Chariton's paving anniversaries ....

Driving across the south side of the square Sunday morning, I noticed that the last two light poles of Chariton's two-year sidewalk revolution have been placed. Although two of three pocket parks and other details remain, this two-year project in the Courthouse Square Historic District now is for the most part complete, as of Nov. 1, 2023.

Think back two years and you'll remember broken sidewalks, some in place for more than a century, street lights from the 1960s, overhead wiring and more --- now swept away. Commencing on the north side of the square and working around clockwise to the west, old sidewalk was taken away, voids under some of those sidewalks filled, new sidewalks with decorative brick, bump-outs to slow traffic and landscaping installed. And, of course the new lights.

But go back 120 years --- to Nov. 1, 1903 --- and Chariton was celebrating paving of another sort: Completion of brand new brick all around the square --- previously a dust bowl when it was dry and a mudhole when it wasn't.

The Chariton Patriot of Nov. 19 reported, "The paving on the public square has been completed and the streets are all now opened for traffic except one block on Main street, which is rapidly nearing completion.

"The opening of the square will cause our merchants to rejoice, for it is well known that business in Chariton has suffered much this fall because the farmers would not  come here to trade while they could not hitch on the square or drive up to the front doors of the stores."

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Before those bricks started going down, every street in Chariton had been dirt. City Council finally approved during the spring of 1903 the city's first paving project --- a street-width stretch of brick all around the square, two blocks of brick paving on North Main from the square to its intersection with Auburn Avenue and a block and a quarter of pavers west on Auburn to the railroad tracks.

Before authorizing the project, the city obtained a commitment from Lucas County Supervisors to spend $5,000 to expand the paving around the square --- widening the city-financed bricked surface as far inward toward the courthouse as $5,000 would take it. The gap between new brick and the old courthouse grounds was filled by extending the grounds.

The image at the top here was taken as paving --- completed during November --- commenced during August of 1903. 

That brick has long since been buried in asphalt or hauled away and replaced by concrete, but November remains a month to celebrate not only new sidewalks, but Chariton's general rise from mud to pavement, too.