Preface
As a city grows, it develops problems that require solutions in order to grow further. St. Louis has seen its share of public health challenges caused by rapid growth and industrialization. The first was the recurrent cholera that plagued the area from the 1840s through the 1860s. The second was the dust problem I write about below. Successful treating of this problem exposed the third – fouled air from burning oil and coal during the 1920s and 30s.
As limestone was so plentiful, and didn’t become as muddy as soil, crushed or gravel limestone initially replaced the dirt of local streets.
But the weight of countless horses and mules, pulling heavy wagons laden with the commerce of a burgeoning city, ground the limestone into a white powdery dust that sometimes lay inches deep on city streets.
Note: The above photo is of the limestone quarry associated with the city workhouse. Inmates reduced limestone chunks to macadam by hand, lending at least historical truth to the trope of busting up rocks in prison.
Long before air conditioning, it was essential to take advantage of any breeze by opening windows and doors in the summer. The dust moved in with the air, coating everything. The foliage in the city that should have been green took on an ashen appearance.
Residents attempted to control the dust where they could, watering the outside of their property. This was only good to the extent that one’s neighbors did the same. Otherwise, the dust swirled and migrated easily.
Health effects
I’ve written about the poor air quality in 19th century St. Louis. The dust was just another respiratory scourge, and contributor to poor health. I’ve also written about the preponderance of horses and mules in early St. Louis. Animal manure fell into the dust, then was macerated by hooves and wagon wheels into just another component of it.
More pernicious was the effect of another environmental insult. Tobacco chewing was the dominant form of tobacco consumption during the 1800s. By 1890, the habit reached its peak, with Americans chewing an average of more than three pounds of tobacco per person annually.
Although difficult to quantify, influenza and tuberculosis can be transmitted through airborne dried saliva. The city’s experience with cholera sensitized the post-Civil War city to the high costs of bad public hygiene.
Horse and mule manure was both a public health and logistical crisis in many 19th century cities. St. Louis had over 100,000 horses, creating up to 1,600 tons of manure per day. When it dried on the streets, hooves and wagon wheels pulverized it into the dust. As the wind whipped it into the air, it caused breathing problems, exacerbated by the silica in limestone dust.
The mess on the streets attracted flies that can carry cholera . These issues were ultimately solved only by replacing limestone gravel streets with hard pavement, and horses and mules with automobiles.
A problem arising from abundance
St. Louis City has fascinating streetscapes with a ton of history. I got thinking about it as I watched the success of both Cara Spencer in her mayoral campaign in St. Louis, echoed by that of Zohran Mandami in New York City. They both emphasized ground level basics, expressed as “fill the damn potholes.” This pragmatic and visible approach to city leadership has come to be known as “pothole politics.”
A city’s destiny often lies in its access to resources, and ability to exploit or market them. In addition to the confluence of two mighty rivers, nature bestowed upon St. Louis its substrate; clay and limestone in great abundance. The clay went to the production of brick, and the brick went everywhere, including its streets. Laying street brick was a labor intensive process, from molding to firing, transporting to setting. Parts of Lafayette Square’s roadways are underlaid with brick. Several alleyways still show a bit of this past.
In the early 1800s, St. Louis’s streets lay unpaved. Its thoroughfares were muddy in the spring, dusty in the summer, and potholes formed and deepened. The fast westward growth of the city ran up against sorely limited funding to make better surfacing elusive. Beginning in 1823, soft limestone was quarried from the Mississippi River bluffs, cut into blocks and laid on major streets. Heavy wagons and shoed horses pulverized the soft limestone into dust.
The trouble with limestone
Eleven years later, St. Louis adopted macadam roadways, with the street center raised from the curb elevation for drainage. The macadam surface was a thick layer of limestone gravel. The idea was that heavy traffic would compact the road surface. The attraction was in its availability and economy, not its performance. By 1880, the city had over 300 miles of such roadways. Quickly ground to dust, they performed worse than the limestone blocks, and required consistent maintenance.
Weaning toward alternatives
The above photo shows remnants of Nicolson pavement at Tenth and Olive Streets. It is wood, crosscut into blocks, treated with tar and laid into rows with the grain end up. This first appeared in 1860. Workers swept a layer of heated gravel and tar over the blocks. The tar prevented water rot, provided a dense, easy to maintain surface, and was far quieter than wagon wheels grinding limestone.
Problems for St. Louis began shortly after the city contracted for 60,000 square yards of Nicolson pavement. Made from soft pine, the blocks absorbed water, swelled and began to rot. Heavy traffic soon reduced the wood to shreds, resulting in ruts and holes. By 1887, less than half a mile of these streets remained.
