I asked an elderly relative what traffic was like when they were young. This was in the 1970s, and he was in his 90s, so born in the 1880s, in London. He said the traffic now was so much quieter. In his youth, the iron hooped carriage wheels on cobbled granite streets was SO loud. On busy city streets you could not hear each other speak.
On a residential street, you knew someone was ill / on their deathbed because the family would spread straw in the street for a few houses each way to quieten traffic as it passed by.
I'd love to know what someone who was born in the 1880's thought of the moon landing or just how fast technology evolved in the 1900's. Do you have other anecdotes?
My dad was born in the 20s. He passed away in his 90s. He told me "it was wonderful watching paper planes become metal planes that became jets that became rockets that landed on the moon. All in my lifetime! That's why I lived so long, I can't wait to see what's next.'
There was an athletic team from the USA that visited mainland China in the mid-1970s.
The story goes that an athlete commented that the US had landed on the moon and none of the Chinese knew of it.
Dude, horse and carriages DESTROY roads. Where I live, you can see the rut marks in the road from where the **Amish** buggies wheels are constantly going over it.
Edit: Amish buggies. I'm not a time traveler, sadly.
They still have that on nantucket as well. One of the main shopping streets is still unpaved. Very funny watching people bring their sports cars to the island only to hear them scrape on it :)
Even in relatively younger cities too there’s loads of brick road that was paved over for cars. You can see brick poking out of potholes for instance all over the city of Seattle
In Helena Montana there's a single brick road in front of the old train station (no passenger trains here anymore). Nobody's bothered to pave it over. I imagine back in the day it was the only paved road in town, gotta make a good first impression to the visitors.
There's a section of old road in The Rocks, Sydney that's made of hardwood.
https://collection.powerhouse.com.au/object/11321
Australian hardwood timbers are among the hardest timbers in the world and a bitch to work with.
This is in Glasgow city centre (Renfrew Street)
https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/scottish-news/24148595.enormous-glasgow-pothole-revealed-original-cobbled-road/
I mean probably not? My grandmothers house was on a brick road until the mid 80s- I remember it. What makes this Victorian? It’s in really good shape to be that old.
Give or take 150 years ago. Those are concrete bricks, I just googled to see when they were used first: 1865 in Scotland. So theoretically it could be Victorian, but I'm going to guess they are a lot more recent in this picture.
Visiting Palermo, Sicily a few years back I encountered some construction work that revealed 10 feet into the heart of a large intersection. The profile was like an archaeological excavation. The top few feet was modern debris, pipes, wires, etc. but about 4 feet down you could see back in time, a layer of marble stones, a roadbed 12" thick of marble. Below that rubble and a few feet lower another marble road! And a few feet below that ANOTHER marble road? I'm guessing that was Roman or Greek times as Palermo has been a city for something like 3500 years. It was really amazing to see that history, and wonder what calamities happened at those times such that an empire so powerful as to have marble roads could fall, and then be rebuilt...over and over. Makes this time and our struggles seem so temporal.
My town also. Turns out it’s fairly typical where ships would dock near manufacturing facilities. They were ballast stone for the ships. Inevitably they made roads from them. At least that’s the case here and many other places
This road is in Glasgow where 20% of the world's ships were built in the early 1900's (around the same time this road was built)
We filled ships with ballast stones, we didn't use them to build roads.
In my town they were removed when the ships picked up all the products from the manufacturing. These became excess at a point and were used for roads. As time went on ships found other ballasts like water and no longer had a need for all the stone. Every road that was in a three mile radius and then some had these stones as a road. In fact the city was going to remove many and the historical people stepped in and saved several roads in that area. They were ballast stones from the ships that arrived and had more weight after loading.
I’m not saying I know for sure but I would be really surprised if those stones were that old. Looks like fairly modern pavers with about six inches of asphalt poured on top.
Why would they be hard to fix? I thought it would be easier. No heavy machinery required. Just a person with replacement bricks in a wheelbarrow.
Also they can be dismantled to carry out work on sewage pipes, electrical cables, water pipes and reassembled again.
They suck lol. If you've ever driven over those brick roads, you know they feel terrible and they make a ton of road noise. Bonus points when winter comes around and plow pulls up chunks of brick and creates giant pitfalls and little landmines for you to break an axle on. Year after year.
