STREET (Latin strata, Anglo-Saxon strat, road) an open way or thoroughfare within the corporate limits of a city or town. In the rural districts streets are called roads or highways. Very primitive cities seem to have been built without real streets, much after the manner of Indian villages; but as population and the activities of communities grew, the ne cessity for better means of communication within the towns themselves and between them and the surrounding country arose and called into being the more regular distribution of buildings. In the large cities of pre-Columbian America, with a few notable exceptions, the buildings seem to have been grouped irregularly around a public square, along the four sides of which were paved roads. From this square, at first, exit was had by one or two highways along which were grouped buildings of many kinds. This seems to have been the only evidence of the regular placing of buildings in a town. This constructive plan, or rather lack of plan, is strongly in evidence in the ruins of the cities of the early period of semi-modern civilization in Yucatan. In the ruined city of Uxmal (q.v.) the central plaza is occupied by a great flat-top pyramid, terraced in form, round which are grouped the other important buildings on high pyramids or elevated terraces but without any evidence of plan. But in some of the later cities the pyramid is found surrounded by an open space consisting of the outer edges of the central plaza. From this plaza, roads led in various directions, often for hundreds of miles into the country. These were efficiently paved and maintained at the expense of the general government. From the heart of the city of Itzamal led, far into the interior, four excel lently paved roads over which the traffic was immense. Each of these roads started from one of the four corners of the central plaza, the broad ground-level space of which was hand somely paved with carefully-cut large stone blocks. From the ancient Chiapan city of Pa lenque stretched a well-paved street for over a hundred miles into Guatemala. All along this street, intermittently, were stone buildings, the ruins of which are still in evidence. This was
evidently a great highway of commerce and general traffic, especially to the sacred shrines of the city. These great highways seem to have preceded the organization of cities and towns into sections divided by more or less geometri cal streets. Most primitive towns are very ir regular in their structure and the more primitive they are the more a matter of accident seem to be the arrangement, the width and the construc tion of the streets, which are generally (when they do exist) narrow, crooked and irregularly placed. Excavations of ruins where one city has been built upon the remains of another show, often, that the older town was much more irregular in its street structure than the later.
As nations began to extend their commerce, trade and other relations, they generally im proved their roads and streets. The construc tion of the magnificent streets of the cities of the Roman Empire seems to have been along the same line of growth as that of the later civilized empires of America. Two necessities compelled the building of magnificent highways — commercial activity and political require ments. No one other factor gave more effi ciency to the Roman Empire than its system of magnificent roads. These, in their turn, brought commerce, trade, commercial import ance, wealth and luxury to the greater cities. All these called for more sanitary modes of living and better facilities for moving about the cities and towns. This brought into being a more geometrical organization in many cities and towns and the construction of magnificent well-paved streets and avenues, many of which were lined with stone benches and handsome statues. The famous °Appian Way," known as the °queen of roads,° stretched away from the heart of the Rome of the empire for a dis tance of 350 miles, every mile of which dis played some feature worthy of attention. It was quite natural that such great roads, lined with magnificent palaces and other noteworthy edifices, should have had their effect upon the streets of the cities of the empire.