The Nicolson sourcing and process were later modified, leading to streets of sweet gum wood. It was pressure treated with creosote and placed over a bed of Portland cement. Blocks were placed tightly together to minimize water infiltration. The roadway was packed down by a steam roller and joints in the blocks filled with sand, then covered with creosote oil. By 1893, St. Louis had nine miles of wooden block pavement; a nearly insignificant presence. Nicolson pavers appeared here and there in the city until the 1930s.
Preventing dust by sprinkling roads
A mid-July, 1868 article in the Missouri Republican called for sprinkling streets with water. It opined that this general good, equally applied, would prove “hateful and oppressive” in specific places. The paper wrote that uniform sprinkling of roads, regardless of roadway construction, made sense on old macadamized streets, where the dust could be allayed and prevented from spreading. It argued that sprinkling limestone actually enhanced the grinding effect of shoed hooves and iron wheels, creating yet more dust. 1
The city charter of 1866 gave the mayor and city council power to enact an ordinance regulating street sprinkling, and “to assess a special tax against city-holders fronting on streets ordered to be sprinkled by the city.” Three years later, no action had been taken, and upon challenge, the city counsellor held that such a tax could not be collected.
Bring on the engineers
The Engineers Club of St. Louis took up the matter in late April, 1871, Colonel Henry Flad presiding. Their suggestions included adding dedicated plugs, like fire hydrants, to both sides of each block, and employing someone to ‘go round and sprinkle,’ by hose. Flad proposed building hose carts with a long hose on a drum and a nozzle for sprinkling.
At that time the city had 54 sprinkling plugs and 630 fire plugs. The latter were off limits to all but the fire department. 432 blocks were deemed essential for sprinkling, taking in 160 miles of streets. Ideally these would be sprinkled five or six times per day from March through October. A lot of math resulted, leading to an estimate of $172,339 dollars of cost per season. City Engineer F. Bischoff calculated a tax per 25 foot frontage of $2.55 per resident each year to offset the costs. Residents argued the costs and benefits, but the cries to mitigate dust grew every summer.2
The city begins an effort
In 1874, St. Louis contracted with private companies to perform targeted sprinkling around the most heavily trafficked districts. Despite the public outcry for relief from the plentiful and invasive dust, nothing resulted in a coordinated city-wide manner. Local waterers dominated the provision of street sprinkling, largely paid for by subscription of each house or business. Prices were high.
Empowered, but indecisive
An amendment to the city charter in late March 1875 allowed the city council to designate thoroughfares for watering or sprinkling, paying for it from general revenue. This set off a hot discussion in both the council and the area newspapers, about the extent and cost of plans to get the sprinkling under way.
The St. Louis Globe-Democrat wrote in April of 1875:
“St. Louis is getting the reputation of being the dustiest city in the United States, and hundreds of strangers, after riding a few blocks in the streetcars or in vehicles, become disgusted and leave for other cities in which to live and do business.”
A reader calling himself ‘Common Sense,’ wrote his opinion that soft limestone, “quickly wears, creates dust, and soon makes an abominably rough road, requiring constant repair… ruinous to man, beast and vehicle.” He called for “Granite!, Granite!!, Granite!!!” 3
Granite was a good idea, but had to be quarried in St. Francois County, transported to the city, worked into blocks and laid. It was worth the cost* and effort on the riverfront and frequently used in the oldest parts of the city, but didn’t represent a universal solution for hundreds of miles of city roads.