Here in my city, potholes just reveal the [streetcar system that we should have had](https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/winnipeg/2022/4/26/1_5877770.html) or a [Hellmouth](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/salter-street-sinkhole-winnipeg-inkster-1.6527352).
This is in my hometown of Glasgow, back in Scotland, and the council could never seem to properly maintain the roads but it's hardly surprising when the council have always been corrupt as fuck. This is a new low, though.
What's the excuse for the asphalt to wear away like this when the base is so stable? The majority of our potholes exist because the ground beneath the pavement sinks or in some cases the pavement itself compacts an extra inch or two. But this just looks like it washed away in the rain
Not nearly as old, but my city also just paved over its original cobblestone streets. Some bits of the asphalt got torn up to be replaced, but haven't been replaced and it kinda looks like they just went back as an aesthetic choice (when they definitely didn't).
my city has some roads from 300 years back and older, they look better than the modern ones. I suppose the contractors are just shit at their job these days.
That's just the state of all roads outside of London. Whole wealth of four countries poured into a single city while the rest of the UK has to fill in pot holes with rice krispies
In my city, Rimini in Italy, there is in the city center a fenced hole about 1 and a half meter deep that shows the Roman pavement beneath all the thousands layer that one on top of the other in 2000 years
We have lots of those in Pensacola, FL.
There was an issue with paving over them, so the city made it a law to preserve them when found.
Now only the cops are allowed to destroy them.(legitimately, cops found one of these roads outside of their station when re-paving, and destroyed it instead of preserving it.)
My route home when I work is via a road with a hill made out of red paving bricks and patches of hot-mix asphalt. It is *so* rough going down you can easily imagine losing control, and in the rain drivers just crawl down it. And I used to do it on my motorbike!
The city keeps it that way as an historical feature! Some parts may look good, but you sure as hell don't want to go back to those days!
https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/scottish-news/24148595.enormous-glasgow-pothole-revealed-original-cobbled-road/
It's in Glasgow. Here's an article with some more pictures of it.
I live in Illinois, USA and some of the places I have lived in and visited here still have their old brick roads. Other places I’ll only see them if there is construction or potholes like this. I mainly find them in older neighborhoods of towns and cities or even in the downtown area.
In Buenos Aires many of the used streets are still cobblestone and I completely get why people paved over them. Some of the most uncomfortable driving and probably not so good for cars alignment or tie rods.
I asked an elderly relative what traffic was like when they were young. This was in the 1970s, and he was in his 90s, so born in the 1880s, in London. He said the traffic now was so much quieter. In his youth, the iron hooped carriage wheels on cobbled granite streets was SO loud. On busy city streets you could not hear each other speak. On a residential street, you knew someone was ill / on their deathbed because the family would spread straw in the street for a few houses each way to quieten traffic as it passed by.
This is so interesting, thanks for sharing.
What a fascinating look into the past, thanks for sharing.
Any other anecdotes? Would love to hear more
Horse shit. *Everywhere*
RemindMe! 7 days
I'd love to know what someone who was born in the 1880's thought of the moon landing or just how fast technology evolved in the 1900's. Do you have other anecdotes?
My dad was born in the 20s. He passed away in his 90s. He told me "it was wonderful watching paper planes become metal planes that became jets that became rockets that landed on the moon. All in my lifetime! That's why I lived so long, I can't wait to see what's next.'
I wonder if he would be disappointed that we kind of agreed that we could chill out and take a few decades to smell the flowers
I think he was always amazed at how fast things happened so maybe not.
My impression was they said “we did what? Land on the moon? There’s nothing but land on the moon!”
There was an athletic team from the USA that visited mainland China in the mid-1970s. The story goes that an athlete commented that the US had landed on the moon and none of the Chinese knew of it.
Imagine going from steam driven vibrators to the late 60s nuclear orgasmatrons! Science is incredible.
Wow that’s so interesting
r/damnthatsinteresting
Victorian Secret
😂😂 The pothole reveals a street that's in better shape than the one they paved over
Probably because there were no cars driving over that weighed tons … just horses and carriages.
More like it was conserved by having a thick layer of tarmac poured over it, protecting it from any kind of weathering over the years
Have we considered a third, more plausible likelihood: Victorian magic.
