![Ancient road surface](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Ancient_road_surface.jpg)
Cobblestone is a natural
building material
Building material is material used for construction. Many naturally occurring substances, such as clay, rock (geology), rocks, sand, wood, and even twigs and leaves, have been used to construct buildings. Apart from naturally occurring materia ...
based on
cobble
Cobble may refer to:
* Cobble (geology), a designation of particle size for sediment or clastic rock
* Cobblestone, partially rounded rocks used for road paving
* Hammerstone, a prehistoric stone tool
* Tyringham Cobble, a nature reserve in Tyr ...
-sized stones, and is used for
pavement roads, streets, and buildings.
Setts
A sett, also known as a block or Belgian block, is a broadly rectangular quarried stone used in paving roads and walkways. Formerly in widespread use, particularly on steeper streets because setts provided horses' hooves with better grip tha ...
, also called Belgian blocks, are often casually referred to as "cobbles", although a sett is distinct from a cobblestone by being quarried or shaped to a regular form, whereas cobblestone is generally of a naturally occurring form and is less uniform in size.
Use in roading
![London Cab of 1823, with curtain drawn](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/London_Cab_of_1823%2C_with_curtain_drawn.png)
Cobblestones are typically either set in sand or similar material, or are bound together with
mortar. Paving with cobblestones allows a road to be heavily used all year long. It prevents the build-up of
ruts often found in
dirt road
A dirt road or track is a type of unpaved road not paved with asphalt, concrete, brick, or stone; made from the native material of the land surface through which it passes, known to highway engineers as subgrade material. Dirt roads are suitable ...
s. It has the additional advantage of immediately draining water, and not getting muddy in wet weather or dusty in dry weather. Shod horses are also able to get better traction on stone cobbles, pitches or setts than tarmac or asphalt. The fact that
carriage
A carriage is a private four-wheeled vehicle for people and is most commonly horse-drawn. Second-hand private carriages were common public transport, the equivalent of modern cars used as taxis. Carriage suspensions are by leather strapping an ...
wheel
A wheel is a circular component that is intended to rotate on an axle Bearing (mechanical), bearing. The wheel is one of the key components of the wheel and axle which is one of the Simple machine, six simple machines. Wheels, in conjunction wi ...
s,
horse
The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million y ...
hooves
The hoof (plural: hooves) is the tip of a toe of an ungulate mammal, which is covered and strengthened with a thick and horny keratin covering. Artiodactyls are even-toed ungulates, species whose feet have an even number of digits, yet the rumi ...
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 dampen the sound.
Cobblestones set in sand have the environmental advantage of being
permeable paving
Permeable paving surfaces are made of either a porous material that enables stormwater to flow through it or nonporous blocks spaced so that water can flow between the gaps. Permeable paving can also include a variety of surfacing techniques ...
, and of moving rather than cracking with movements in the ground.
Use today
Cobblestones were largely replaced by quarried granite
setts
A sett, also known as a block or Belgian block, is a broadly rectangular quarried stone used in paving roads and walkways. Formerly in widespread use, particularly on steeper streets because setts provided horses' hooves with better grip tha ...
(also known as Belgian block
) in the nineteenth century. The word cobblestone is often used to describe such treatment. Setts were relatively even and roughly rectangular stones that were laid in regular patterns. They gave a smoother ride for carts than cobbles, although in heavily used sections, such as in yards and the like, the usual practice was to replace the setts by parallel granite slabs set apart by the standard axle length of the time.
In England, it was commonplace since ancient times for flat stones with a flat narrow edge to be set on edge to provide an even paved surface. This was known as a 'pitched' surface and was common all over Britain, as it did not require rounded pebbles. Pitched surfaces predate the use of regularly-sized granite setts by more than a thousand years. Such pitched paving is quite distinct from that formed from rounded stones, although both forms are commonly referred to as 'cobbled' surfaces. Most surviving genuinely old 'cobbled' areas are in reality pitched surfaces. A cobbled area is known as a "causey", "cassay" or "cassie" in
Scots (probably from ''causeway'').
