History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume II, Part 69

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1196

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An amended ordinance as to posting the names of streets and alleys was passed March 31, 1873. An ordinance of June 25, 1877, provided that the streets should be sprinkled under supervision of the Street Commissioner. The duties of the Commissioner were defined by ordinance of June 15, 1857, and amendments of June 11, 1860, February 26, 1866, and January 26, 1880. In 1873, Broad Street, east of High, was surfaced with gravel and broken stone. The estimated cost of this improvement was three dollars per front foot. In November, 1873, the con- dition of High Street was declared by the State Journal to be " shameful." On June 13, 1874, the same paper stated the Nicholson surfacing was " literally worn out " and could not be repaired, many of the blocks being not more than 212 inches long. On June 9, 1874, a meeting of the owners of property on the street was held to consider its condition. John Greenleaf was chairman of this meeting, C. J. Hardy its sceretary. On motion of Mr. Parsons a committee was appointed to investigate, and report what was needed. After making observations in Chi- cago, New York, Philadelphia, Washington and other cities, this committee reported on October 18, recommending that High Street be laid with conerete or asphalt pavement. The members of the committee were Theodore Comstock, T. Ewing Miller and C. C. Walcutt. Shortly after their report a party of citizens visited Pittsburgh for the purpose of inspecting the Filbert vulcanite pavements of that city. Meanwhile what was called a " war between wood and asphalt " broke out. A wooden block pavement was offered by a Cleveland company for 82.20 per square yard ; on the other hand, the Filbert pavement interest offered to take up the old Nicholson, roll the surface, lay it with twelve inches of broken stone and three inches of small stone and gravel mixed with composition, and put on top of that a fiveinch coating of " vulcanized asphalt," for $2.70 per square yard, and guarantee the work for ten years. On January 28, 1875, a committee of one councilman from each ward, appointed to receive all papers pertaining to the pav- ing of High Street, met, talked the matter over at great length, and adjourned. On February 1, same year, 107 owners of property on the street petitioned the council for a wooden block pavement. Mr. Breyfogle denounced the wooden pavement as a fraud. After various further proceedings of the citizens and the coun- cil, the latter adopted a resolution to pave the street with the material then known as the Parisen asphalt." The contractors were James L. and William H. Hastings, W. B. Parisen and HI. R. Beeson. On September 3, 1873, the completion of the work was celebrated by a promenade concert on the street, in front of the Capitol. This concert, of which A. B. Stevenson was the projector, was accompanied by

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STREETS, SEWERS AND PARKS.

fireworks and a parade of the Columbus Cadets. The dancing was kept up until after midnight. Captain W. B. Parisen, the patentee and superintendent of con- struetion of the pavement, meanwhile entertained his friends at the parlors of the American House.

When the Nicholson pavement was laid, " a healthy streak of cleanliness struck the authorities," said a newspaper writer, "and horsebrooms were set to work, but the work was not kept up." The streets, not excepting the newly paved one, soon relapsed into a state of neglect, of the continuance of which, in 1874, we have evidence in these statements of July 10, that year: "The thousands of cart- loads of ashes thrown on our streets during the last winter by private citizens and city officials have now done double duty. During the winter they gave us an interminable abyss of hogwallow ; all summer long they have been a principal source ofinterest in the shape of dense and varied, if not beautiful, elouds of dust."3 On November 9, 1874, propositions to clean the streets were made by the Colum- bus Scavenger & Garbage Company, and at a later date these propositions were accepted by the Police Comissioners.

On June 21, 1875, ordinanees were passed providing for the pavement of Town and North High streets with concrete. The Town Street contract was awarded on August 9 to F. W. Smith & Co , at 95 cents per square yard, for which compensa- tion the contractors were to surface the old Nicholson with a coating of small stone and bitumen, and, on top of that, a 23 inch layer of Filbert's patent vulcanite. As the work was about to begin, Captain N. B. Abbott, then of Brooklyn, New York, gave notice that he would enjoin the execution of this contract as an infringement of his patent on the process for surfacing Nicholson pavements, whereupon all further proceedings were suspended. On August 23 a new ordi- nance for the paving of Town Street was passed, and on October 4 a contract with F. W. Smith & Co. to pave the street from High Street to Parsons Avenue, at $1.25 per square yard, was ordered. This contract provided for a central roadway of concrete, leaving a strip of the Nicholson on each side, between the concrete and the curb. The completion of the High Street pavement, between Broad and Long streets, was celebrated by a street dancing party at the corner of High and Gay streets September 29. State Street, from High Street to the City Hall, was laid with the Abbott concrete in the autumn of 1877. This was an experimental piece of work, and was the first use made of concrete composed of Trinidad asphalt. (Patent was for Trinidad asphalt and petroleum wax, with some sand and gravel.) Already in 1877 the condition of the Parisen coaltar pavement on High Street had become very bad, and extensive repairs were urgently needed. An ordinance for the repair of the street was therefore passed on August 21, and the Columbus Paving Com- pany - H. M. Claffen President and N. B. Abbott Manager - was employed to execute the work. An ordinance of April 16, 1880, authorized the property own- ers on High Street to pave it by blocks or squares and be relieved of assessment. A sweepingmachine for High Street was purchased in the autumn of 1875. On September 5, 1877, N. B. Abbott began cleaning the street six nights of the week with a onehorse sweeper, and offered to continue this service regularly at $400 per month. An ordinance for the improvement of South High Street was passed Jan- uary 22, 1877.

Of the North High Street improvement, authorized by ordinance of June 21, 1875, the author has been favored with the following sketch by De Witt C. Jones, Esquire :

During the year 1876 North High Street, from Naghten Street to the north corporation line, a distance of 313 miles, was improved under an act of the General Assembly of Ohio, passed March 30, 1875, commonly called the Penn Act. At that time more than three miles of the roadway to be paved was a mere country turnpike, known as the Worthington Toll Road, comprising a track thirteen feet wide flanked on each side by a ditch without curbing. The act authorized the improvement of this street, but required, as preliminary to action in

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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBU'S.

that behalf by the City Council, that twothirds of the owners of the abutting property should unite in a petition for the improvement to be made under the act. Such a petition was signed by the property owners in the spring of 1875. There were likewise numerous remonstrances against the proposed improvement ; nevertheless it was authorized by an ordinance of June 21, 1875, which also provided for the election of five commissioners to superintend the work. At an election held at the schoolhouse, High Street and Woodruff Avenue, John G. Mitchell, Frederick Michel, John R. Hughes, Henry M. Neil and G. A. Frambes were chosen to serve on the board. The power of these commissioners was exten- sive. They determined the kind of improvement to be made, let all the contracts and made the assessment upon the abutting property. The contract for the whole of the work and materials was let to the Columbus Paving Company, which completed the work in the fall of 1876.4 The total cost was $226,253. As the work progressed bonds aggregating this amount were signed by the Mayor and City Clerk, and delivered to the commissioners who negotiated them and paid the cost of the improvement with the proceeds

After the work was completed, the commissioners caused a plat to be made showing each abutting lot or parcel of ground, together with the name of its owner. At this point a disagreement arose among the commissioners as to the meaning of the words "abutting property." Some of them thought that the cost of the improvement at the crossings of streets and alleys, amounting to $25,828, or more than onetenth of the entire cost, should be paid for by the city at large and not assessed upon the property owners on High Street. In order to settle this dispnte mandamus proceedings were brought in the Supreme Court of the State, which held the Penn Act to be unconstitutional on the ground that it was a special act applying to Columbus alone. At the same time the court held that inasmuch as the work had been done at the request of a large number of property owners, and the bonds of the city had been issued and were unpaid, the commissioners should make an assessment embracing the entire cost of the improvement to be charged on the abutting property other than streets and alleys. The court further held that, as there was no power to sell streets and alleys to enforce the collection of any assessment made on them, such assessment was futile, and that such was not the design of the act.

After the assessment was made upon the ahutting lands a very large number of suits was brought to enjoin collection of the assessments, on the ground that the law had been held to be unconstitutional; charging fraud in procuring signatures of property owners to the original petition to the council asking for the privileges of the act of March 30, 1875; and alleging that twothirds of the frontage were not represented on the petition. After long, tedious and expensive litigation through all the courts, those who in any manner participated in or in any wise encouraged the making of the improvement were held to pay the assess- ment on their properties; while those who opposed the improvement, or took no part in favor of it, escaped, and their lands were not held to pay the assessment. The original assess- ment was $7.15 per front foot, upon all the property on both sides of the street. The bonds drew seven per cent. interest, and when the litigation was at an end the original assessment and interest amounted to about twelve dollars per front foot. That portion of the assessment which was enjoined was paid by the city at large.

A statement of the development of the public inconvenience caused by obstructing railway trains at the High Street crossing will be found in Chapter XVIII of this volume. When railway lines first began to touch Columbus, the council, in its zeal to promote their construction, and hasten the advantages to be derived from them, practically voted them the freedom of the city. The extent of the inconvenience which has since resulted from the passage of steam cars through the streets was not then foreseen. Complaints of this inconvenience, which began to be serious in the sixties, and have covered a period of not less than thirty years, culminated in the construction of a tunnel under the railway tracks in 1875." An ordinance granting the street railway company a right of way through this tunnel was passed on December 5 of that year. So far as the pedestrian and vehicular travel were concerned, the tunnel afforded no adequate relief. It was therefore necessary that some other expedient should be found for the relief of the street from railway obstruction, and, on August 1, 1881, the matter was referred in the council to a special committee. That committee reported December 19, 1881, pre- senting a communication from prominent citizens containing the following state- ments :

The daily experience of the public shows it [the railway obstruction of High Street ] to have become almost insupportable. That the main business artery of a city of 60,000 inhab-

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STREETS, SEWERS AND PARKS.

itants should be eut in two and all movement thereon should be blockaded during a large portion of each day, is probably without a parallel in this country. With a view to obtaining some basis on which aetion may be initiated, the undersigned, have, at their own cost, employed an engineer of the highest qualifications who has made an examin- ation of the premises, and whose report, with an accompanying plat, we herewith submit.

The matter was further agitated in the council, the Board of Trade and the press until an arrangement was made, between the city and the railways, for the viaduct now in course of construction. The City Engineer's report for 1884 con- tained the following passages :

The improvement of High Street from Livingston Avenue to Naghten Street has period- ically engaged the attention of property owners along the line of the street for eighteen years. Prior to 1867 the street was a graveled roadway; during the year 1867 the wooden block pavement was put down. This pavement proved to be a miserable abor- tion and eost the property owners along the line of the street, from a point 125 feet south of Main Street, $100,170.93, and the Street Railroad Company 85.757 ; total cost, $105,927.93. This pavement remained in tolerably good condition for about four years, when it began to fail, and from that time to the end of its existence in 1876 it was a miserable roadway. In 1876 the Hastings asphalt was put down from 125 feet south of Main Street to Naghten Street, and the Filbert asphalt from 125 feet south of Main to Livingston Avenue. The Hastings asphalt eost $84,012.81 and the Filbert pavement put down the following year cost $16,465.94. Total cost of wooden block and asphalt pavements, $206,406.76. This is not all, for the cost of repairs of the wooden block and asphalt was $45,150, making a grandtotal of the cost of wooden block and asphalt pavements of $251,556.76, in round numbers a quarter of a million dol- lars - more than would have been sufficient to put down a granite bloek pavement which would have worn for thirty or forty years, with but little cost for repairs.

In 1885 the paving of High Street began under an ordinance permitting the work to be done by private contract by the property owners. About onethird of the street was let to Booth & Flynn, of Pittsburgh, whose surface metal consisted of blocks of Ligonier stone packed with sand. Another onethird of the work was done by N. B. Abbott, whose surfacing was composed of Medina stone blocks with pitch filling. In 1886 contracts for the remaining onethird were advertised for by the council and let to George W. Foster and W. H. Venable, of Atlanta, Georgia, the surfacing to be done with Georgia granite blocks and pitch filling. These con- tracts were sublet by the Georgia company to N. B. Abbott, who executed the work. Part of it comprises that portion of the street which lies contiguous to the Capitol Square. A long controversy as to the application of pitch filling resulted in permission to use it in laying the Georgia and Medina blocks.

