I grew up in the Northwest part of Miami, Flordia. We were just 2 blocks from the city limit in an area called “Little River.” I was bout 4 or 5 when they paved our street with asphalt. That would have been about 1939 or 1940. It was fun to watch the steam roller working on our street. I don’t remember any streets with concrete.
Fron time to time, I like to model a street repair job with a steam roller.
I still remember as a kid some areas of Pittsburgh still had cobblestones right up into the early 90s. The Street beside****nal Park was one (I loved riding over that street in my dad’s pick-up as a kid) and over in the Strip district is another. There were more through out but sadly they’re disappearing in the name of so-called progress. I think it really depends on the particular area though. I think some small towns might have also went the cheap route and used tar and chips to pave their roads.
There are quite a few state and federal highways with concrete pavement in South Dakota.
Do you think that the state-owned cement plant at Rapid City might have had somenting to do with that?
Chuck
On Staten Island, in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the local streets in my neighborhood were paved with conventional sized brick, or a gray stone called Belgian block, what most folks these days erroneously call cobblestone. Remember that Staten Island is part of New York City, so that major metropolitan areas still hadn’t converted to asphalt surfaces. Larger arterials and highways might be concrete or asphalt. These earlier, alternative surface treatments still survive in parts of many cities. Two good resources on street surfaces are this one http://www.btco.net/ghosts/streets/paving/paving.html and this one http://www.forgotten-ny.com/COBBLESTONES/Brick%20Streets/bricks1.html
On a second topic mentioned, mail boxes, stop signs, street lights, general signage and many other details varied from what is the general norm for today. Stop lights had only two aspects, red and green. There were fire alarm and police call boxes every few blocks, with yellowish-orange (fire dept.) and green lights (police) illuminated above them at night. Every house on my street had a milk box. Enclosed telephone booths were common, the “Fallout Shelter” sign was everywhere, as was the air raid siren. (The siren in our neighborhood was sounded at noon every weekday when I was growing up, similar to a noon whistle, which, now that I think about it, was also sounded at a factory about three blocks away. Two blocks away in another direction, one of the local churches had a bell tower which chimed the Angelus, so depending where you were at the time, noon would have a different sound. Air raid drills were scheduled on a periodic basis.)
One good resource for this type of info is the website of the Rensselaer Model Railroad Society http://railroad.union.rpi.edu/ Others can be found in period photos or by searching the web under specific topics.
-Ed
Ed Great Posts! [:D] Thanks! [:D]
They remind me… large areas of side streets in Lancaster (England) remained cobbled into the 70s when the Council “improved” the town… and then had to spend a fortune on one-way systems and limiting traffic to stop people cutting through the side streets because the main drag was too small and slow. Since then they’ve dug up great chunks of cobble and tar to put in sleeping policemen to slow the traffic further… also slows ambulances and fire trucks… real neat.
“Bring back cobbles”! is what I say. You can travel smothly over them at a steady 15-20 and you don’t crash over a stupid great hump.
Did any US cities use horse steps? These were put into some steep hills or ramps… basically they were slopes about a horse and a half long between 4 - 5 inch steps with a pair sloped sections for cart wheels in each step. The arrangement reduced the angle that the horses hoof worked on and made the climb easier. I think that there is still a stretch in place at the back of London Bridge Station near Guys Hospital. The ramps fit vans but not cars.
I also knew two locations in London where plain horse steps were used to access stables on the 2nd floor where fire engines in one case and drays (I think)were kept on street level. The third floor was offices and the fourth provender. Anyone over here touring should try to see Camden Lock… apart from the weird species usually visible the buildings by the lock show the use of multiple levels for storage and horse working. I think that the two level stables for the railway horses are still in place at Euston.
And now I recall… where I grew upon a T junction by Epsom (of the Derby) the roads were concrete panels but by our back gate there was a big tarmac patch. There was another part way down the front road. These were repairs to craters from Luftewaffe bombs. The hardcore that went into the base of my Dad’s garage - which housed his 0 Gauge layout - came from th