Abstract

Abstract:

By the end of the nineteenth century, street pavement was synonymous with modernity. Municipal authorities around North America struggled to improve not only the health and appearance of their cities but also the movement of vehicles. Although sheet asphalt, which would come to dominate street pavement in the twentieth century, was employed beginning in the 1870s, it did not provide the modernizing cure-all as readily as historians have suggested. In reality, local conditions, regional practices, and economic concerns played significant roles in prompting municipalities to experiment with a wide range of paving materials. Savannah, Georgia, was typical and offers a rich case study both for the wealth of municipal documentation that survives and the persistence of numerous historic paving materials that attest to the highly experimental nature of this civic improvement.

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