Red Brick Road in Granada Terrace

There’s something about a red brick road that just evokes good feelings in me.  I’m not sure exactly why, but it’s true.  I like the look of brick roads – they’re much more visually appealing than an asphalt street.  And I love the sound that comes from driving down a brick road.  I guess they’re just a sort of hook to the past, a connection to simpler times, smaller towns, gentler people.  Maybe that’s over-romanticizing them, but I can’t help it – I just really like them.

A few months ago, city work crews appeared at the end of my block one morning and began tearing up a large chunk of pavement at the corner of Dr. ML King Street North, in order to do some construction. I walked over to see what they were up to, and as I looked at the debris from the excavation that they had done, I saw piles of old red clay bricks, mostly in perfect condition, but for the asphalt covering them. As I looked toward the edges of their excavation, I could see that the entire road had once been red clay brick. At some point in the past, all the major roads in St. Petersburg were red brick.  I suppose that the roads got too costly to maintain, due to the labor-intensive nature of such work, and they were paved over by layer upon layer of asphalt. I understand that, but, still…

Luckily for those who, like me,  find great appeal in the red brick road, there are still lots of them scattered throughout different areas and neighborhoods of St. Petersburg.  You have to go looking for most of them, but they’re out there.  They’re too numerous to mention them all in this post, but as I have a chance to talk about St. Petersburg neighborhoods in the coming weeks and months, I’ll be sure to mention those that have red brick roads.  But for now, just to give you a little of the flavor and to have somewhere to send you if you’d like to see some of them, there is a historic preservation district near Coffee Pot Bayou called Granada Terrace, and all of the roads in that neighborhood are the original red brick roads. 
The neighborhood is small; it exists between 22nd Ave NE and 25th Ave NE, from 1st St NE to Coffee Pot Blvd NE.   While
you’re there, check out some of the gorgeous Mediterranean Revival houses from the 1920′s. 

Augusta Block

Of course, once upon a time, red bricks were the greatest road material available.  In St. Petersburg’s earliest days, roads were nothing more than rutted dirt paths. Over time, as the city grew, some improved roads were built out of shell or marl, which was a great improvement over the dirt. But it still left a lot to be desired. Then, as the city began to prosper and more developments began to take shape, clay bricks became the material of choice for a well constructed roadway. In the excerpt below, from an article titled “Brick Roads” in the July 28, 1913 edition of the St. Petersburg Evening Independent, you can get an idea of how well brick roads were being received in that era.

“All over Florida it is the same way. In every section they are talking of brick for road building and the general opinion seems to be that brick is the only material that is worth while in Florida. It is also contended that brick is only more expensive when first laid. The upkeep is where the difference counts and in the long run the brick road is cheaper.”
“Around St. Petersburg many thousands of dollars have been spent on roads and there is hardly a good road out of St. Petersburg. Roads that were built only two years ago, out of marl, and that were excellent roads when first built, are now full of ruts and almost no roads at all, in spite of constant patching. The brick road proposition should be looked into carefully before the commissioners spend that $370,000 that was voted for road building in Pinellas county.”

By the end of 1913, there were 73 miles of brick roads in St. Petersburg, most of them built by the Georgia Engineering Company, using a brick built by the Augusta Block company.  Most of those are no longer apparent, though they do still exist, buried just a few inches beneath our modern day asphalt roads.