Looking North from Beverly Road and East Fifteenth Street, Brooklyn, in October, 1899.
When wood pavements are spoken of in most of our cities, the taxpayer pictures to himself the round cedar block so generally in use in Western cities. These are used on account of their cheapness. They are usually laid on one or two courses of plank. The blocks are round, from four to eight inches in diameter and six inches in depth, are set as closely as possible to each other, and the joints are filled with gravel, after which they are usually poured full of pitch. Such a pavement, when new, is quite agreeable to ride over. It soon, however, becomes uneven; the defective blocks quickly decay; the surface not being impervious to water, the wet foundation under a pavement with so little rigidity becomes soft, and the mud or slime works its way up between the blocks, and the process of decomposition is expedited. We hear sometimes of the floating pavements of Chicago. These are such cedar-block pavements which are said to rise with the floods of water filling the roadways after heavy rainfalls, and from specimens of the pavement which may be seen in that city considerable sections must have floated away. The round block has nothing to recommend it but its cheapness, and this usually proves to be expensive economy. In Galveston, Texas, creosoted yellow pine blocks have been laid for some years with general satisfaction. They are laid directly on the fine sand, which is water-rammed so as to be very compact. The surface is formed with great care by a template to the exact grade and crown, and the joints are filled with similar fine sand. In Indianapolis creosoted blocks have been laid for several years, sixty thousand square yards having been put down during the past season. They are laid as closely as possible on a concrete foundation, with a sand cushion of one inch, and the joints filled with paving cement, composed of ten per cent of refined Trinidad asphalt and ninety per cent of coal-tar distillate, after which the surface is covered with half an inch of clean coarse sand or granite screenings.
A New Cedar Block Pavement in Toronto.
Improved wood pavements are a luxury. They have many points of superiority over asphalt. They are so considered in London, where their use is continued, although they require renewal oftener than asphalt, and much more often than granite. They will undoubtedly be used more frequently in this country when the people are willing to pay the additional cost for the quiet and freedom from dust and from the somewhat disagreeable glare of asphalt.
For a dozen years or more brick has been used for street pavements in the cities of the middle West. The use of this material is by no means new. It began in Holland in the thirteenth century, and in the seventeenth century the highway from The Hague to Scheveningen was paved with brick. In Amsterdam such pavements are said to last from ten to twenty years, or an average of fourteen years. After about ten years they are commonly turned over and relaid, after which they will last about four years more. The size in common use is about the same as that made in this country.
A good paving brick should be tough enough to withstand the wear to which a street surface is subjected without chipping or cracking, and should not absorb more than from two to four per cent of its weight of water after submersion for forty-eight hours. It has not the wearing qualities of granite, although there is one block on Ninth Avenue, in the Borough of Manhattan, which has been subjected to very heavy traffic for eight years, has had no repairs to speak of, and its condition to-day compares very favorably with almost any street pavement of equal age which has been subjected to similar traffic.
An Old Cedar Block Pavement.