Plentiful water suggests a solution
St. Louis formed a water board, and in 1875 proposed that the city sprinkle 100 miles of critical streets, with the new Bissell waterworks providing 3,000,000 gallons per day. A single plug at Third and Market dispensed twenty-six wagon loads, sprinkled over nineteen blocks of Nicolson pavement. From a plug at Ninth and Olive, another cart sprinkled sixteen blocks of macadam. The board had sprinkled 38 miles of streets during the previous year. A rather arbitrary goal of 100 miles would require taxes raising about $76,000 per season. The Globe-Democrat pointed out that this represented only half of the streets requiring water. It remained unequivocal in its advocacy of sprinkling, stating, “the streets must be sprinkled, if it costs a quarter of a million.” 4
City engineers considered many schemes for delivering water to the streets. Laying perforated pipes along curbs, or suspended them above the center of streets by guy wires. Another thought was to contract with the street rail system to draw tanks along their routes at night.5 Perhaps a man could be assigned to each block, hooking a hose and nozzle to a nearby plug and sprinkling his block twice per day. Each house would be equally assessed by a special tax for the expense.6
The impossibility of herding cats
By early May, the water board determined that individuals should take on the sprinkling of each block along a street. The idea was to avoid giving power to sprinkling cart monopolies (or ‘combine’) charging exorbitant fees. Rather, a person would take out a license for as much as he proposed to sprinkle, paying five cents per foot of frontage. It also encouraged citizen clubs to sprinkle streets. Such service would be paid twenty cents per linear foot. The accepted norm for sprinkling was a length of hose, connected to a water plug, dispensing water through a “Rose nozzle,” like one would see on a watering can.7
The monopoly thrives, regardless
In practice, the city still awarded contracts to commercial providers. A March, 1877 article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted the acceptance of bids tor sprinkling of streets around the city’s major market areas: Soulard Market, Union Market, City Market, Lucas Market and Centre Market. The 1876 competition was fierce, and winning bids were in a $4.00-5.00 per month range. The bids for 1877 ran from $15-40, by comparison – a clear case of proving the worth of something, then exploiting it. 8
The Globe-Democrat in April 1878 reported 350 sprinkling carts in St. Louis, employing 600 men and 800 horses. The city paid a fairly flat $15 per block to contractors. St. Louis’s biggest yearly summer event was fair week at the city fairgrounds. Approaches to the area were sprinkled daily through a special appropriation. 9
A problem of equitable distribution
By 1883, street sprinkling was widespread enough that the water commissioner issued a warning to drivers of sprinkling wagons that they conserve the amount of water applied. The rate of delivery from the Compton Hill reservoir was nearly 2,500,000 gallons per day. The implicit threat was that water delivery stoppage for all would result from overwatering streets. 10
Colonel Flad, still very much in charge of the water board, was busy drafting a new sprinkling ordinance in June, 1884. Difficulties he faced included providing equally to 258 miles of city streets. Since taxpayers were on the hook, it wouldn’t do to slight anyone on water distribution. He also had to consider the various forms of pavement involved – macadam had to be sprinkled heavily, but at longer intervals. Asphalt required light sprinkling, but more often. These differences dictated details down to the number and size of the holes in the sprinklers for a given area.
What was decided
Contracts would be let according to the creation of five or six districts within the city. Water plugs had to be placed strategically, in order to provide the wagon sufficient water through a hose long enough to cover the ground between plugs. 11
That August, Flad reported his findings to the Board of Public Improvements. He recommended that soil or macadam be sprinkled three times per day. Wood or stone pavement should get six sprinklings per day, of one half gallon per foot. Monolithic asphaltum (a term for asphalt applied hot) roadways would get eight sprinklings daily, one fifth of a gallon per foot. The money required annually for contractors, inspectors and water provision would be $195,000. The city also had to add $61,000 in the first year for more dedicated water plugs. Sprinkling season was defined as March 1 to December 1. The ordinance Flad submitted created a position of sprinkling superintendent, paying $1,800 per year, and an inspector for every twenty street miles at a salary of $110 per month, although each was responsible for furnishing his own horse and buggy.12
Contractors form a combine
By 1887, the situation had backtracked to where it was before all the utopian visions of equal and efficient city-wide sprinkling at a low price. Only a few contractors controlled the market:
“They have made the householders feel their power. The prices have been established at their pleasure. Each block has been forced to yield enormous profits or go without sprinkling, as the contractors have an understanding never to interfere between one another and their respective victims.” 13
A month later, the city council debated the Duross bill, named for the councilman who proposed it. The Post-Dispatch said there were two classes of interested residents; “those who won’t submit to the monopoly, and those who can’t.” The first class was financially able to buy a long hose, take out a special license and do their own sprinkling. They could also pack up their families during dust season and head to the country or lake resorts. “They can laugh and grow fat while the monopolist rages.” The second class could do nothing:
“When the heat and glare of midsummer is upon them, they have no place to go. Their home can only be in the midst of the blinding dust… The contractor can laugh and grow fat while those who cannot pay him grow thin and sick.” 14
Getting city government more involved
All this, by way of the Post-Dispatch endorsing the pending Duross sprinkling bill as an ordinance. It would change “a class system of sprinkling into a general blessing and change a system for the few into one for the many.”
