Sidewalk Basements

Architectural Subterranea is a term this researcher has coined for the phenomenon of the underground built environment, especially in urban areas. Architectural subterranea is almost always styleless, utilitarian, and forgotten. Exploring them is a cross between spelunking and architectural history.

The only material this researcher has found so far on the subject is the book by David Macaulay, Underground, and he deals with only modern subterranean spaces. There seems to be little else written on the subject.

My concept includes--but is not limited to--the following subterranea (see Illustration 1).

• Water Passage

  • Buried Waterway (Stream or River). Honey Creek is a small stream in Chillicothe, Ohio, that was funneled through a concrete and brick tunnel in 1903. Arcadia Creek in Kalamazoo, Michigan was also tunneled but was being uncovered in 1993. Urbana, Ohio, and Salem, West Virginia, also have buried streams.
  • Sanitary Sewer Probably usually small, and very uninviting...but I've seen come big ones, especialy in old photos of 19th-early 20th century Louisville, and a six-foot-diameter circular brick sewer line in Akron in the abandoned Ohio & Erie Canal prism (I walked into that one).
  • Water Lines Can't say much on this one.
  • Storm Sewer Can't say much on this one either, other than the raccoons go in and out of of ones in my neighborhood. I've seen whole families crawl into the corner drain, which has a four-foot deep circular pit, and small tile pipe inlets. I'm not sure if the animals stay in there for the day, or actually squeeze into the pipe and travel elsewhere - the pipes seem too small for them.

• Water Storage and Access

  • Cistern. Essentially a large buried cylinder for storing water. These are usually brick, and tend to be squat bottle-shaped or a domed cylinder. These were usually built for residential use. In Chillicothe, many were built around the mid 19th century at the center of street intersections to hold water for firefighting, and were shown in Sanborn Fire Insurance maps. A few of them caved in with newsworthy surprise (personal communication, John Grabb, c1988.
  • Dug Well. Hand-dug wells are usually about three or four feet in diameter and are lined with brick or stone. They are usually eventually filled in an urban situation, but the soil settles and hints at the buried space below.

    I have found what I think is a well inside a sidewalk basement, in the Nipgen Block. Odd, but sensible, as long as the water was not for drinking...

• Tunnel

  • Tunnel Between Buildings. This is the most mythicized and probably the most rare of architectural subterranea. Other forms of subterranea are often mistaken for true tunnels. Stories about Underground Railroad tunnels abound, but many tunnels were built after the Civil War and thus could not be used for that purpose.

    There are probably three basic types of these tunnels for the passage of people and small amounts of bulk items underground, such as stock.

    • Adjacent or contiguous buildings may have a connecting tunnel under the sidewalk, especially if they were built at the same time or as a single construction. This is essentially an extended sidewalk basement.

    • Tunnels running under an alley or street (perpendicular to the street) between two buildings are probably rare, since this researcher has never seen a real one.

    • Tunnels running under a street or road for some distance, parallel with it, are probably nonexistent--at least for nineteenth-century civil and commercial construction.

    Large drainage tunnels, such as dry storm or sanitary sewers, may be mistaken as tunnels for people.

• Room

  • Basement. This is the subterranean space under and within the footprint of a building that most people are familiar with. Other more unfamiliar spaces extend beyond this space.
  • Sub-Basement. An additional basement level. This researcher has come across very few of these. If a basement is very deep (such as under an 1872 grain elevator in Chillicothe), stories sometimes state that there are several levels of basements. Breweries have a tendency to have descending layers of basements or vaults, sometimes on top of each other.
  • Sidewalk Basement. This is an extension of the basement outside of the foundation wall.
  
  Entries and windows into sidewalks basements exposed by demoltion. [Northwest] Ohio, c1998.
  
  • Sidewalk Room (tentative name). A room intended to be used for people, instead of storage, movement of materials into the basement, or access. Probably rare; finished basement rooms were usually in the basement, with utilitarian spaces under the sidewalk.

    The Nipgen Block had a couple of these, but they were usable and intended for people only because they had been renovated in the 1970s.

  • Coal Bin. A sidewalk basement used to hold coal. A small removable cover at the top center is used as the coal chute, and is often mistaken for a manhole cover. These are often perforated or have grillwork, apparently to allow ventilation of the coal pile.
  • Wine Cellar or Beer Vault. A rectangular room, usually arched, that is set deeper underground than the average basement to utilize the insulating properties of the earth. Larger ones are found under breweries and wineries, but smaller ones may be found in residential locations. These are usually within the perimeter of the building above, but some may project out, especially small residential cellars.

    The Emmett House, Waverly, Ohio, has (or had) one, and I'm fairly certain it was for drinkables storage.

  • Ground Cellar or Storm Cellar. (Not really and urban phenomenon.) An external basement separated from a building probably to utilize the insulating properties of the earth and to simplify its construction. Usually projects from the ground, creating a low mound with a door in it. Used to store and keep cool household goods, and in weather emergencies, to be safe from high winds and tornadoes.