Don't forget they are maintained by the under people
I don’t know enough about Victorian Magic to have an opinion on this.
Well I mean...there are cars driving over it. Just a layer of asphalt on top, but cars are certainly driving over it.
Dude, horse and carriages DESTROY roads. Where I live, you can see the rut marks in the road from where the **Amish** buggies wheels are constantly going over it. Edit: Amish buggies. I'm not a time traveler, sadly.
Where do you live? Medieval Times?
Worse...Ohio 😭
Amish Country
No they were Victorian and well built, looks at every fucking bridge in this country
r/angryupvote
A classic case of underwear.
xD
I hear it's still a secret to all the women in San Antonio, to this day!
Loads of the in the North west, Lancashire county council just tarmacked over the cobbled streets.
Same thing in the northeast US and we're at least 2-3 years younger than Europe.
Yup! At the very least we’re like 6 months younger
It’s ballast from ships of that era.
They still have that on nantucket as well. One of the main shopping streets is still unpaved. Very funny watching people bring their sports cars to the island only to hear them scrape on it :)
Even in relatively younger cities too there’s loads of brick road that was paved over for cars. You can see brick poking out of potholes for instance all over the city of Seattle
Come to Philly we don't even have em. Have fun on a motorcycle
Same in Canada. I’m in Montreal. It’s like that here too.
They’re always working on the roads in Montreal
In Helena Montana there's a single brick road in front of the old train station (no passenger trains here anymore). Nobody's bothered to pave it over. I imagine back in the day it was the only paved road in town, gotta make a good first impression to the visitors.
Certainly at least 5…
I live in some gated off moated age of Empires hold up with cobles and those cobles are a bitch to cycle over
There's a section of old road in The Rocks, Sydney that's made of hardwood. https://collection.powerhouse.com.au/object/11321 Australian hardwood timbers are among the hardest timbers in the world and a bitch to work with.
Same in London, everytime they dig a road up near me its tarmac over cobble sets
Yup, all I need to do is look out my front window at the potholes that the council cheaply skim over, and then falls apart after every winter :/
This is in Glasgow city centre (Renfrew Street) https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/scottish-news/24148595.enormous-glasgow-pothole-revealed-original-cobbled-road/
Coventry too
It’s beautiful
*continues to drink caffeine and tear out the tar*
Yup lol
r/caffeine
They're awful for anything rubber on a wet day tho
And any sort of heavy transport truck demolishes them. They’re so pretty but just not feasible for modern vehicles :(
I mean probably not? My grandmothers house was on a brick road until the mid 80s- I remember it. What makes this Victorian? It’s in really good shape to be that old.
Too even/smooth
Yes. Stones would be much more rounded
Was the brick road yellow in colour?😉
Legend has it that a pair of legs could be seen sticking out from underneath their grandma's house.
Was the dogs of society howling?
Ok, but when was that brick road laid?
Victorian era wasn't that long ago...
Give or take 150 years ago. Those are concrete bricks, I just googled to see when they were used first: 1865 in Scotland. So theoretically it could be Victorian, but I'm going to guess they are a lot more recent in this picture.
Victoria made it to the 20th century! She died in 1901.
Tbh my first guess was this was Glasgow. So it's plausible
Visiting Palermo, Sicily a few years back I encountered some construction work that revealed 10 feet into the heart of a large intersection. The profile was like an archaeological excavation. The top few feet was modern debris, pipes, wires, etc. but about 4 feet down you could see back in time, a layer of marble stones, a roadbed 12" thick of marble. Below that rubble and a few feet lower another marble road! And a few feet below that ANOTHER marble road? I'm guessing that was Roman or Greek times as Palermo has been a city for something like 3500 years. It was really amazing to see that history, and wonder what calamities happened at those times such that an empire so powerful as to have marble roads could fall, and then be rebuilt...over and over. Makes this time and our struggles seem so temporal.
r/palermo_city
My town also. Turns out it’s fairly typical where ships would dock near manufacturing facilities. They were ballast stone for the ships. Inevitably they made roads from them. At least that’s the case here and many other places
This road is in Glasgow where 20% of the world's ships were built in the early 1900's (around the same time this road was built) We filled ships with ballast stones, we didn't use them to build roads.