Councilman James Duross said he wanted to see general sprinkling come from municipal revenues. He added, “You can put me down as in favor of sprinkling now and forever.” The president of the council volunteered that “you can put me down as a sprinkling man.” John Vogel called himself, “ a sprinkling man from away back.” P. O’Malley one-upped that by identifying as “the strongest sprinkling man in the world.” Theodore Bell was in favor, “decidedly, emphatically and as strong as any words in the English language can make it.” Overall, the Post-Dispatch, running a major anti-dust petition toward enactment of an ordinance, counted ten for, zero against, and three non-commital among the city council.
The Post–Dispatch had its heart (or craving for a big civic win) in this effort. It placed petitions in all drug stores, club houses, liveries, factories, big retail stores and businesses. It enlisted ‘lady canvassers’ to get out the vote. The paper’s prose got flowery at times.
“When will a husband and father get such an opportunity again to speak for the happiness of wife and child? When will a wife get another chance to let her sweet voice be heard for home and domestic comfort? When again will anybody be able to clasp hands in a magic circle like that which is now uniting the hands and heads and hearts of the city?” 15
Too much money in the water
The few providers of the street sprinkling combine hedged their bets. The owners of the St. Louis Improved Street Sprinkling Company announced that they were in favor of the city sprinkling streets, but assured the public that they had no intention of forming a monopoly to keep prices up. On the contrary, they insisted, bidding would be fair and square for the contracts.
The Post–Dispatch countered by pointing out that it cost Minneapolis $50,000 to sprinkle 924 blocks, but St. Louls $451,000 to sprinkle 2,123 blocks. For twice the space, it cost St. Louis nine times the money. 16
By May 13, 1887, the newspaper collected 75,200 signatures for its petition. It reminded the House delegates voting on the Duross bill that “150,400 eyes will be fixed on them tonight, to see how they act on this great bill.”17. There followed an exhaustive table of figures, covering distances, costs, surfaces and intervals. It determined that of the 1.425 million feet (about 270 miles) of streets in St. Louis City, 1.283 million were macadam, 128 thousand paved with wood or granite blocks, and only 13 thousand of “monolithic asphaltum.** The table figured that 140 wagons and 1,600 water plugs could accomplish total coverage three times daily.
The city takes on the task
The Duross bill became a city ordinance, making street sprinkling a municipal responsibility, on August 13, 1887. The Post-Dispatch took a proud bow:
“The sentiment among the leading citizens is that the general street sprinkling is the greatest boon ever conferred upon the citizens of St. Louis. The honor attending this success rewarded with great unanimity to the Post-Dispatch, which appreciates this wide acknowledgment of its fidelity to the public trust.”
It followed up with nearly a hundred reader quotes, largely enthusiatic. “P.G. Gerhart of 3649 Washington is highly pleased and thinks the croakers should choke on their dust.” F.W. Mott of 6526 Michigan Avenue wrote that “the people are delighted and gaze in wonder at the passing sprinkling carts.” That accrued to the benefit of the Post-Dispatch, which placed advertizing banners on many of the wagons. A.M. Lewis of 3582 Page Avenue complained that too much water lay on the dirt roads, “rendering the track too heavy for ‘bikers.’” Mark Priest at Chouteau and Tenth wrote, “The streets out my way are all nice and cool now, and there are no dusty blocks in the neighborhood, as of yore, to blow the dust over the strees that were sprinkled.”
Other local reactions
Baseball umpire and New Yorker Bob Ferguson: “I have traveled this country from New York to ‘Frisco and from Minneapolis to New Orleans, and this sprinkling scheme you’ve got here beats anything I ever saw. It’s the grandest thing in the world. I lost my voice three times in St. Louis on account of the dust, but now, thank God, I’m safe.” Interesting call from an umpire.
Henry Broker at Ninth and Warren said he had paid to sprinkle his corner, while those around him refused to sprinkle at all. “Then I got all their dust and those above received all the benefit of my money.”
Fourth District police officer McKane said that “laying the dust will add ten years to the life of an ordinary patrolman. Dust is the greatest nuisance we ever contended with, and people will not realize the extent of the damage caused by it until they’ve had a couple of months of well-sprinkled streets.”
Mrs. Ed Sharpe of 2925 Lucas Avenue, a feisty Post-Dispatch lady canvasser, delighted in “the pleasant sensation that we don’t have to go down into our pockets for the monthly sacrifice to lay on the old altars. That is why we smile and say to the municipal mud-maker, ‘Lay on, Macduff, and damned be he who cries hold! enough!”
J.H. Hunicke: “ I am a beer man, but I favor water on the streets.”
