Cobblestone streets in Detroit

[EASTSIDE CAT 67-83]

When I was a teenager back in the 70's my dad worked for Barton Mallow Construction Co and one day he comes home with a truck load of old cobblestones that were being ripped out of the streets during the construction of Joe Louis arena. Does anyone know where these stones were quarried from? This forum has always amazed me with the ability to come up with obscure answers to questions about old Detroit so lets see.

[DetroitPlanner]

My dad worked on that site too and he was constantly bringing home old crap that they would unearth from the Union Train Station. Being a richardsoinian building, the bricks would resemble a cobblestone look. Dad seemed to be fascinated mostly with blue bottles.
http://www.michiganrailroads.com/RRH...ionStation.htm

[Buy American]

Don't know where those particular stones were quarried from downtown [[ may be at the Detroit Historical Museum) but I can tell you where there is a street in Detroit that still has them. Marlborough, east side of Detroit, south of Jefferson they still exist. Sorry I can't help you with your question.

[EASTSIDE CAT 67-83]

Don't know where those particular stones were quarried from downtown [[ may be at the Detroit Historical Museum) but I can tell you where there is a street in Detroit that still has them. Marlborough, east side of Detroit, south of Jefferson they still exist. Sorry I can't help you with your question.

Buy Amer
I grew up on Chalmers and remember the Bricks on Marlborough, they are a vestige of the entrance to the old horse race track that was there at the turn of the century. If I remember correctly the bricks still go from Essex to Jeff.

[EASTSIDE CAT 67-83]

My dad worked on that site too and he was constantly bringing home old crap that they would unearth from the Union Train Station. Being a richardsoinian building, the bricks would resemble a cobblestone look. Dad seemed to be fascinated mostly with blue bottles.
http://www.michiganrailroads.com/RRH...ionStation.htm

That is too funny... Dad also brought home his share of old bottles and also the old glass insulators from telephone poles, the ones that were green glass and had dates on them.

[Buy American]

Buy Amer
I grew up on Chalmers and remember the Bricks on Marlborough, they are a vestige of the entrance to the old horse race track that was there at the turn of the century. If I remember correctly the bricks still go from Essex to Jeff.

We lived in an apartment on Lakewood when we first got married, early 60's. That area was our old stomping grounds dating and family lived on Ashland and Manistique. I never really thought about the cobblestones on Marlborough as being anything other than a nuisance when driving over them, only in my "grown up" years do I realize the significance of them and the historical value.

[EASTSIDE CAT 67-83]

We lived in an apartment on Lakewood when we first got married, early 60's. That area was our old stomping grounds dating and family lived on Ashland and Manistique. I never really thought about the cobblestones on Marlborough as being anything other than a nuisance when driving over them, only in my "grown up" years do I realize the significance of them and the historical value.

BA
Well said, sometimes when we live it we didn't appreciate it enough...BTW did you ever run out of 32's when you were on the job my uncle used to take me there for meals every now and then when he ran out of there in the early 70's, he retired a few years back as a Capt.

[HazenPingree]

I took a virtual tour of the streets on Marlborough with the aid of Google Maps. Though it is still very cool, it looks like it is brick street, not cobblestone. Did I just not venture far enough South?

[Detroitnerd]

I think it's a common misconception of what paving material we're talking about.

Cobblestone is like Canfield between Third and Second, yes? A clattery, uneven stone that gives you a rattling ride.

Then there's brick paving, which is smoother, but harder to brake on in ice.

Then there are older materials not in use anymore, such as pounded cedar.

[Wheels]

If they are original cobblestone like in the streets of Detroit exhibit at the Detroit Historical Museum they came from Europe as ballast on ships.

Brick paver's came later and are much harder and denser then building bricks.

[gazhekwe]

I worked downtown in the 60s. At that time the area from Jefferson to the River where Hart Plaza is now was all leveled and used for surface parking. It was punctuated with the original cobblestone streets that had not been taken up. Those stones were a challenge in heels, I can tell you that for sure. My guess is the JLA construction hit the same era of street just a few blocks west.

[HazenPingree]

Then there's brick paving, which is smoother, but harder to brake on in ice.

Don't forget that brick streets last longer in some respects than asphalt or concrete. They seem to take better to the Michigan freeze and thaw.

Despite the fact that MDOT has put hideous asphalt turn lanes over the brick on Michigan, the rest of the road is pretty old, if I'm not mistaken. And it gets a ton of traffic.

[Gistok]

There used to be [[pre-Judge Augustus Woodward Plan of 1805)... a street along the water called "River Road". It would be very interesting to find parts of it still under the modern layers of time...

