Since when is concrete used as pavement in the US?
I’m not asking for ordinaly public roads but for industrial areas, yards. Was it used 1930 already?
I assume the area of cobblestone was over at that time. Asphalt must have been the main pavement. But when did concrete enter the scene?
I’m not sure that asphalt roads etc. are older than concrete ones?? Not sure about road but there are concrete bridges around that date from the 1880’s-1890’s, which is about the same time asphalt roads started to be built in the US.
In Pennsylvania a lot of the older concrete roads were called “Pinchot” roads for Gov. Pinchot who had them built. He served from 1923 to 1927.
Dave H.
For industrial yards and areas, concrete was in use by the early 1900s. But few industrial areas or yards were hard-paved in the 1930s with either portland concrete or bituminous concrete (what we call “asphalt” today), but were either paved with brick or used a rolled, packed road surface such as water-bound macadam or bituminous macadam – the latter is crushed rock sprayed with a tar or pitch.
Brick pavers were much more common than cobblestone. Brick pavers were relatively rare in western states due to lack of coal and fireclay. Asphalt and tar was very cheap in California and on the West Coast and it was widely used there.
For highways and streets, concrete appeared at the same time as bituminous macadam. Bituminous concrete (today’s “asphalt”) did not become widespread until after WWI. Concrete was very common until the 1930s, when asphalt began to rapidly supplant it as mechanization appeared to lay it and as labor costs rose. Today concrete has reappeared in large quantity because it’s been mechanized (somewhat), lasts much longer, supports much heavier loads, and in some areas is equivalent in price to asphalt.
RWM
Thank you very much for the history lesson of pavemenmts in the last century. That was very helpfull[:)]