Paving Paradise

In the summer of 1926, Coffeyville, Kansas was supplying massive quantities of its vitrified brick to Florida cities. Getting the pavers to Tampa was no easy feat due to a railroad embargo:

"Coffeyville bricks were shipped by the train-loads to Florida, to be used in paving the streets that are enjoying a rapid growth. The bricks, 3,250 tons, or 811,500, were manufactured in the plant of the Coffeyville Vitrified Brick and Tile Company here, [and] left Coffeyville by two trains, bound for Texas City, Texas, where the material was transferred to a boat leased by the Company, and was transported by water to Tampa, Florida. The first train contained twenty-nine cars; and were routed over the Missouri Pacific."(1)

Vitrified bricks were touted by their manufacturers as being impervious to freeze-thaw cycles, heat and humidity, excessive weight and tire chains. Beginning in 1927, the National Paving Brick Manufacturers' Association in Chicago advertised heavily in regional newspapers (below) and published The A.B.C.s of Good Paving in order to promote the product's assets. Frugal municipalities envisioned the cost savings.

Hattiesburg and Wiggins, Mississippi implemented vitrified brick pavers on their streets. Brownwood, Texas paved some 42 miles with it in 1928.(2)

The Florida Land Boom brought large quantities of the product into the state. In 1924, Kansas State Agricultural College landscape gardening professor William S. Wiedorn relocated to St. Petersburg, Florida. The street where he lived is still paved in vitrified brick.

(1)"From the Sunflower State." Anita Record 1 July 1926.

(2)"Hitting a New Peak." Brownwood Bulletin 5 October 1928.

Images above:  Ebay; Advertisement. New Castle News 16 November 1927; Advertisement The Charleston Gazette 11 April 1928.

Paving Chinatown

The Association of Commerce News Bulletin is a good source for construction announcements dating from 1919-1972.  Issues regularly feature a "New Orleans Is Growing" column that itemizes business developments and urban planning initiatives.

In September 1937, the bulletin highlighted the razing of the city's Chinatown:

"Tulane-Crescent Parking Company will start demolition of the old Chinatown area, Tulane Avenue between Rampart and Elk Place, September 15. The area will be converted into a parking lot by October 15."

The same issue nodded to Charles B. Walgreen's intent to demolish the Canal Street Beer Building in order to build a $2,000,000 drug store.

Impassable Cypress Swamps

As so many tilling and paving projects are currently underway in New Orleans, we thought it timely to quote from city paving engineer Bryson Vallas' 1926  lecture to the Realtor Salesmen's Division on "Paving and Allied Projects."

"Expansion for most cities, has meant merely the cleaning away of the forrest that surrounded it, and finding that Nature had already provided the land on which to locate the farm, the home or the factory. When our ancestors left the confines of the little settlement nestled behind the two foot levee in the bend of the Mississippi River they found their task of expansion a bit more difficult, especially when this expansion was lakeward, for not only was the cypress and the gum forrest to be cleared away but the land upon which this future expansion must grow, had to be made.

"Old maps of New Orleans made in 1798 show the Old City, or the Cieux [sic] Carre, as we pridefully term it, surrounded by impossable [sic] cypress swamps and by laying out on these old maps such thoroughfares as Canal, Claiborne, Broad and Carrollton, as we know and use them today, we find these these cross through the very heart of this swamp of 128 years ago.

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"The unimproved streets of New Orleans consist usually of a fairly hard top crust about one foot thick under which is found a very saturated plastic clay soil. In paving, this top crust is removed and after installing sub-surface drainage the tendency of the sub-soil is to dry out. There is therefore the problem of placing a pavement on a none too stable sub-grade which in later years and after completion of the pavement, will dry out and subside.

"We therefore see in all parts of the City pavement curbs sunken almost out of sight, manholes protruding above the pavement surface and catch basins that were once at the lowest point of the street now occupying a place at the highest point. Treatment of the sub-grade would no doubt result in correction of the unstable sub-grade at the time of paving but only as the soil is drained years in advance will any near correction of the subsequent sub-grade settlement be accomplished."

Bryson Vallas. "Paving and Allied Projects." Realtor Salesmen's Division Lecture. Typescript. 1926. Martin Shepard Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Paved with Good Intentions

In the early twentieth century, American and European cities sought economical, durable, hygienic, and noise-buffering materials for paving streets and pedestrian walkways. San Francisco was one of the first to introduce treated wood block pavers, which were laid on California Street in 1898. New York followed soon thereafter, its Metropolitan Street Railway Company experimenting with treated wood paving along Hudson Street in 1902. British and French civil engineers adopted the new material for paving the heavily trafficked Regent Street and the Champs-Élysées (image above).

What was this new wonder paver? Creosoted wood block. The Southern Pine Association (SPA) produced creosoted yellow pine block pavements and sold them internationally:

"The claim for Creosoted Yellow Pine Block Pavement is that it is the most durable, the most economically maintained, the least noisy, the most sanitary, and the least injurious to horses, of any pavement in existence."(1)

In New Orleans, headquarters to the SPA, creosoted wood blocks were used for the Gas Light Company's courtyard paving as early as 1878. R.E. Slade, the company manager, provided a testimonial for SPA's 1915 advertising brochure:

"First, the Yellow Pine Blocks in question were laid in either 1878 or 1879; second, the pavement has never been repaired for wear, but the blocks have been taken up and relaid in numerous spots owing to the changes in the piping which ran underneath them."(2)

Creosote, a coal tar product, had largely been used to treat wood for railroad ties and plank roads. Its adoption for block pavers was predicated on a belief that it was easier to maintain, noiseless, more durable than granite and that it had antiseptic properties due to its high percentage of phenol and naphthalene. An earlier experiment, using wood creosote (rather than coal tar) as a preservative, was invented in Boston by Samuel Nicolson. Read about his experiments here.

One wonders, where it all went? Time Out Chicago has documented some extant wood pavers near Lincoln Park. The Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area was once considered the largest user in the nation, noted for its creosoted yellow pine-paved expanses on Cathedral Hill. . .

Sylvester Labrot, Sr. was a New Orleans industrialist who owned a large creosote works. When he died in February 1935, he left a vast fortune of some $87 million to his two sons, Sylvester Jr. and William.

Picture above: Southern Pine Association. What the Cities Say about Creosoted Wood Block Pavements: The Opinions of Civil Engineers, Paving Experts, Street Commissioners & Citizens' Leagues with a Comment by the United States Government. New Orleans, [1915].

(1) p. [3] of above cited publication.

(2) p. 9 of the same.

Infrastructure: Streets of New Orleans

Reported by today's Times-Picayune, New Orleans roadways are undergoing extensive repairs.