Wooden you know it?

March 21, 2019 8:25 PM

Pittsburgh's Roslyn Place is one of the country's very last wooden streets.
posted by Chrysostom (21 comments total)

The alley behind the Cardinal’s mansion in Chicago is also paved in wood, and was recently restored.
posted by adamrice at 8:45 PM on March 21, 2019

That's very cool! Interesting that they seem to be using side-on blocks on some of the restorations, instead of end-up blocks like the earlier ones.
posted by tavella at 10:44 PM on March 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

I lived on the corner of Ellsworth Avenue back at the turn of this century. There was nothing to indicate that this was a notable street. I'm glad its being noticed.
posted by infini at 2:00 AM on March 22, 2019

Is there a particular species of wood used?
posted by Thorzdad at 3:38 AM on March 22, 2019

It's "pressurized oak".

Pittsburgh also boasts the steepest street in the continental United States.
posted by M-x shell at 5:41 AM on March 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

In wonder how thick the pavers are. I wouldn’t be surprised if some are 6” or more, otherwise I’d expect them to be in worse shape.
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:53 AM on March 22, 2019

Hessler Court, here in Cleveland, is also wood.
posted by SystematicAbuse at 6:49 AM on March 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

Ah, nice.

Until last year, my local railway station had rather lovely wooden stairs of similar construction, leading down from the platforms towards the ticket office. They didn't seem particularly slippery or otherwise dangerous, but have nonetheless now been replaced with something grippier (but much less interesting and attractive).

I'm pleased to find that someone managed to get a photo before they were removed; the change wasn't announced, so I missed my chance. I feel a little sad every time I walk down them now (on the way up I'm generally in too much of a rush to feel anything but panic about catching the train).
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 7:11 AM on March 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

There are a few spots of these in Victoria, B.C., and the floor of the warehouse building that housed the original REI store in Seattle was the same.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 7:24 AM on March 22, 2019

I used to work for a railcar company, and at the time, one of the old machine shops still sat next door, unused. The entire shop, with many lathes, mills, and other heavy metalwork equipment, had flooring like this. Since it was indoors, it didn't experience the temperature swings and precip of this road, and all of the machine oil and grease soaked into the wood. For character, decades of metal chips and stringers had been pressed into the grain by generations of machinists.

It was beautiful.
posted by notsnot at 7:32 AM on March 22, 2019 [6 favorites]

FWIW, they once raced motorcycles and cars on wood tracks (though the wood was laid-down in planks, rather than ends)
posted by Thorzdad at 8:20 AM on March 22, 2019

Pittsburgh still has the cable cars running as public transport
posted by infini at 9:13 AM on March 22, 2019

I was born and raised in South Philadelphia and the street at my house (13th street at Porter) was Oak on end. When I moved (1952) it was intact. They also used horse drawn Municipal and street commerce vehicles. The horses were gone by 1954, but the street remained. The sound of the huge workhorses clopping past the house on the wooden surface was a distinct "1890's" sound.
posted by shnarg at 9:48 AM on March 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

The second linked story mentions that Roslyn Place is one of just three remaining wooden streets, but then mentions that there are others in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Cleveland. So there are at least four remaining.

The one in Cleveland is Hessler Court. In Chicago, it's Wooden Alley. (Another one in Chicago, the 2100 block of North Hudson, was paved over in 2018. This story mentions a third one "off Roscoe near Inner Drive.") The one in Philadelphia is the 200 block of Camac Street. There was one in St. Louis, Lombard Street, but at least some of it was paved over in 2016.
posted by beagle at 10:13 AM on March 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

Cool! I first heard about this kind of paving from the game Choice of the Vampire: The Fall of Memphis, which goes into surprising detail about the Nicholson wood-block paving of the streets there, the debt that the city council went into over it, and the sad fact that it got saturated with horse urine and sent up a terrible smell in the summer. (There's some information about it here: Crisis and Commission Government in Memphis: Elite Rule in a Gilded Age City by Lynette Boney Wren.)

This is probably not the kind of knowledge you'd expect to gain from a CYOA vampire game, which is one of the reasons why I love it so much.
posted by daisyk at 10:14 AM on March 22, 2019 [5 favorites]

Nicholson pavement also shows up in the history of U.S. patent law.
posted by rossmik at 10:20 AM on March 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Pittsburgh still has the cable cars running as public transport

Technically, funiculars, although we call them inclines. There used to be many more; there's probably an FPP in their story.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:32 PM on March 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

infini: "Pittsburgh still has the cable cars running as public transport"

What I love about at least the Mon Incline is that it's still used by commuters to go to work every day. And it's only $2.50 a ride, the same as the bus since it's run by the transit authority.
posted by octothorpe at 1:19 PM on March 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

Different kind of wooden road, but there's a history park near me, and along the original Milwaukee Avenue trail (the current Milwaukee Avenue is about 500 yards west), they've reconstructed a bit of the wooden boardwalk-style toll road (then called the Northwestern Plank Road) that was built to provide farmers faster access to market ... for a price. (That one operated 1845-1890, but eventually the Northwestern Plank Road's toll office was stormed and burned to the ground by enraged local citizens.) Anyway it's interesting to see the reconstruction partly because it's so insanely NARROW to modern eyes.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:49 PM on March 22, 2019

We still have these in a few streets in Manchester UK, but they're covered up under asphalt/tarmac. This BBC News article is about some others being unearthed in Dundee, and has my photo of one I spotted in Manchester so I absolutely have to link to it.
posted by BinaryApe at 2:05 AM on March 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

Pittsburgh also boasts the steepest street in the continental United States.

A friend of mine lived at the last house at the bottom, facing down it was on the right. He moved there from Climax Street in Dormont, which frankly seemed steeper.
posted by StickyCarpet at 5:58 PM on March 23, 2019 [1 favorite]