House and Garden 
In the old 
streets it was 
observed that 
the roof drains 
emptied into 
the thorough¬ 
fare. Not only 
that, but from 
the windows of 
the houses the 
refuse of the 
household was 
poured into the 
street. For 
hundreds of 
years this 
method of dis¬ 
posal, or rather 
transference, 
was continued, 
to the ruination of many a dandy’s fine rai¬ 
ment and grosser temper. In fact, we are 
likely to forget, in swift review of the modern 
street’s evolution, how very long and slow 
the course of that evolution was. Even in 
the reign of Henry VIII, “the road of the 
Strand ” in elegant, cleanly England, was 
described as “ full of pits and sloughs, very 
perilous and noisome.” Yet at that time the 
Strand was the highway from the royal palace 
at Westminster to the royal palace on the 
Fleet, and was frequented by the aristocracy. 
So the emptying of dirty water into the public 
street from house windows was long continued 
—with a barbarity which our own familiar use 
of rivers as open sewers may assist us to 
understand! And it can be fancied that if the 
refuse was collected into a stream of re¬ 
stricted boundary and good current there 
may have been a feeling that quite an ad¬ 
vance had been secured, even though the 
stream was still in the street. This open, 
central gutter is still common in some South 
American and Spanish cities. 
But there came a time when the drainage 
of house and way was put into pipes or tun¬ 
nels beneath the surface. By that time many 
other services were developing. There were 
fresh water and gas to be distributed and 
there was about to be a demand that elec¬ 
tricity be carried under ground. The sub¬ 
surface of a great street became a network 
of conflicting constructions, and to keep 
them all in 
order there was 
repeated need 
of disturbing 
the pavement. 
The line of 
progress is like 
a line of battle 
and is not the 
u n i f o r m ad¬ 
vance of dress 
parade. Here 
a local victory, 
gained by cour¬ 
age, or good 
leadership, or 
favoring con¬ 
ditions, carries 
the line far for¬ 
ward; there the 
resistance seems impossible to overcome 
and the line is backward. But little by little 
the local victories multiply until the whole 
line is seen to have progressed. We have 
come now, in considering the evolution of 
the street, to that near time when the battle 
rages all around us, when the proximity of 
local victory or defeat makes it difficult to 
see the trend of the general line. But there 
are many advances beyond the point that 
is reached when a multitude of distinct sub¬ 
surface constructions call for a frequent tear¬ 
ing up of the pavement. In some localities 
these advances are very recent; in some 
they are no more than a hope. But we may 
go back thirty-three years, a whole generation, 
and can find in the London County Council’s 
“History of London Street Improvements ” 
an account of such advance in the case of 
Commercial Road (Whitechapel) — a new 
street that was commenced in July, 1869, and 
opened to the public ten months later, and 
that had less than the present day maximum 
of underground construction, since it con¬ 
tained no railroad beneath the surface. 
The description is worth quoting at some 
length, for more than the sub-surface con¬ 
struction is of interest and pertinence. “ The 
new street,” says the official history, “was 
twelve hundred feet in length and seventy 
feet in width. The carriage way was paved 
with granite laid upon concrete, and beneath 
it, along the center of the street, was formed 
A STREET AT CHARLOTTE AMALIE, ST. THOMAS, D. W. I. 
Showing the wide central gutter 
267 
