But after the fall of Rome the art of city street construction declined throughout Europe. Under Germanic and Gothic influence new cities and towns were constructed with narrow, crooked, unsanitary streets, many of them little better than alley-ways, in which plagues, fevers and other diseases made their homes. When the streets were paved at all it was generally with loose cobble-stones and later with roughly cut stones in the more progressive cities. The old Roman art of building cement ways seems to have been completely lost, forgotten or neg lected. Here again the old story has repeated itself. The rapid extension of trade and com merce during the 19th century, the invention of the steam engine, the locomotive and the steam boat called for the extension of highways and the material improvement of those already ex isting. These, in turn, brought increased popu lation and wealth and importance to the cities and towns. In their train came the improve ment of the city streets. The invention of the bicycle and the automobile led, about the be ginning of the present century, to the rapid extension of the city boundaries and the intro duction of wide avenues and streets in the mod ern city planning and construction. These fac tors have brought with them many improve ments in street pavement. The ancient cobble stones were replaced by carefully-filled rectan gular wooden blocks, cut stone and brick. These are being rapidly replaced by the more durable and sanitary asphalt and cement pave ments. Handsome sidewalks are taking the place of the old-fashioned narrow walks of a gener ation ago. Even in the United States the board
walks are disappearing as the price of lumber continues to advance.
The tendency now is more and more to turn over the management of city streets to experts in city planning and beautifying, and it is safe to say that the future city and town street is destined to be as great an improvement on the present street as the present is on that of the past century. The planning of the streets of a city, their connection with proper recreation parks, their pavement, drainage, lighting, water supply, gas conductors, telegraph and telephone lines, street railways, policing, flushing and cleaning, all now form proper subjects of municipal forethought and regulation. The days when the fates took care of the health of a city are past. The health officer has come into his own; and to the attention given by him to the city street is due the banishment of the most fearful of the ancient scourges of great centres of population, making the cities more healthful than the rural districts. (See CITY; MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT; CITY PLANNING; ROADS AND HIGHWAYS; PAVEMENTS; DRAINAGE; ELECTRIC LIGHTING; RAILWAYS, STREET). Consult Doo little, F. W., Transportation Service' (New York 1916) ; Holt, R. B., Track Construction' (New York 1915); Robin son, C. M., The Wealth and Arrangement of Streets' (New York 1911) ; (City Planning' (1916) ; Walker, E. K., (City Planning' (Civic Bulletin, Berkeley 1914).