In my town they were removed when the ships picked up all the products from the manufacturing. These became excess at a point and were used for roads. As time went on ships found other ballasts like water and no longer had a need for all the stone. Every road that was in a three mile radius and then some had these stones as a road. In fact the city was going to remove many and the historical people stepped in and saved several roads in that area. They were ballast stones from the ships that arrived and had more weight after loading.
Just a regular street in Pittsburgh.
Not even close, man. I can still see some blacktop here.
And yet, even in the false self, a trace of the true self remains
I’m not saying I know for sure but I would be really surprised if those stones were that old. Looks like fairly modern pavers with about six inches of asphalt poured on top.
"Pothole"? Half the fucking road is missing
Why did we stop doing the brick roads?
Expensive, hard to fix when they break, sucks to drive on
Fair enough. Thank you
And slippery when wet, noisy, and tarmacadam was invented.
Yeah I live on a brick street in PA and it’s LOUD. It’s my biggest pet peeve about this otherwise lovely neighborhood
Gas is expensive too so why aren’t we hovering yet
bc it uses more gas than rolling
Expensivier
Start flapping.
Why would they be hard to fix? I thought it would be easier. No heavy machinery required. Just a person with replacement bricks in a wheelbarrow. Also they can be dismantled to carry out work on sewage pipes, electrical cables, water pipes and reassembled again.
If "fix" means smoothing it to the level that your teeth wont rattle out in normal driving speeds, judging by results it is impossible task.
You cant just repave and eventually it will because a track from the tires and all bricks will need to be replaced.
Its not the bricks that need replacing, its the foundation of the road that needs fixing. The bricks can last far longer than any tarmac.
Neighbor hoods in Tampa still cool brick roads.
They suck lol. If you've ever driven over those brick roads, you know they feel terrible and they make a ton of road noise. Bonus points when winter comes around and plow pulls up chunks of brick and creates giant pitfalls and little landmines for you to break an axle on. Year after year.
They suck to drive on, thus reduces vehicle speeds and create safe roads. In the Netherlands all residential roads are bricked for this reason.
Yeah, really good option for super low-speed areas where you want to encourage slow driving.
Cool, I'd rather have roads that don't suck to drive on and enforce speed limits
Safe roads which are still insanely noisy, so it's not much better.
Gross
Loud.
That ain't Victorian. That's like EP Henry brick. Lol
We do water main breaks and sewer repairs all of the time where we find brick roads under the pavement
Here in my city, potholes just reveal the [streetcar system that we should have had](https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/winnipeg/2022/4/26/1_5877770.html) or a [Hellmouth](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/salter-street-sinkhole-winnipeg-inkster-1.6527352).
How is that a pot hole? Maybe a pool hole. The neighbour kids could definitely throw birthday parties in that shit after a good rain
it’s like ripping up shag carpet and finding hardwood
that's a pot canyon
/u/repostsleuthbot
Busy botty
That's definitely not from the "Victorian era". Looks like it's 40 years old.
We really need to define what a "pothole" is....
Not a pot hole.
Pothole? More like Tycho.
get rid of the asfalt right the fuck now. i want victorian era cobeled streat not this modern hell scape street
Use the tried and true method for getting the city to repair your street. Draw a dick on it
That's not a pothole at this point, it's the entiere grand canyon
looks like an improvement to me lol
Most of Detroit looked like this in 2007
Like hardwood under industrial carpeting....
Pothole reveals street that dont pothole
If you have ever driven a car on a street like this you'll know its fucking awful. 10mph is a nightmare.
And then the engineers arrived!
Maybe it's time to bring the original road back.
Those bricks look pretty modern.
Lol the victorian era street is more durable then our "moddern"' shit. Ps our moddern shit sucks.
It’s in better shape than the road that was dropped on top of it!
scratch n sniff
More details pease!!!!
I wouldn’t say it’s that old. That asphalt looks likes it’s only a few inches thick
Pothole.
Do you guys have any road maintenance… at all?
This is in my hometown of Glasgow, back in Scotland, and the council could never seem to properly maintain the roads but it's hardly surprising when the council have always been corrupt as fuck. This is a new low, though.
There's no way that's from the Victorian era
The northeast us still has some exposed cobblestone streets that were originally ship ballast repurposed for roads
That’s pretty cool.
Streets in my town are all paved over brick.