[Buy American]

BA
Well said, sometimes when we live it we didn't appreciate it enough...BTW did you ever run out of 32's when you were on the job my uncle used to take me there for meals every now and then when he ran out of there in the early 70's, he retired a few years back as a Capt.

No, I never ran out of 32 but I'm sure your uncle and I crossed paths occasionally. I retired in '94.

[douglasm]

Good point about brick. In a town near where I live, one of the main streets is still brick paved. Of couse it's on a hill with a traffic light at the bottom.....

[Lowell]

There are many pieces of brick streets and alleys to be found in Detroit. Brick unfortunately is slippery but other than that i love it. The sea of red brick on Michigan around Tiger Stadium, even if in disrepair with ugly asphalt patches, is still beautiful to behold. I also love the sound of driving over brick.

If built on a good base and maintained it would seem that they are ideal for flexing with our freeze-thaw cycles.

[ptero]

There was a thread in the dark ages [[archived?) that included a lot of discussion of Detroit's cobblestone streets. My search foo is poor - I couldn't find it.

I remember commenting then about Canfield. The cobblestones were installed new sometime in the 1980's. It was plain old asphalt/concrete when I lived there ~'73-78. They excavated to dirt and moved/realigned the street a bit when they 'updated' it.

[Pam]

There was a thread in the dark ages [[archived?) that included a lot of discussion of Detroit's cobblestone streets. My search foo is poor - I couldn't find it.

I remember commenting then about Canfield. The cobblestones were installed new sometime in the 1980's. It was plain old asphalt/concrete when I lived there ~'73-78. They excavated to dirt and moved/realigned the street a bit when they 'updated' it.

I found this old thread:

http://www.detroityes.com/mb/showthr...n-Michigan-Ave

[black gold man]

Cobblestone is granite i think, ships needed ballast to stabilize the ship.
Lots of cobble came from Europe on ships to New England maybe DETROIT to.

I was reading somewhere they noted first cobble went down
on Jefferson in 1859.

I an sure there is a granite quarry around here somewhere
Canada, up north in Michigan maybe.

But i am sure lots of cobble came on ships from all over
then they loaded with furs,copper,salt,wood ext.

But here http://stories-in-stone.blogspot.com...1_archive.html they note that granite was shipped
from west cost for projects all over the country in 1900.
For the natural beauty of the stone.

David Stott building, Detroit, 1929 Stone from west cost.



About 15 years ago i was working on patio in my backyard.
The cost of stone or even concrete pavers was a lot of money. I heard they tore down a church by tiger stadium
it was red brick but the windows and other areas were
sandstone about 6 inches thick. I went down there and
got 4 loads in my pick up. They were all smooth sided
i took a chisel and split them so i had natural face stone
about 3 inches thick and square all different size.
It is blue sand stone i think it came from Indianan.
I think the church was built around 1830.

BGM

[chuck mc]

Detroit was not a seaport until the completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway in the 1950s. Niagra Falls and Rapids in the St. Lawrence prevented Ocean Ships from reaching Detroit in early times. Freight had to be "portaged" around these obstacles and loaded into craft upstream. They would not have carried rocks. Pavement cobblestones were probably a 'gift' of the Glaciers found in farm fields and Great Lakes.

[black gold man]

People have been navigating the great lakes long before that.
We have only been here a few hundred years and cant get our own history right.


"Archaeologists tell us the roughly 5000 open pit mines running for a hundred miles on the north shore of Upper Michigan were worked from aproximately 3000 - 1200 BC to extract anywhere from 100 - 500 thousand pounds [[or some texts say tons) of essentially pure copper. Such a quantity was certainly not seen by Joliet and Marquette when they explored the Mississippi valley and discovered the aboriginal Americans who posessed copper trinkets. This is enough tonnage to support a proper Bronze Age.

We are further told by a combination of archaeologists and ancient historians that the Trojan war is dated anywhere from 1290 to 1135BC; the same time is given for the fall of the Hittite empire.
The way I put all this together is: either the Greeks or Hittites, or both, or possibly a third party "Arms Merchant" society, was sailing across the Atlantic Ocean for almost 2000 years taking copper from the south shore of Lake Superior and building an eastern Mediterranean culture on it.
The Greeks and Hittites then went to war at Troy and were so mutually devastated that they had no further need for or perhaps interest in Bronze armor and war weapons; or were too economically smashed to make such a voyage, so the fleet stoppped sailing. In a single generation of inactivity they could forget how to get here, making future travel during for example the Roman era, impossible unless lost knowledge was relearned and lost mines rediscovered.
If Mediterranean people freighted this much metal from upper Michigan to the Atlantic I see three sensible roads. They could have barged it down the St Lawrence with a portage around Niagra falls. Until the St Lawrence Seaway was dynamited in the 1950s there was also a rough stretch on the lower river which may have required a detour.
The second road is the Mississippi river.
The third possibility is to travel entirely overland with pack trains of horses.
I would guess each of these was tried.
American Indians have said they had horses before the Spaniards brought them to the Americas at the time of Columbus. And yet Zoologists tell us the American wild horses all come originally from Europe. This may be an indicator in one way or another.

