$2.3 million project restoring bricks Evansville's Main Street
(Published Saturday, September 29, 2007 01:20:42 AM CST)
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
By Gina Duwe/Gazette staff
EVANSVILLE
A part of Evansville history is taking shape piece by piece.
Or brick by brick.
By November, the downtown blocks of Main Street will reflect much of what the street looked like in early 1900 after 250,000 original brick pavers are set in place.
It's the highlight of the $2.3 million renovation project that ripped up the street from storefront to storefront starting in April to replace century-old utilities and crumbling sidewalks. The brick paving was made possible by a $400,000 federal grant and $14,000 in private donations.
"We felt that the bricks were the key," said Jeff Farnsworth, a downtown business owner who helped with the project.
BURIED HISTORY
In the early 1900s, oil and water kept the dust down on the dirt street, said local historian Ruth Ann Montgomery.
"It was all of the dirt coming off the street and into the houses and into the businesses that was prompting getting some paving down," she said.
So in 1914, the city council passed a resolution to brick pave Main Street from the railroad crossing on East Main Street to Second Street, she said.
The city estimated it would cost $3,000 to pave, costing a taxpayer owning a home or business on the paved portion $1.50 per $1,000 of value, she said. A referendum passed 175-109 in support of bonding to pay for the project.
The bricks were set on a 5-inch base of concrete during the summer of 1914.
In 1962, the city covered the bricks with asphalt, likely because of maintenance issues, she said.
RECOVERING AND RESURFACING
The asphalt chipped off the brick pavers pretty easily when workers uncovered them this spring, said city engineer Dave Sauer.
"It was surprisingly easier than what we were expecting," he said.
Seventy to 75 percent of the Purington Paver bricks were salvageable, he said, which also was more than expected.
"They're pretty resilient," he said.
Workers from LPS Pavement Company of Oswego, Ill., use a hand device to carry five bricks at a time from a pallet to set into about an inch of sand atop 8 inches of concrete.
The bricks are set into a "running bond pattern" with a "soldier course border," foreman Jason Grant said. Translation: They run in parallel lines like the side of a brick building with one perpendicular row of border along the gutter line to contain the cuts.
Once the rustic red bricks are set in rows, workers use tools to push them together so there's no more than a one-fourth inch gap, Grant said. The bricks settle about one-fourth of an inch, he said.
The bricks are held together with SandLock, a flexible hardening system, he said.
"If this street ever moves or settles a little bit, everything will move with it, so it's a flexible system," he said.
The completed street will be slightly bumpy under vehicle tires because of the segmented pavement, he said.
Grant is expecting to have all the bricks in place around the end of October. When the brickwork is done on West Main Street, city officials will review it and open the block, Sauer said.
INCREASING TREND
As a specialist in installing brick pavers, Grant said more and more cities are doing what Evansville is doing with historic bricks that have been paved over.
"We've already done several streets in Chicago in the western suburbs," he said. "It's coming back. Instead of tearing the streets apart and throwing all of the material away, they're tearing the streets apart and saving the brick. And it's saving them money, because once we do it like this, it'll last forever."
In Maywood, Ill., for example, he recently took out 60,000 square feet of brick pavers, cleaned every one and put them back down.
When Evansville's construction is done, Main Street resident Margery Buckeridge joked she didn't know what people will do because everyone has been watching and "supervising" the project.
She often stops to watch the work progress after trips to the post office and library.
"They've done wonderfully well and really moving fast," she said, overlooking the project last week.
As the Nov. 16 completion for the project nears, the aesthetic features, including lighting, benches, bike racks and garbage cans, will be installed.
"You certainly hope they don't stick asphalt over them in another 20 years," Farnsworth said, "but we had to do something to make Evansville unique."
