition to what she had already laid. In 1876 the contract was let for paving Pennsylvania avenue In Washington. and now that city leads all others in Americ, in the number of square yards of asphalt lllat SQe mas uOWn, llere DelIs Itdrly lf9 miles of 1t. Utica Bufralo, Chicago and Indianapolis followed fast on the heels of New York and Washington, and now almost every city of any size has this
 material in great or small quantities on it's streets Philadelphia has the longest as- phalt street in the world, seven of Broad streets eleven miles being so fashioned. Boards of health have argued in favor lac ha,a f, sxf all pavements to keep clean. New York spends over S2000.000 d year for sweeping her streets, and it Is said that if all her thoroughfares were of asphalt that half
 of this expense would be saved. Someone
 arose in Philadelphia not long ago and declared that the noise of horses feet
 was so much louder on asphalt than on other surfaces that 1t was a nuisance and that It's value as a paving material
 was decreased on this account. test wa5
 made by having a vehicle drawn over
 asphalt and then over stones, and the
 verdict was, that the sound of hoofs Is practically the same on both. The diff ference was noted because of the louder
 noise made by the vehicle when on stone, 1t making 90 per cent of the noise then. Belgian blocks have gained the disfavor of the health authorities because dust falls in the crevices and breeds disease. Wood and brick pavements found early | favor in Chicago. These were more | readily secured than stone. the principal | point in their favor. On La Sale street. where traffic was heaviest. the brick wear l ing surface stood the test In general | demonstrations throughout the country