Cobblestone
Cobblestones set in sand have the environmental advantage of being permeable paving, and of moving rather than cracking with movements in the ground.
The fact that carriage wheels, horse hooves and even modern automobiles make a lot of noise when rolling over cobblestone paving might be thought a disadvantage, but it has the advantage of warning pedestrians of their approach.
In England, the custom was to strew straw over the cobbles outside the house of a sick or dying person to damp the sound.
[2] In the early modern period, cities like Paris, London, and Amsterdam began to pave their streets with cobblestones to manage the increased traffic from carts, carriages, and pedestrians.
Cobblestoned and "setted" streets gradually gave way to macadam roads and later to tarmac, and finally to asphalt concrete at the beginning of the 20th century.
[5] In older U.S. cities such as Philadelphia, Boston, Pittsburgh,[3] New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, New Castle, Portland (Maine), Baltimore, Charleston, and New Orleans, many of the older streets are paved in cobblestones and setts (mostly setts); however, many such streets have been paved over with asphalt, which can crack and erode away due to heavy traffic, thus revealing the original stone pavement.
In some places such as Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, as late as the 1990s some busy intersections still showed cobblestones through worn down sections of pavement.
Many cities in Latin America, such as Buenos Aires, Argentina; Zacatecas and Guanajuato, in Mexico; Old San Juan, Puerto Rico; Vigan, Philippines; and Montevideo, Uruguay, are well known for their many cobblestone streets, which are still operational and in good condition.
In the Finger Lakes Region of New York State, the retreat of the glaciers during the last ice age left numerous small, rounded cobblestones available for building.
In addition to homes, cobblestones were used to build barns, stagecoach taverns, smokehouses, stores, churches, schools, factories, and cemetery markers.