![LT Kaunas, 2019](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/LT_Kaunas%2C_2019.07.20%2C_fot_Ivonna_Nowicka_%283%29.jpg)
Cobblestoned and "setted" streets gradually gave way to
macadam
Macadam is a type of road construction, pioneered by Scottish engineer John Loudon McAdam around 1820, in which crushed stone is placed in shallow, convex layers and compacted thoroughly. A binding layer of stone dust (crushed stone from the o ...
roads, and later to
tarmac Tarmac may refer to:
Engineered surfaces
* Tarmacadam, a mainly historical tar-based material for macadamising road surfaces, patented in 1902
* Asphalt concrete, a macadamising material using asphalt instead of tar which has largely superseded ta ...
, and finally to
asphalt concrete
Asphalt concrete (commonly called asphalt, blacktop, or pavement in North America, and tarmac, bitumen macadam, or rolled asphalt in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland) is a composite material commonly used to surface roads, parkin ...
at the beginning of the 20th century. However, cobblestones are often retained in historic areas, even for streets with modern vehicular traffic. Many older villages and cities in
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
are still paved with cobblestones or pitched.
In recent decades, cobblestones have become a popular material for paving newly
pedestrian
A pedestrian is a person traveling on foot, whether walking or running. In modern times, the term usually refers to someone walking on a road or pavement, but this was not the case historically.
The meaning of pedestrian is displayed with ...
ised streets in Europe. In this case, the noisy nature of the surface is an advantage as pedestrians can hear approaching vehicles. The visual cues of the cobblestones also clarify that the area is more than just a normal street. The use of cobblestones/setts is also considered to be a more "upmarket" roadway solution, having been described as "unique and artistic" compared to the normal asphalt road environment.
In older U.S. cities such as
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
,
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
,
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...
,
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
,
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
,
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
,
New Castle,
Portland (Maine)
Portland is the largest city in the U.S. state of Maine and the seat of Cumberland County. Portland's population was 68,408 in April 2020. The Greater Portland metropolitan area is home to over half a million people, the 104th-largest metropoli ...
,
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
,
Charleston
Charleston most commonly refers to:
* Charleston, South Carolina
* Charleston, West Virginia, the state capital
* Charleston (dance)
Charleston may also refer to:
Places Australia
* Charleston, South Australia
Canada
* Charleston, Newfoundlan ...
, and
, 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
Saskatoon () is the largest city in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. It straddles a bend in the South Saskatchewan River in the central region of the province. It is located along the Trans-Canada Yellowhead Highway, and has served as t ...
,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, as late as the 1990s some busy intersections still showed cobblestones through worn down sections of pavement. In Toronto streets using setts were used by streetcar routes and disappeared by the 1980s, but are still found in the
Distillery District
The Distillery District is a commercial and residential district in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, east of Downtown Toronto, downtown, which contains numerous cafés, restaurants, and shops housed within heritage buildings of the former Gooderham and W ...
.
Many cities in Latin America, such as
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...
,
Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
;
Zacatecas
, image_map = Zacatecas in Mexico (location map scheme).svg
, map_caption = State of Zacatecas within Mexico
, coordinates =
, coor_pinpoint =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type ...
and
Guanajuato
Guanajuato (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Guanajuato ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Guanajuato), is one of the 32 states that make up the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 46 municipalities and its capital city i ...
, in
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
;
Old San Juan
Old San Juan ( es, Viejo San Juan) is a historic district located at the "northwest triangle" of the Isleta de San Juan, islet of San Juan. Its area roughly correlates to the Ballajá, Old San Juan, Ballajá, Catedral, Old San Juan, Catedral, Ma ...
,
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and Unincorporated ...
;
Philippines
The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no),
* bik, Republika kan Filipinas
* ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas
* cbk, República de Filipinas
* hil, Republ ...
,
Vigan
Vigan, officially the City of Vigan ( ilo, Siudad ti Vigan; fil, Lungsod ng Vigan), is a 4th class component city and capital of the province of Ilocos Sur, Philippines. According to the 2020 census, it has a population of 53,935 people.
Loc ...
; and
Montevideo
Montevideo () is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Uruguay, largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2011 census, the city proper has a population of 1,319,108 (about one-third of the country's total population) in an area of . M ...
,
Uruguay
Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...