Further opinions
Harry Harris: “Oh, general sprinkling is magnificant. I was out on the road for a drive, and I tell you it was glorious. Ordinarily when you go out to Forest Park, you are literally covered with dust when you return, but yesterday, with the road nicely sprinkled, I did not get a speck of dust, although Lindell was filled with vehicles. A cool breeze blew and came over the dustless street so clear and fresh that it made me feel like a new man.”
Judge E.A. Noonan: It is here to stay, for they will never return to the old order of things. It is now worth a man’s while to own a horse, where heretofore the dust nuisance destroyed all the pleasure of a drive. “
E.A. Sheble of Mississippi at Lafayette thought the sprinkling of the city well-worth the enterprise of a great newspaper.
G.H. Andreas of Mississippi at Park Avenue was glad to see the work taken out of the hands of monopolies.
Nic Johnson of Park Avenue near Second Carondelet (18th Street) looked forward to having less work washing his buggies now that the city was to be properly sprinkled – “not mud for a block and dust for a mile.”
A singular figure in the health of a great city, Dr. Max Starkloff said, “This matter, so successfully carried out, benefits us to a boundless degree, and our dusty streets will soon be a thing of the past.”
Consider the bikes
Finally, in a sign of changing times, H.W. Belding of Cote Brilliante Avenue wrote that “from the standpoint of a bicyclist, the Post-Dispatch anti-dust crusade was a grand success. Along with horsemen, wheelmen detest mud as well as dust. (Sprinkling) has done away with the alternation of mudholes and dust. The streets are now given a hard, firm surface, delightful to him who rides behind a horse or on top of the big wheel.” ***
A summary (summer) opinion
Jacob Guhman of St. Louis Avenue may have summed up the relief of many when he wrote: “I join with the rest in praising the anti-dust. We realize all this most when we no longer see our shrubbery, trees and grass growing white with dust, but again assuming its natural greenness. We naturally think, well, if sprinkling does this for vegetable life, what must it to for animal life? I used to pay for sprinkling in front of my house; my neighbors all did not, so I got their dust. Now the street, everywhere I look is moistened. I can enjoy a sit on the porch in the evening. It used to be that a walk down the block would soil one’s shoes. Last night I went out, all over the locality and my shoes were nearly as clean when I returned as when I started out.” 18
Problems in provision. Back to a combine
Service providers wasted no time consolidating and creating a closed market. Teamsters fitted out wagons with large tubs and introduced a sprinkling system that became a high-priced monopoly, principally shared among three companies within the city. The business was divvied up into districts, and granted exclusively to each provider, avoiding competition. They hired men to canvass each block and sell subscriptions. Revenues were on the order of $500.00 per mile. The Post-Dispatch estimated that the profit ran to 300%. If one household refused to subscribe, the water provider might refuse to sprinkle the entire block, adding peer pressure to the reluctant homeowner. In a tenement, each family or room was expected to ante up.
Victim of its popularity. Money runs dry
The ordinance that had passed in the previous year stipulated that money for sprinkling was to come from ‘general municipal revenue.’ This fund didn’t last into the second year. Even firing employees from the street department, cancelling street reconstructions, and putting off repairs to the parks and an addition to the poor house didn’t offset the costs of sprinkling. The public, largely unaware of the fiscal disaster unfolding, hailed the wetting down of city streets as a great success.
The council discussed implementina a new special tax. Board of Public Improvements president Henry Flad said, “the proposed amendment in regard to sprinkling is the only salvation of the city.” The cost per house holder would be $2.50 for the season. It was a binary situation for the city – either sprinkle all the roadways or not at all. The city comptroller weighed in, saying “if the citizens can be made to understand the importance of adopting the amendment, there will be no question as to the adoption of it at the coming election. 19
Contracts went into effect during April, 1888. Awards for forty-three city districts, on a lowest bid basis, went to twenty-one contractors. Mayor Francis called for a special meeting of the assembly to enable sprinkling as soon as possible.20
Corruption grows within the system
The tally for sprinkling St. Louis streets during 1892 reached $202,000. This included salaries for twenty-one inspectors of $103.00 per month, for nine months service. Sending messages or maintaining coordination within this network was difficult, involving the use of ‘push’ messengers. The Globe-Democrat noted that these dispatches required carfare, but “giving carfare to the messangers usually guaranteed that they would get no further than the first saloon.”
