Sidewalk

“ This is a spectacle to be viewed seriously; to be mocked at only by the flippant, though the moving pedestrian mass on the sidewalk is gayer of colour, more sentient—more companionable, more understandably human. ”

“ On the sidewalk a crowd of men, women and children pushed close to the swinging doors to catch a glimpse of the festivities within. When a new couple arrived, or when one of the bouncers came storming out, half dragging, half carrying a limp sodden figure which he dumped upon the sidewalk, the crowd sent up clamorous cries of laughter and applause. ”

“ Let the man of the East cling to the old ways and seek out the old landmarks. The symbol of the West is the plank sidewalk leading out from a brand-new prairie town and pointing to a thriving suburb which as yet exists only in the mind of its projector. There is something prophetic in that sidewalk on which the foot of man has never trod.
One who has once had this fever never completely recovers. Though he may change his environment he is always subject to intermittent attacks. ”

“ Something tiny and black was moving along through the snow on the sidewalk. It gave little hops, each time sinking down almost out of sight, stopping to rest between jumps as though it were very tired. ”

“ They shrank closely together in the tangle of narrow streets as though for protection, conscious of the strangeness of it all, and how unrelated they were to it.
Children and babies sprawled on the sidewalk and under their feet. ”

“ The beautiful children, who throng the walks in almost all weathers, (and what children on earth are half as beautiful as English children?) were to me a constant source of pleasure and amusement. Tire of this, and by crossing the street you meet a transfer of the gay throngs of Regent street and Hyde Park, with splendid shops and all the features of a metropolis, while midway between the sea and this crowded sidewalk pours a tide of handsome equipages, parties on horseback, and vehicles of every description, all subservient to exercise and pleasure. ”

“ However, as you begin to find the way a trifle more open, you will not fail to notice on the right-hand side, about midway of the square, a small, low, brick house of a story and a half, set out upon the sidewalk, as weather-beaten and mute as an aged beggar fallen asleep. ”

“ The length, breadth, straightness, regularity, and beauty of these avenues strike the American visitor with astonishment. Fancy a street twice as wide as Broadway or Washington Street, with a sidewalk as wide as some of our ordinary streets, and shaded by a double line of trees, the street itself paved or laid in concrete or smooth hard asphalte; the houses tall, elegant, and of uniform style; brilliant, with elegant stores, cafés with their crowds at the tables set in front of them; the gay, merry throngs ”

“ You must know, reader, that King street is our Boulevard of fashion; and though not the handsomest street in the world, nor the widest, nor the best paved, nor the most celebrated for fine edifices, we so cherish its age and dignity that we would not for the world change its provincial name, or molest one of the hundred old tottering buildings that daily threaten a dissolution upon its pavement, or permit a wench of doubtful blood to show her head on the "north sidewalk" during promenade hours. We are, you see, curiously nice in matters of color, and we should be. ”

“ But it is the lop-sided appearance of the thoroughfare that grates on one. The sidewalk at the head of the street is eight feet wide, and gets narrower and narrower until the walking space has been reduced to eight inches. ”

“ About the first thing that strikes you as you venter out-doors is the wideness and beauty of the streets, with their double row of trees and their elegant housen, lookin’ so sort o’ finished—not put in anyhow, like a palace and a hovel, but all kinder of the same style and make, handsome as picters, and the sidewalk is as wide as from our house to the barn, and I d’no but wider. ”

“ Its deep sandy sidewalks are any thing but inviting for promenaders. The decaying structures and dilapidated fences remind us of old age, “when the keepers of the house shall tremble.” The place looks discouraged from sheer weariness in trying to be a town. ”

“ Now theyre uncovering the sidewalk. I'm following right behind with the microphone—maybe you can hear the roar of the weedburners again. Now I'd like to have you keep in mind the height of this grass. You never saw grass as tall as this unless youve been in the jungle or South America or someplace where grass grows this high. I mean high. Even here at the sidewalk [52] it's well over a man's head, seven or eight feet. And this crew is carving right into it, cutting it like steel with an acetylenetorch. Theyre making big holes in it. ”

“ Nor is it important that the sidewalk runs only between the parking lot and post office entrance. The existence of a public forum does not turn on a particularized factual inquiry into whether a sidewalk serves one building or many or whether a street is a dead end or a major thoroughfare. ”

“ The houses come to their very edges, except for a narrow strip hardly to be classed as a sidewalk, originally left, presumably, only for the purpose of preventing the scraping of the front of the building by the wheels of passing carts and carriages. ”

“ An observant man may see on one side of any stone or brick sidewalk in the city wherever there is soft ground near by, a well-worn path which will be instinctively chosen by pedestrians. If we test ourselves we shall find the chief reason of our choice is because it jars us less to walk there than upon stones and bricks. ”

“ Second, the outer sidewalk of this street should become at most points a tree-shaded promenade, of such width and with such equipment of benches and other features for public recreation as the circumstances permit, so arranged that the people using it will neither be in the way of the transportation activities nor be annoyed or endangered by them, and so designed that the people can enjoy to the full the natural beauty of the river valley and the always interesting activities of which it is the stage. ”

“ If you stand in the middle of the street and look down its length you will notice that the lines of the sidewalk seem to run together, that the trees and houses decrease in height as they are seen farther away, and that people in the distance appear smaller than people near you. When you can see these effects for yourself, you will begin to understand what the study of perspective means. ”

“ One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. ”

“ While we're waiting for some action, folks—well, not exactly that—the grass is giving us plenty of action all right—I'll try to bring you some impressions of the people in the street. Literally in the street, because the sidewalk is covered with grass. Pardon me, sir—would you like to say a few words to the unseen audience of Station KPAR? Speak right into the microphone, sir. ”

