The Times did a great story on the art of the cobblestone street — or, more accurately, Belgian block, as we have come to learn — featuring our guys working on Greenwich as we speak. (Thanks to P., who still gets the paper paper!)

Some takeaways:

• Only 15 of the city’s 6,300 miles of streets are stone.
• In 1949, there were 140 miles of stone streets (e.g., we lost part of Staple just last year)
• City DOT has only six bricklayers working on cobblestone streets, stone curbs and brick sidewalks.

The Times said the process is this: concrete base; on top of that a mixture of sand and cement; then the stones; then the sand and cement mixture to fill in the cracks + water.

The job is not easy, as we might have guessed. From The Times: “Working with cobblestones can take a toll. Mr. Cherry has carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis in his fingers, wrists and elbows. ‘Every time you hit a cobblestone with the hammer, the vibrations travel through your arm, through your joints,’ he said. Mr. Gianfrancesco, the supervisor, said he could not remember the last time a young person interviewed for the job. He pointed to a stone and joked that unless there was an iPhone inside it, young people would not be interested.”

Now as we know, the DOT has no plans to do the other parts of Greenwich (not to mention Harrison and Staple) other than the block between Laight and Hubert; time to start agitating for the rest! The Times notes that Dumbo and Vinegar Hill got 26 blocks done by the Department of Design & Construction in 2019 for $104 million!

Let’s get in on that…

And just to make you sigh, a shot of Greenwich and Beach taken by Anna Mogyorósy in 1981: