1907: First pavement for Main Street

At the turn of the century, Hudson's Main Street was cobblestone, as were some of the side streets. Others were basically dirt roads. Paving and upgrading the city's streets would be a project that would be ongoing throughout the century.

The brick pavement for Main Street was cordially welcomed by the citizens of Hudson.

Work on Main Street got under way in August of 1907 by a firm named Kaumier Brothers, who had two railroad cars full of bricks and a carload of tools sent to get the job under way.

While the paving was under way, considerable water line and sewage work was under way. Then, as now, digging turned up traces of the past; near the Cincinnati Northern crossing, work crews digging a catch basin found traces of an old corduroy road nearly six feet below the level of the present road. Work stalled over the winter, but continued on Church Street the following spring.

    Though there would be several repavings of the downtown, the brick underlayment of the streets would remain in place for most of the century, until the 1998 rebuilding of Main Street. Crews turned up some old bricks and cobblestones, dating from many years before, just as the earlier crews had found the corduroy road.

                                                         
PAVING CREW working on Main Street in 1907. The "Hall House" is in the background. Most of the work was hand work; the steam powered cement mixer behind the street crew was about the only machinery they had to work with. Prior to the 1907 paving, Main Street was cobblestone.

                                

In 1907, the cobblestones were removed from Main Street and Church Street, and replaced with bricks. Bricks were stored on the sidewalks on the South side of Main St. to Howard St.

 

On the corner of Main St and Lane St., the workmen installing the brick streets. The man on the right standing with his arms folded was Louis Brennan. The house was owned by Henry Kellogg and later owned by Tom Thurlby. The building to the right was the L. C. Smith Co., now the Hudson Community Center.



WATER AND SEWER LINES (right) were laid under the streets, like Market Street looking southbound, early in the century. Some of the very old lines are still sound and in use. Many of the buildings in this photo are gone, although some still stand -- the tower of Sacred Heart Church, in the distance on the left, is a fairly new feature on the Hudson skyline.