twin city sidewalks: *** Sidewalk Weekend! ***

2014-09-19

* Sidewalk Weekend! *

Sidewalk Rating: Crispy

-->The municipal engineering manuals recommended increasing the standard street width, so repaving projects frequently included some widening, usually by cutting back on sidewalks, a relatively inexpensive expedient. New York widened 23^rd Street, an important crosstown street, in 1910. Two years later, the city cut back Fifth Avenue’s sidewalks to add two new ten-foot lanes for traffic. Later the city widened Madison Avenue, a project favored by merchants on that street, but opposed by residents. Baltimore widened its streets a little after the great fire of 1904 and San Francisco did the same after the earthquake, but only on a piecemeal basis. Public works departments in other cities also cut back on sidewalks. High condemnation costs limited most building demolition to the occasional elimination of bottlenecks. Municipal engineers also increased the radius of downtown curbs to allow cars to turn more easily. This made it slightly more difficult for pedestrians to cross the street. Widening streets often meant cutting down street trees. Abutters objected, but the demands of suburban commuters and shoppers for parking spots almost always took priority. Thus, urban residents not only lost the use of the street itself for social, recreational, and commercial purposes, but much of their sidewalk and many trees as well. Even the limited success of these street widening programs suggests the political power of automobility, since abutters had only allowed widening under the rarest of circumstances in the nineteenth century.

[Clay McShane, Down the Asphalt Path.]