On Sun, 27 Jan 2013 17:33:38 -0500, DerbyDad03
wrote:

I was traveling through Vermont this weekend and walked around the
pedestrian mall in downtown Burlington. One of the buildings on the mall
was the Ethan Allen Engine Company #4, as shown here. Note the concrete
sidewalk across the front of the building, which extends around all four
sides of the building. It's actually 2 -3 squares wide on the sides and
back of the building.

http://i440.photobucket.com/albums/q...ps04230033.jpg

Each sidewalk square is almost 5 feet on each side. As you can see from
the images below, each square is inside of a metal frame and each square
has some sort fitting in the center of it. The fitting has an outer
circle and domed center with a hole in the middle. The top of the dome
is level with the concrete surface. Only the sidewalk squares that
surround the old firehouse have the frames and fittings.

Does that fact that these fittings are only found around the fire house
have anything to do with it or was that just some old time contractor's
way of building sidewalks?

I've seen frames like that on very old sidewalks. I'm thinking they
went back about 100 years or so as they were in old sections of
Philadelphia where I lived the first half of my life. I think that
type of layout was used in the early years either because it was
needed, or just because it was fancy. From memory, it was in the
"better" parts of the city that had them.

As for fittings, it was common to have access for water, gas, phone
connections and shutoffs,but it was not one per square.