“ In South State street, in blocks near 35th street, there are colored men who stand on the sidewalk and pick out faces from the human stream flowing by. They saunter carelessly out and meet these faces and speak words addressed to the ears adjusted behind the faces. ”

“ Parks are usually constructed to beautify a city and to provide opportunities for recreation, rather than to afford a forum for soapbox orators or leafleteers; streets are built to facilitate transportation, not to enable protesters to conduct marches; and sidewalks are created with pedestrians in mind, not solicitors. Hence, why the sidewalk was built is not salient. ”

“ On one side a succession of splendid squares, elegant granite houses, broad and well-paved streets, columns, statues, and clean sidewalks, thinly promenaded and by the well-dressed exclusively—a kind of wholly grand and half deserted city, which has been built too ambitiously for its population—and on the other, an antique wilderness of streets and “wynds,” so narrow and lofty as to shut out much of the light of heaven; a thronging, busy, and particularly dirty population, sidewalks almost impassable from children and other respected nuisances ”

“ The streets are extravagantly wide, the paved squares are prodigious, the houses are huge and handsome, and compacted into uniform blocks that stretch away as straight as an arrow, into the distance. The sidewalks are about as wide as ordinary European streets, and are covered over with a double arcade supported on great stone piers or columns. One walks from one end to the other of these spacious streets, under shelter all the time, and all his course is lined with the prettiest of shops and the most inviting dining-houses. ”

“ The sidewalks, lined with gaudy windows wheedling dollars from the passers-by and noisy with street hawkers, passionately supply last-minute gew-gaws for the tired men and women who have had to shop late because they had no money to shop early–sidewalks smooth and wide and sturdy to the tramp of millions of feet–not over a lifetime ago were narrow strips of wood, raised on stilts, with enough room underneath for children to play and for rats to hold continuous convention. ”

“ Up and down the street, far as the eye could reach, the sidewalks were crowded with men, women, and children, all eager to see the sight. There were people from the city and people from the country, the latter of whom, having anticipated the day for weeks and months, were now unquestionably enjoying it to the last degree. ”

“ Indeed, it may be said as a general rule that on any street where the buildings are set back from the sidewalk line the very advancement of a few buildings to the sidewalk line is a sign which points directly to the growth of travel and indicates that ample width will soon be needed in that thoroughfare. ”

“ There aren’t any sidewalks to speak of—just dirt paths with curbstones that keep the mud and stuff from running off into the street, so you have to walk in it up to your neck, if you want to get anywhere. ”

“ Light leaped out and streaked the sidewalks while at each corner it ran silently down from high globes like full moons and spattered over the curb into the gutter and out as far as the glistening car tracks. She passed blocks solid with human beings and blocks without a human soul. ”

“ The sidewalks are made of plank and brick, shaded and overhung with live-oaks, forming archways of inviting appearance, from which swings pendant moss, presenting a perennial, picturesque scene of nature’s grandeur. There are over twenty church-edifices in and around the city, where both white and colored people come to worship in crowds. We are happy to state these statistics find the inhabitants in a much better spiritual condition than has been represented. ”

“ When I state that in all these narrow streets, which constitute the greater part of the city, there are no sidewalks, the windows of the lower stories have iron gratings extending a foot or so into the street, which is only wide enough for one cart to pass along, you can have some idea of the facility of walking through them, to say nothing of the piles of wood and market-women with baskets of vegetables which one is continuously stumbling over. ”

“ The rest of the street view is snow, or, lacking that, a cobbled pavement very rough and uneven, and lined on each side—sometimes on one side only, or in the centre—with a narrow sidewalk of heavy planks laid lengthwise over the otherwise open public sewer, a ditch about three feet wide and from three to six feet deep. ”

“ The marks of the wheels and all the other signs of that trail, as they rode along, were quite enough to excite a pair of young ladies who had never seen a road, a pavement, a sidewalk, or anything of the sort ”

“ The streets, now deserted by the fair, will ere long glitter with the brilliant throng, and our sidewalks be swept once more by the gracefully flowing silk. Taper fingers shall condescendingly be extended to us, the smile of beauty beam on us, and witty speech banish our resentful remembrance of incomprehensible jargon. ”

“ New passages have been cut from street to street, old streets have been made wider, new streets have been made, with broad sidewalks, and stately rows of houses hewn from the easily wrought cream-colored stone of the quarries of the Seine. ”

“ An old gentleman on the East Side who broke a toe nail by kicking the gate post just as the young man went down the sidewalk, would also like to know. Bait your hook with a mighty good looking girl that wears a sealskin cloak, and you can reach the young men. ”

“ In cities the multiplication of street-car lines points unmistakably to a time in the near future when there will be one or more in every street, with possibly a moving sidewalk, supplied with upholstered seats, on each side of the way. ”

“ Some who live in the outskirts, having come to town a-shopping in their wagons, have been obliged to put up for the night; and gentlemen and ladies making a call have gone half a mile out of their way, feeling the sidewalk only with their feet, and not knowing when they turned. ”

“ The roadway is hardly wide enough for two vehicles to pass abreast, and the sidewalks could never by any possible chance contain a crowd. Indeed, the street is seldom thronged, and the people you meet there seem to be possessed of but one desire—to get out of it as fast as possible. ”

“ The Multiple Speed Sidewalk is also called the Travelling Sidewalk, or the Locomotive Sidewalk. It is a mechanical device for facilitating travel on the long pier—nearly one half a mile long and two hundred and fifty feet wide—near the Peristyle, thus enabling the tourist to make the trip over the pier in ease and comfort, refreshed by the lake breeze. ”