"John Grabowski" 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.
They butt up against the sidewalk squares that surround the City Hall
next door and a sidewalk through City Hall Park behind it. Those
sidewalk squares are a different size and have no frame or fitting.
They appear to have been poured at a different time.

The fittings were filled with dirt and slush and it was too darn cold
for me to start digging around to clean one out for a better look.

Here's the fitting, with my sneaker nearby for size comparison:

http://i440.photobucket.com/albums/q...9317653551.jpg

Here's a couple of images of the metal frame around each section:

http://i440.photobucket.com/albums/q...9317718938.jpg

http://i440.photobucket.com/albums/q...9317823080.jpg

Anybody know the purpose of these frames and fittings? Could the fitting
be for some sort of "mud jacking" to keep the square level? Could they
just be a design feature?

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?


*To me the fittings look like some sort of spray head like an irrigation
fitting. A thought occurred to me that maybe they were used to wash down
the sidewalks to get rid of horse manure. Old fire trucks were horse drawn at one time.

I was just looking at pics friend posted on Facebook in Pittsburgh. Hmmmm,
could it be something like this, not her pic.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bdmccray/6064198090/

Greg