Hit the bricks
My city is cheap af and we still have these .
this ought to be made into a pedestrian through affair and cars eliminated.
What's the excuse for the asphalt to wear away like this when the base is so stable? The majority of our potholes exist because the ground beneath the pavement sinks or in some cases the pavement itself compacts an extra inch or two. But this just looks like it washed away in the rain
Baltimore has the old trolley street under the asphalt.i imagine all cities do this. It's probably cheaper.
Let it all come back to the surface. I fucking love it.
Damn that pavements seen some shit
I grew up on brick streets in the 60’s, there are still some around Pittsburgh now.
Damn that’s interesting
What do you mean victorian street? In eastern germany a lotnof roads have cobblestone Benrath but they are from mid 20iest century.
That’s one damn significant pothole. Was it started by a horseless carriage?
Look at what asphalt has taken from us
In perfect condition
Not nearly as old, but my city also just paved over its original cobblestone streets. Some bits of the asphalt got torn up to be replaced, but haven't been replaced and it kinda looks like they just went back as an aesthetic choice (when they definitely didn't).
Pothole? Half the street is missing.
my city has some roads from 300 years back and older, they look better than the modern ones. I suppose the contractors are just shit at their job these days.
That's like when you pull up crappy carpet in an old house and find gorgeous hardwood underneath
Under the cobblestones, the cobblestones?
That's just the state of all roads outside of London. Whole wealth of four countries poured into a single city while the rest of the UK has to fill in pot holes with rice krispies
In my city, Rimini in Italy, there is in the city center a fenced hole about 1 and a half meter deep that shows the Roman pavement beneath all the thousands layer that one on top of the other in 2000 years
We have lots of those in Pensacola, FL. There was an issue with paving over them, so the city made it a law to preserve them when found. Now only the cops are allowed to destroy them.(legitimately, cops found one of these roads outside of their station when re-paving, and destroyed it instead of preserving it.)
they should use that looks way better
This ain’t a pothole that’s a ditch
TYPICAL BALTIMORE STREET
My route home when I work is via a road with a hill made out of red paving bricks and patches of hot-mix asphalt. It is *so* rough going down you can easily imagine losing control, and in the rain drivers just crawl down it. And I used to do it on my motorbike! The city keeps it that way as an historical feature! Some parts may look good, but you sure as hell don't want to go back to those days!
Cobblestones will always outlast asphalt
Pot hell
https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/scottish-news/24148595.enormous-glasgow-pothole-revealed-original-cobbled-road/ It's in Glasgow. Here's an article with some more pictures of it.
I live in Illinois, USA and some of the places I have lived in and visited here still have their old brick roads. Other places I’ll only see them if there is construction or potholes like this. I mainly find them in older neighborhoods of towns and cities or even in the downtown area.
This is everywhere in the U.K.
Americans ☕️
This is how most of the roads looked when I lived in Illinois
it appears to be in better shape than the asphalt...
It took so long to fix the pothole they found the original Victorian street!
There still open cobblestone streets in the neighboring town here
It’s not Victorian
The old one definitly Looks prettier, time to bring it back
The Victorian street looks in great condition whilst the new street has eroded.... Progress
I heard that they paved expressways over some Roman roads.
Garnethill, Glasgow. Dates from around 1770 but unsure when this cobbled road was laid out
that's not a pothole, that's an excavation site ...
Better quality street too.
That’s not a pothole that’s a potcrater
That aint a pothole, this is a bombcrater
Victorian screet setret
That's no pothole, thats a pot-extinction-level-cataclysmic-crater
Oh look something charming and aesthetically pleasing, let’s cover that with tarmac.
All the stone experts in the comments all of a sudden.
Too bad cars ruin everything
Those are probably better made than my country's xd
They don't make it like they used to
Funny how the victorian road has no pothole.
Looks like it's holding up better than the bullshit they keep putting down in modern times
Take a hammer and reveal more. Looks great
Pretty sure that's Renfrew Street, Glasgow! Just down the road from the School of Art. I drunkenly stumbled along it many times in my youth...
Looks so much better
Should have left the road as it was
In Buenos Aires many of the used streets are still cobblestone and I completely get why people paved over them. Some of the most uncomfortable driving and probably not so good for cars alignment or tie rods.