The inspectors themselves appeared to live well on small salaries, bringing up the many opportunities for bribery. If a street went unsprinkled, it might go unreported after a payment from the contractor to the inspector. At that level, there was little oversight. It would take the superintendent up to a month to check the entire area for efficacy. The Globe-Democrat complained that the cart drivers displayed “a complete ignorance of how to sprinkle a street.” Effectiveness often gave way to speed, observing the letter, but not the spirit of the law.” It listed complaints from the owners of two liveries, dealing with mud fouling their carrages, and horses slipping on muddy streets. J.R. Bettis, a “prominent bicyclist,” called the streets never more than half cleaned, with water thrown on the remaining sediment, making a horrible mass.”21
Dawn of the bike; immediate complaints
A reader named “A Suffering Multitude” wrote an opinion that despite other’s praise of the general dust reduction, “streets of the West End part of the city are kept in a constant state of mud at all times of the day and night, and nearly all seasons of the year.” He opined that if this situation persisted, “there won’t be any bicyclists after a year or two; they’ll all be killed riding on muddy roads.” He suggested that a “charitably disposed person in the bicycle business” gift bikes as presents to the “sprinkling fiends.” They would soon enough understand the situation, and receive heartfelt thanks in return.22
Cycling in the city grew almost exponentially over the 1890s, and the cyclists made their feelings known. They almost unanimously opposed the sprinkling. The street commissioner seriously considered having the inspectors make their rounds on bicycles. It would save on the keep of twenty-three horses, and speed inspections along.23
The word from downtown
The Post-Dispatch remained bullish on street sprinkling. Having it be a municipal function was largely the result of the paper’s efforts. By contrast, a look at the competing St. Louis Republican in June 1901 focused on the many complaints from its readership. Businessmen in the central business district complained of the lack of sprinkling during the day. The dust sifted into buildings and covered sale goods. The city ordinance called for sprinkling four times per day, but observers said they were lucky to get half that.
“A sprinkling cart passed by Olive at Eighth Street yesterday afternoon after 2 o’clock. Half an hour later, the pavement was as innocent of moisture as an alkali desert. The dust whirled through doors and windows, to the infinite disgust of the store and office tenants.”
This was in the clothing district, and there were many complaints about the futile efforts to keep dust from soiling the goods. The street commissioner said the complaints were “under investigation.” 24
Toothless enforcement of the rules
There had been investigations before. In 1896, the name “F. Mueller” appeared on the street department payroll as a sprinkling inspector. Superintentent of Sprinkling Henry Besch collected Mueller’s salary through July. The mayor appointed Besch city register and his clerk advanced to the superintendent position. He then collected the Mueller money for the next four months. Both men were fired and indicted. That summer, one resident at Chouteau and Tower Grove Avenues claimed that despite his block paying their taxes, no service had been provided that year. The street commissioner reviewed the inspector’s reports and found no reference to lack of sprinkling. He wrote back, contradicting the resident, but later investigation verified a complete lack of sprinkling.
Besch was indicted on three charges of receiving bribes from contractors while he was superintendent. One paid Besch $550 in a single season to obtain immunity from fines by inspectors under Besch’s control. As the sheriff is a state office, indictments couldn’t be held against Besch, a city officer, and the cases against him and his clerk were dismissed. 25
Engineering vs reality
Despite graft, corruption, and operational ignorance, the majority of city residents remained supportive of the sprinkling system. Engineers tried to help by writing specifications for standard methods. Of course, one answer would never fit every situation, but the 1899 set of rules called for “water delivered upon the street in a finely divided state, similar to rain, and not in streams or sheets. This, by running water through “a metal pipe two inches in diameter, closed at the ends, extending around the vehicle rear in a semielipse, suspended to within three feet of the ground, perforated on the outside diameter with one-eighth inch holes five-eighths of an inch apart, and one-half inch above this, a second row of holes of he same size and distance apart, the holes in the upper row alternating with the holes in the lower roles.” And so on. In practice, the pipe had as many holes as the contractor pleased, often resulting in flooded areas. 26
Conundrum of the combine
The Globe-Democrat concluded that a “combination,” or shared monopoly existed in 1902. In January, the Board of Public Improvements received an average of two bids per district. Escalating prices were the norm, but sprinkling by then expanded to year-round, and more frequently, in preparation for the World’s Fair. The lowest bids still wound up being over $250,000.27
A patently imperfect process continued for years. The Globe-Democrat in September, 1908 noted that price estimates for 1912 grew by another $10,500 over the year before. The street commissioner expected improved service, as the bids of 1911 were the result of cut throat competition, “ too low for good work.” Throwing money at a problem was a long held form of political addressing of a municipal issue, and so it was. 28
Perhaps better supervision would help
A new street commissioner took some new steps in 1914. He borrowed seven inspectors from the sewer department to canvass the frequency and effect of street sprinkling. This doubled the number of inspectors to twelve. When an inspector located a neglected street, he would find and compel the wagon driver to sprinkle proberly. If unable to find the contractor, they would hire a wagon for the job and deduct the cost from the contractor’s pay. At that time there were 192 wagons and eleven trucks on the streets of St. Louis. A lot to monitor for a dozen men.