, are well known for their many cobblestone streets, which are still operational and in good condition. They are still maintained and repaired in the traditional manner, by placing and arranging granite stones by hand.
In the
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...
, there are old cobblestone paths with colored
marble
Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or Dolomite (mineral), dolomite. Marble is typically not Foliation (geology), foliated (layered), although there are exceptions. In geology, the ...
s and
limestone
Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...
s. The design with three colors (red/limestone, black/limestone, white/marble) has a long tradition in
Bohemia
Bohemia ( ; cs, Čechy ; ; hsb, Čěska; szl, Czechy) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohem ...
. The cubes of the old ways are handmade.
Use in architecture
![Alexander Classical School, Alexander, NY](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Alexander_Classical_School%2C_Alexander%2C_NY.jpg)
In the
Finger Lakes
The Finger Lakes are a group of eleven long, narrow, roughly north–south lakes located south of Lake Ontario in an area called the ''Finger Lakes region'' in New York, in the United States. This region straddles the northern and transitional ...
Region of New York State, the retreat of the glaciers during the last ice age left numerous small, rounded cobblestones available for building. Pre-Civil War architecture in the region made heavy use of cobblestones for walls. Today, the fewer than 600 remaining cobblestone buildings are prized as historic locations, most of them private homes. Ninety percent of the cobblestone buildings in America can be found within a 75-mile radius of Rochester, New York.
There is also a cluster of cobblestone buildings in the Town of
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
,
Ontario
Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...
. In addition to homes, cobblestones were used to build barns, stagecoach taverns, smokehouses, stores, churches, schools, factories, and cemetery markers.
The only public cobblestone building in the US is the
Alexander Classical School
The former Alexander Classical School, today Alexander Town Hall, is located on Buffalo Street in Alexander, New York, United States. It is a three-story cobblestone building erected in the 1830s.
It has a number of distinctions among cobblestone ...
, located in
Alexander, New York
Alexander is a town in Genesee County, New York, United States. The population was 2,534 at the 2010 census. The town is named after Alexander Rea, an early settler, and is on the southern border of the county. It includes a village also named A ...
.
Use in cycling
In cycling road races, cobblestones are used as an additional difficulty for the riders. It requires a certain skill to ride cobblestones efficiently, without falling or getting a flat tire.
Tour of Flanders
The Tour of Flanders ( nl, Ronde van Vlaanderen), also known as ''De Ronde'' (''"The Tour"''), is an annual road cycling race held in Belgium every spring. The most important cycling race in Flanders, it is part of the UCI World Tour and organi ...
and
Paris–Roubaix
Paris–Roubaix is a one-day professional bicycle road race in northern France, starting north of Paris and finishing in Roubaix, at the border with Belgium. It is one of cycling's oldest races, and is one of the 'Monuments' or classics of the ...
are notable
cobbled classics
The cobbled classics are four cycling classics held in March and April. Cobblestones, like mountainous terrain, are important elements in courses of cycling. Many classic cycle races in northwestern Europe contain cobbled sections. The two Monumen ...
.
See also
*
Calade
Calade is a French term for a harmonious, decorative and useful arrangement of medium-sized pebbles, fixed to the ground.
Rue en calade describes a road with a surface composed in this way—essentially a cobblestone road. These are found predo ...
, a harmonious, decorative arrangement of medium-sized pebbles, fixed to the ground
*
Flagstone
Flagstone (flag) is a generic flat stone, sometimes cut in regular rectangular or square shape and usually used for paving slabs or walkways, patios, flooring, fences and roofing. It may be used for memorials, headstones, facades and other con ...
*
Portuguese pavement
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
*
List of cobblestone streets
image:Cobblestone_J1.JPG, A Sett (paving), sett block, sometimes mistakenly referred to as a cobble, but distinguished by being quarried & carved rather than naturally occurring, and being of regular size and rectangular shape.
A cobbled stree ...
*
List of cobblestone buildings
This is a list of cobblestone buildings, mostly houses and mostly but not all in the United States, that are notable and that reflect cobblestone architecture. Cobblestone architecture had some popularity for substantial homes and other buildings ...
References
External links
The Cobblestone Society & Museum - Albion, New York
{{Road types
*
*
Building stone
Natural materials
Pavements
Stone (material)