THE EVOLUTION OE THE STREET—IV. 
Br CHARLES MULFORD ROBINSON 
( Concluded) 
E VOLUTION as a process of develop¬ 
ment is inevitably affected by environ¬ 
ment. As an adaptation, progressively 
complete, to elaborating requirements, much 
must depend on the nature of these. The 
course of development under different kinds 
of surroundings becomes thus of interest. 
In considering the street’s evolution, in 
the earlier articles of this series, there has 
been a careful avoidance of any study ot 
purely racial or national peculiarities. We 
have taken the street in the abstract and in 
the differentiated species have not lost hold 
of it, emphasizing the position—when it be¬ 
came necessary to use concrete illustrations— 
by selecting these from various and widely 
scattered cities. But now that we have in¬ 
dicated the general course of street develop¬ 
ment, it may not be uninteresting to observe 
some strictly national characteristics. And 
this can at last be done without fear that 
the specific will be mistaken for the general, 
the national for the international. 
To begin with our own country, it should 
be recognized at once that in a tract of such 
vast extent there may easily be differences of 
environment and society—of conditions nat¬ 
ural and human—quite as marked as between 
the nations of crowded Europe. It would, 
therefore, be as difficult to find here a tvpe 
that in every part could be called strictly 
national as it would be difficult across the sea 
to discover one that could properly be called 
distinctly European. But a bird’s-eye view of 
town beginnings in the United States would 
probably suggest, it is safe to say, that the 
predominating influence upon street devel¬ 
opment has been a building. In the North¬ 
eastern States—certainly in New England— 
we should expect, remembering the begin¬ 
nings of the colonies—to find this structure 
a church. In the Western States, it would 
more probably be a railroad station. 
Now, the fact that these structures were 
the dominant buildings of the town in its 
early days must have made its impress on 
the street nomenclature and the street plan. 
Where old names linger, we find—as in 
Boston—Meeting-House Hill, and—as in 
Southampton, L. I.—Meeting-House Lane. 
Railroad terms have never been received into 
street nomenclature with the same cordiality, 
for they do not stand for the activities of the 
town, as the church stands for them, but for 
something outside the town. And the wish 
at the station is naturally to give an impres¬ 
sion of the town’s separate importance. 
As structures of exceptional significance, 
these buildings had the choice locations. In 
the case of churches, especially, these posi¬ 
tions were given. The station simply selected 
the site desired, and the town made it, by plot¬ 
ting or rearrangement of the streets, a choice 
one. We have to remember, in this con¬ 
nection, that the towns which owe their ori¬ 
gin to the railroad are a recent growth. For 
the purpose of studying street evolution we 
shall find the older communities more inter¬ 
esting. 
Albany, N. Y., was settled by the Dutch. 
It is one of the oldest cities in the United 
States. One would not accuse the Dutch 
of attaching over-much importance to the 
church ; but that is simply because the Puri¬ 
tans outshine them. They did attach great 
importance to it, and they set it in the mid¬ 
dle of that splendidly broad street which 
now as State Street climbs the hill to the 
Capitol. They thought so much of it, in¬ 
deed, that they not only gave it a location 
comparable, from the standpoint of the street 
plan, to that which the State has given to 
the enormously costly Capitol; but when 
need arose for a larger structure, they built 
this around the old one, so that only one 
Sunday’s service was lost. 
There is a water-color painting in Albany 
of State Street hill in 1802, when the sec¬ 
ond of the old churches stood in the middle 
of the street. It is an instructive picture to 
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