An ordinance providing for the renumbering of houses, and prescribing a sys- tem therefor, was passed in March, 1887. In the course of that year a general improvement of the thoroughlares of the city was begun under the Taylor Law, an account of which has been elsewhere given. The operations of this law are described in Chapter XXXII of Volume I, to which chapter is appended a tabu- lation showing the cost of the street improvements of the city from 1875 to 1892 inclusive. A more particular account of recent street paving in the city is appended to the present chapter.

From want of system in surveying and looseness in approving building lot additions to the city, much crookedness, irregularity and other disfigurement of the streets and alleys have resulted. Efforts to correct these mistakes by opening, widening or straightening the thoroughfares spoiled by them have caused a great amount of controversy, litigation and expense. Some of the finest streets are per- manently disfigured - a fact the more noticeable in a city unusually favored in the general regularity and amplitude of its thoroughfares. Efforts to clear the streets and alleys of the unsightly poles and wires used for electric service have at various times been made, but thus far without success. An obvious and practica- ble escape from this nuisance is found in placing all electric wires underground, and this expedient will doubtless in course of time be reached.

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ILISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

The duty of the State and the United States governments to pay their propor- tionate share of the expense of grading, paving and cleaning the streets and alleys contiguous to their grounds and buildings has been the subject of intermittent dis- cussion for at least a quarter of a century past. In January, 1879, the matter was brought to the attention of the General Assembly by a petition from the City Council, in which many prominent citizens united. In this petition it was stated that extensive improvements had been made on the streets and pavements adjacent to the property of the State ; that the grounds on which the publie buildings had been located were donated by the people of the city ; that the people of Franklin County had voluntarily levied upon themselves a tax of $300,000 to establish and locate the Agricultural College; that more than half the sum thus levied had been paid by the people of Columbus; that no claim had made on account of the sew- ers built by the city and used by the State ; that 3,000 feet of paving touching the Agricultural College grounds on North High Street had been paid for from the proceeds of bonds issued by the city ; that no part of the cost of this improvement had been assessed upon the college farm; and that the finances of the city bad been crippled by such exemptions of State property. The petitioners therefore asked that an appropriation of 850,000 be made from the State Treasury as an equitable indemnity to the city for its street improvement obligations and expen ditures directly beneficial to the State buildings and institutions.

This petition failed to move the General Assembly to take the action desired, nor has the State made any payments for street improvements contiguous to its property, excepting portions of the paving around the Capitol Square and the asphalt on Town Street fronting the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb. The State now stands charged with the following assessments, all made under the Taylor Law excepting that for paving touching the Capitol Square on Broad Street :

Capitol,

Third Street,

$ 9,642 50

Capitol,

State Street,

1,596 97

Capitol,

State Street,

1,509 78

Capitol,

Broad Street, .

14,570 35

Capitol,

High Street.

7,329 63

Penitentiary,

Spring Street,

11,410 03

Penitentiary,

Dennison Street,

10,868 34

Penitentiary,

Maple Street,

3,000 00

Asylum for the Blind,

Main Street,

3,934 88

Asylum for the Blind,

Parsons Avenue,

3,491 09

Asylum for the Insane,

Broad Street, 11,907 13

Asylum for the Feebleminded,

Broad Street, 18,628 41

Total,

$97,889 11

No payments whatever bave been made for street improvements tonching the property of the United States.

At present the city possesses no general system of street cleaning. No thorough sweeping had been done prior to 1886, in which year N. B. Abbott began running a fourhorse sweeper on High Street six nights per week. After a year's service of this kind Mr. Abbott sold his large sweeper and the work was let for machines drawn by two horses. The streets are now swept under contracts made by commis- sioners - two for each street to be swept - nominated by the property owners desiring the service and appointed by the Board of Public Works. The work is paid for by assessments on the abutting property according to its frontage. These assessments may be placed upon the tax duplicate if not liquidated within a cer- tain period.

A.WKnight.

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STREETS, SEWERS AND PARKS.

SEWERS.