Late in the day when sprinkling would even be necessary, more malfeasance came to light. A contractor in February of 1922 reported to the Board of Public Service that he had received an offer of $1,500 to not bid on street sprinkling. By that time the sprinkling contracts totalled over $379,000 and covered 710 miles of streets. The city comptroller declared that this had gone on long enough; that from February 1923, the city would do its own sprinkling. Mayor Kiel endorsed this.29
The water movement loses steam
The St. Louis of 1926 was a lot different than that of 1905. Now the danger posed by wet streets was that cars and bikes would skid. A boy died when his bicycle skidded, throwing him into the path of a heavy truck. The St. Louis Safety Council and Department of Streets aligned to push for abolition of street sprinkling. Sprinkling, by then, was more the result of inertia than actual need. The Director of Streets addressed the Optimist Club in April of 1926, and had to remind people why there was any value to sprinkling. It was historical. Now almost all streets had hard surfaces and sprinkling formed a thin film of water and mud, increasing the skidding hazard. Periodic flushing of streets proved a better dust deterrent than frequent wetting. Truck mounted vacuum cleaners worked the roadways in some sections. 30
In November of 1926, the Director of Streets and Sewers announced a plan to do away with street sprinkling. The new strategy was to flush paved streets once a week. Remaining unpaved streets would be permanently paved over the next several years, or oiled once in the spring and again in the fall. 31
Ridding the dust by paving the streets
All of this is prologue to the streets director announcing, in March, 1927, that the city’s special tax on real estate for street sprinkling would no longer be collected. The city spent $490,000 in the preceding year on sprinkling by contractors. That expense reduced to $170,000 for flushing and oiling.32
The Director of Streets told a large group from Lions Club in January 1929 that of 1,017 miles of roadways, the city of St. Louis still had 212 miles of unpaved streets. Old macadam and Telford streets amounted to another 200 miles. 1928 stood as an example; the first year in St. Louis history that saw 50 miles of streets newly paved. He proposed to add another fifty miles of paving each year, in perpetuity, to bring and keep all roads up to snuff.33
The street sprinkling days were finally passing, with few able to recall just how bad the dust situation had been fifty years earlier. Here is one of the few remaining wagons, still on duty in June of 1930:
Summary
It’s a rare thing that a city can grab accolades from its residents for putting a complex and expensive municipal service into place, and then duplicate the praise for doing away with the same service four decades later. I suppose you take your kudos how and when you can. It speaks to how quickly urban infrastructure, from water supply to waste control and street maintenance improved in St. Louis from 1875 to 1925.
One last photo. There was a time when dust was a true quality of life issue for St. Louisans. Having a system in place to mitigate all the dust this place kicked up was a boon for the people. There was even a parade down Market Street in 1913, caught on film by the ever-observant William J. Swekosky. Times were moving fast. Note the videographer, standing on a water tank, catching the parade for a local newsreel.
Notes
* The Engineers Club of St. Louis in 1904 estimated the relative costs of road surfaces. 1903 was, of course, a busy year for surfacing. The city had to look its best for the upcoming fair. Road surfacing was still a scattershot approach, involving five different materials.
| Paving Material | Cost per 100 linear feet | Laid during 1903 |
| Wood Block | $42 | 1.5 miles |
| Granite Block | $35-40 | 3 miles |
| Bituminous Macadam | $35 | 6 miles |
| Asphalt | $33 | 12 miles |
| Brick | $25 | 13 miles |
The standard at this time was to create a base layer of concrete, then top with any of the above.
Brick, made in great abundance in St. Louis, was ‘vitrified,’ or heat glazed. The city began using it in roads in 1894. Placed in a sand base with cement grout filing joints between bricks. Very sturdy, and still in use, or buried beneath today’s asphalt.
Asphalt base was typically 1.5 inches of clean broken stone mixed hot with asphaltic cement and topped with a wear layer of thick sand mixed with asphaltic cement and carbonate of lime. It began use in St. Louis around 1885, and its lifespan ran from 5-7 years.
