Paved Roads and Wooden Sidewalks

As seen in this 1898 photograph, looking east on Nicolet Boulevard from the top of Walter Brothers Brewing, the old wooden sidewalks are quite evident, a period detail that gives 19th century Menasha a particular charm, though I'm sure the reality was quite different.  I hear people say, oh, isn't it charming, what with the horses and all?  Yet they neglect the practicality of ridding the streets of the obvious waste problem.  And then there's the smell.  Other details of the time would be dirt roads, hitching posts, and gas lights, though electrification was well underway by this time.  1898 saw the streetcars electrified that year.  It's a fact that Main Street wasn't paved in a modern manner until 1910, so I wouldn't be surprised that wooden sidewalks were still found in some parts of the city until the 1920s. 

The map below was published in a 1903 treatise published by the state of Wisconsin regarding paving of roads within the state.  The map shows that essentially, paving in Menasha, for the time, extended from the Neenah border, down Washington Street to Main and then down Racine to Third and on to Old Plank Road where it ended.  And this applied just to the roads, so one can imagine the sidewalks and other lesser travelled streets as an afterthought.