Down to the year 1848 the drainage of Columbus was limited entirely to that of the surface. In 1849, a 31 foot brick sewer was carried from the river up 35 W to Sote Broad Street to the Asylum for the Insane, then situated on the ground now known as East Park Place. This work was executed jointly by the corporation, at. there 20m. the Statehouse Commissioners, the institutions for the insane and mutes, and the Starling Medical College. The contractor, William Murphy, passed High Street by tunneling through sand and gravel at a depth of eighteen feet below the surface. The surplus earth thrown ont of the trench was used in filling up swales around the markethouse on Fourth Street. The pioneer sewer thus built is still in use, and in fair condition. It lies under the outer course of trees, on the north side of Broad Street.

Spring Street was sewered and filled from Front Street to Third in 1852. This was regarded as " an exeellent thing for the north part of the city," which was at that time very marshy. The early continuation of the Spring Street sewer to the river was much desired in order that a pond which lay " between the Tool Factory and Ridgway's Foundry" might be drained. In 1853 the council was petitioned for numerous sewers, one of which was desired for the drainage of a stagnant pond in Locust Alley. The total length of the under- ground sewers possessed by the city in April, 1854, was 12,500 feet. In 1855 the cellars on Spring Street were flooded in consequence of the defective construction of the sewer on that street. Four judgments against the city, for damages, were therefore obtained before Justice Miller. The cost of the sewers possessed by the eity in April, 1858, was 840,800. In June of the same year a general system of sewerage was asked for. In January, 1859, the " Centre Alley Sewer" was spoken of as an "expensive piece of brick masonry but lately completed," which was " already giving out." In May, 1863, the council appointed George Gere, L. Hoster and Daniel Worley to divide the city into sewerage districts. A " horrid accumulation of sewage and other trash from sluices " discharging into the river from the Penitentiary, the Soap Factory and other sources, was complained of in May, 1864. In 1865 a sewerage committee appointed by the council recommended the construction of gates or sluiceways in the Scioto River dam in order that the dam might be suddenly drained of all its water and its bottom cleansed of sewage. The committee was directed to confer with the Board of Public Works and the lessees of the Ohio Canal relative to the construction of these sluiceways.

In December, 1865, a sewerage commission of which John H. Klippart was chairman, reported through Mr. Klippart recommending that all of the city east of High Street be divided into two districts; that all the municipal territory west of High Street should constitute a third district ; that in each of these districts a main sewer should be built, and that the three sewers so constructed should dis- charge into an intercepting one to be conducted along the river bank, east of the canal, to a point below Moler's dam. Mr. Klippart further suggested the utiliza- tion of the sewage for agricultural purposes, and said the day would come when this method of its disposal would be appreciated. In September, 1866, extension of the Spring Street sewer to the river and of the Peters Run sewer to the " aque- duct crossing the canal," was ordered. In March, 1867, the council passed a reso lution asking the General Assembly to authorize a tax which would produce $100,000 for the construction of a general system of sewers. In April, of the same year, an ordinance for extension of the Peters Run sewer was passed, fol- lowed a month later by instructions to the engineer to survey a route for a main sewer through Fourth Street to a point below Moler's dam. The estimated cost of this sewer, including its proposed extension ou Broad Street to Seventh and

34*

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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF COLUMBUS.

thence on Seventh to a pond then existing near St Patrick's Church, was $300,000. A sevenfoot brick sewer from State Avenue east on Elm Alley to Spring Street and thence on Spring to Front, was built in 1867. This sewer, built by Hall, Fornoff & Co., and the Peters Run sewer built by Staib & Co., were accepted August 20. A resolution directing the engineer to prepare plats and estimates for a large number of sewers was passed March 23, 1868. On May 30, 1870, construc- tion of the following lines was ordered : On Broad Street from Fifth to a point one hundred feet east of Douglas Street; branch of Spring Street sewer from Medary to Seventh; in Noble Street from the Peters Run sewer to East Public Lane, thence to Friend Street and thence to the summit of that Street; in Rich Street from the Scioto to East Public Lane, with a branch in Fourth Street to Oak and in Oak to East Publie Lane; from the Peters Run sewer in Strawberry Alley to East Public Lane. Additional lines were ordered in the ensuing Octo- ber. In June, 1870, appeared the following statements :

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History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume II, Part 69

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co Publication date: 1892 Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co. Number of Pages: 1196

Author: Lee, Alfred Emory, 1838-; W. W. Munsell & Co
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York and Chicago : Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1196