Bituminous macadam had a 2 inch wear surface of crushed granite or porphyry mixed with sand, then heated and mixed with bituminous pitch. A quick-dry top coat of hot bitumen was applied and covered with a thin layer of granite or porphyry chips. A steam roller pressed everything together. It was a clear precursor to today’s road surfaces, but was first applied in 1903.
Granite blocks, by contrast, were like a blunt instrument, laid 6″deep on a bed of sand. After a quarter of a century in use, they held up great. The sound of wheels and hooves hitting it made a constant racket, the resulting surface was not uniformly smooth, and it could be slippery when wet.
These descriptions are adapted from information in a book called “World’s Fair Souvenir Of The Engineer’s Club Of St. Louis;” 1904.
** 1887 was a pivotal year for change. Jones and Orear cited the critical need to deal with limestone dust in their book Commercial and Architectural St. Louis (1888). They called macadam surfaces ‘very unsatisfactory,’ while questioning the city’s ability to afford replacement by granite, wood or asphalt. They worked from a city total of 324 miles of improved streets. In the preceding year, the city had added 30.9 miles of granite streets, 7.8 miles of Telford, 3.9 miles of asphalt on concrete, 3.3 miles of Nicolson wood, and only a single mile of limestone blocks. Still, the streets made from limestone macadam ran for 278.2 miles, or 86% of the total.
*** Bicycling was new, and a big deal, eagerly embraced in St. Louis in 1887. That year, the St. Louis Cycling Club formed. It remains the longest continuously operated bicycle racing club in the U.S. Also that year, St. Louis hosted the national meet of the fast-growing League of American Wheelmen.
Resources
Statistics on chewing tobacco in late 19th century America from grin.deltadental.com
A review of the historical health effects of horse and mule manure on city streets appears in Smart Water magazine, at https://smartwatermagazine.com
Further information on manure’s uncomfortable relationship with the city is in my earlier essay; https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/1887-horse-manure-and-the-city/
Sprinkling of different type road surfaces, from the Missouri Republican of July 19, 1868
A good review of the history and features of wooden streets is the website of a company fixed on bringing them back. https://www.proflowpavers.com/news/the-forgotten-history-of-wooden-streets
A local history of wooden streets in St. Louis is titled The Creosoted Wood Block, by Ryan J. Reed for Landmarks Association of St. Louis. This is a primary source for my treatment of the subject.
Colonel Henry Flad was another German emigre’ who made good here. His story is outside the scope of this essay, but deserving of a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Flad
St.Louis City pothole repair stats from https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/government/departments/mayor/news/citystat-launch.cfm
Max Starkloff was quite a guy, steering the city through the great influenza epidemic of 1918, and spent 30 years as health commissioner of St. Louis. You can learn more about him at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_C._Starkloff
You can still find a later iteration of pavement around South St. Louis, especially in its sidewalks. My earlier essay deals with Granitoid – some stout stuff: https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/1891-the-granitoid-sidewalks-of-st-louis/
Newspaper sources
- Missouri Republican; July 19, 1868
- Missouri Republican; April 27, 1871
- St. Louis Globe-Democrat; April 20, 1875
- Globe-Democrat; April 21, 1875
- St Louis Republican; April 21, 1875
- Globe-Democrat; April 21, 1875
- St.Louis Republican; May 2, 1875
- St. Louis Post-Dispatch; March 3, 1877
- Globe-Democrat; April 5, 1878
- Globe-Democrat; August 5, 1883
- Post-Dispatch; June 10, 1884
- Post-Dispatch; August 9, 1884
- Post-Dispatch; March 9, 1887
- Post-Dispatch; April 29, 1887
- Post-Dispatch; ibid
- Post-Dispatch; ibid
- Post-Dispatch; May 13, 1887
- Post-Dispatch; August 20, 1887; all quotes
- Post-Dispatch; February 11, 1888; three preceding paragraphs
- Post-Dispatch; April 4, 1888
- Globe-Democrat; December 10, 1892
- Post-Dispatch; November 19, 1895
- Post-Dispatch; November 5, 1895
- St. Louis Republican; June 22, 1901
- Republican; March 16, 1901
- Republican; October 21, 1901
- Globe-Democrat; January 11, 1902
- Globe-Democrat; ibid
- Globe-Democrat; February 2, 1922
- Globe-Democrat; Jun 8 1926; Post-Dispatch; April 30, 1926
- St. Louis Star and Times; November 16, 1926
- Post-Dispatch; March 19, 1927
- Globe-Democrat; January 24, 1929