http://www.dailygrail.com/blogs/Bria...ichigan-Copper


http://books.google.com/books?id=Vcm...page&q&f=false

[gazhekwe]

There is some evidence to suggest that the Phoenicians were here in the Great Lakes. They called themselves the Red Men, which confuses historical accounts of the Red Men bringing copper to Egypt. It is fun to speculate and to look for contemporary accounts of that time.

Here is some interesting info about the DNA tracking of ancient seafarers:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/7700356.stm

The cobblestones could have come from ballast in the lower lakes. The portages around Niagara and Bawating did not stop shipping commerce. In the Soo, ships were dragged on rollers around the falls. The street is called Portage Avenue to this day.

[chuck mc]

I never said there was not commerce to and from Detroit prior to the St. Lawrence Seaway. I only indicated Ocean vessels had to stay below rapids near Montreal. It is unlikely ship ballast from Europe would be transported from Montreal to Detroit. The Great Lakes Basin has a lot of glacial tumbled stone.

[beachboy]

"Archaeologists tell us the roughly 5000 open pit mines running for a hundred miles on the north shore of Upper Michigan [actually, Superior] were worked from aproximately 3000 - 1200 BC to extract anywhere from 100 - 500 thousand pounds [[or some texts say tons) of essentially pure copper.

Fact: Copper was mined since antiquity by native people in the Western Lake Superior area. Large deposits of elemental copper [[versus sulfide or oxide ores) are a feature of the pre-Cambrian volcanic geology of the Keeweenaw Peninsula - an arm of the UP that juts northeastward into L. Superior.

A good source for reading about the history of copper mining in the UP is the book "Red Metal", by Harry Benedict [[a now-deceased professor at MTU):

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listi...&condition=all

When I worked in the A.E. Seaman Mineral Museum as a student at Michigan Tech [[many years ago) we were cataloging some mineral samples from an old cabinet. In this piece of 19th Cent. furniture was a wooden cigar box with copper spear points that dated from 3,000 BCE. These were made by Native Americans on Isle Royale [[where they were found in the 19th Cent.)

Such artifacts can still be viewed in the Midwestern US. For example, here is a pic of some spear points like the ones we found:



and you can read more about it at:

http://www.uwlax.edu/mvac/preeuropea...erculture.html

My apologies for digressing from the street-paver thread,
so here a few comments about that...

1 - From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobblestone

"Cobblestones are stones that were frequently used in the
pavement of early streets. "Cobblestone" is derived from the very old English word "cob", which had a wide range of meanings, one of which was "rounded lump" with overtones of large size. "Cobble", which appeared in the 15th century, simply added the diminutive suffix "le" to "cob", and meant a small stone rounded by the flow of water; essentially, a large pebble. It was these smooth "cobbles", gathered from stream beds, that paved the first "cobblestone" streets.

"Cobblestones were largely replaced by quarried granite setts in the nineteenth century. Cobblestone is often wrongly used to describe such treatment. Setts were relatively even and roughly rectangular stones that were laid in regular patterns. They gave a smoother ride for carts than cobbles, although in heavily used sections, such as in yards and the like, the usual practice was to replace the setts by parallel granite slabs set apart by the standard axle length of the time.

"Cobblestoned and setted streets gradually gave way to macadam roads, and later to tarmac, and finally to asphalt at the beginning of the 20th century. However, cobble­stones are often retained in historic areas, even for streets with modern vehicular traffic. Many older villages and cities in Europe are still paved with cobblestones. In recent decades, cobblestones have become a popular material for paving newly pedestrianised streets in Europe. In this case, the noisy nature of the surface is an advantage as pedestrians can hear approaching vehicles."

2 - Lower Michigan, being of glacial geology, is richly supplied with cobbles - stream beds being good sources. Cobbles can be found throughout the USA - here is a pic of a dry stream bed rich with cobblestones "out West":



3 - Cobblestone streets abound in the USA, for example, in Boston - and Van Buren street hill & bridge [[across the Brandywine River) in Wilmington DE to provide a bit of traction on wintry days:

[Gistok]

... and then there was the Erie Canal.... opened in 1825....