• Opening

  • Sidewalk Stairs. An open stairway for pedestrians, leading from a sidewalk or yard down into a basement. These have typical amenities, such as hand railing, railing along the edge of the stairwell for safety, and stairs with a reasonable slope. They are almost always associated with a basement room for public or commercial use.
  
  A stairway that had been covered over, but its stone curbing remained visible. 100 N. Pain St., Chillicothe, Ohio, USA.
  
  • Bulkhead Stairs or Cellar Stairs. An external stairway leading from a sidewalk or yard down into a basement, often with a pair of heavy doors covering the stairs and mounted at a low angle so as to have a low profile but still shed water. The stairs are usually steeper than more-often traveled residential stairs. Some may have a narrow slope running down the center of the stairs for the use of wheelbarrows. These may be modernized by replacement with steel bulkhead doors flush with a sidewalk.
  
  "Gall's Barber Shop" in Chillicothe, Ohio before demolition. Note the steel plate in the sidewalk at the right corner of the building.
  
  "Gall's Barber Shop" after demolition, view of the inside of the front foundation wall. That steel plate was a door covering the stairway shaft at the left side of this image.
  
  • Coal Chute. This is merely a steep external masonry slope leading from a sidewalk or yard down into the basement of a building, with a rectangular opening in the sidewalk covered by a wood or steel door. Coal was delivered for furnaces through this, and the kids in the "Little Rascals" short movies from the 1930s periodically used these for adventures (such as the one that the "Goonies" movie was styled after). The opening would be smaller or narrower than a bulkhead doorway.
  
  One of the more ornamented coal chute covers. Note the drop-down bar handle in the center.
  
  • Elevator Shaft. This is an open vertical shaft with an elevator platform and doors at sidewalk level. The one example this researcher has been in (in the Nipgen Block addition) had a steel hand-crank elevator. With the elevator equipment removed, this may appear the same as a coal chute.
  
  The steel doors in the sidewalk closest to the camera are probably just access doors. The doors to the hand-crank elevator are in the middle distance on the left edge of the image.
  

This paper focuses on one form of architectural subterranea, the Sidewalk Basement.

Basement

(From Latin basis, lowest part or bottom; and Latin -mentum, a result or product.) The lowest story of a building, below the main floor and wholly or partly below the surface of the ground (Webster's Dictionary).

Sidewalk Basement

Basement space that is built underneath a city sidewalk, in front of the foundation wall of a building (unknown source).

Sidewalk basements are utilitarian underground urban spaces. They were built in the 19th- and early 20th- century to be used as storage space, coal bins, elevator shafts, and other uses. Some were designed as basement corridors, with stairs from the sidewalk and windows and doors into basement shops.

They probably evolved from pre-industrial era bulkhead stairs and ground cellars. They are still being built, though now primarily as larger utility spaces for electrical transformers, heating and cooling units and for utility access. This researcher became interested in and investigated the sidewalk basements in my home town of Chillicothe, Ohio, for two reasons. I had heard vague tales of an Underground Railroad tunnel running thousands of feet under the main downtown street, connecting many commercial buildings in the downtown, and I was curious and brave (or foolish) enough to want to explore this phenomenon. There was also a "Streetscape" plan that called for new sidewalks in the central business district. Construction work on this was impending, and the plan called for destruction of about half of the sidewalk basements located by the engineers.

Most of my observing and recording of them took place during the summer and fall of 1988 while construction took place. After reviewing the Streetscape blueprints, I asked the proprietors of downtown buildings to allow me to check out their basements, and surprisingly, most let me. I mapped out as many as I could, and took black-and-white photos of many. I also photographed the aboveground clues to the existence of sidewalk basements.

The sidewalk basements I investigated are classifiable into two types by roof form: brick arch and stone slab. These may appear to be an earlier and later method of construction, but there is no chronology apparent. The earliest sidewalk basements I know of date to the 1840s and they are both of arch and slab construction. Even in the 1870s both types were built, even in the same building.

The basements with a brick-arch roof are simpler in construction and appearance, with brick or stone walls rising into a transverse or parallel arch, always with a round vent or solid cover that resembles a manhole cover. The apex of the arch is about seven feet high, and they are never domed. The floor is usually dirt, enriched by coal dust, mold, cobwebs, skeletons of small animals, bottles, candy wrappers, rubbish, brick dust and other items.

Basements with a stone slab roof are less cramped because the brick walls rise to the level of the sidewalk. The roof and sidewalk is formed by a large stone slab, sometimes supported by sections of railroad rail. Round vents sometime perforate the slabs, and steel doors are common. The floor is usually paved with brick.

Beware of stories of "Underground Railroad" tunnels in downtowns--they often refer to these mysterious, spooky and often sealed-off subterranean spaces that rarely connect unrelated buildings and never extend into the street beyond the sidewalk.

As observed in Chillicothe, Ohio. Items numbered in Illustration 2.

1. Stone Slabs surviving as sidewalk pavement. These usually extend only 1/4 or 2/3 to the curb, and reveal the extent and size of the sidewalk basement beneath. The large slabs are laid perpendicular to the direction of the sidewalk. In Chillicothe and Ann Arbor, the stone is sandstone, used in the late 19th century. In Chillicothe in the 1840s, smaller square slabs were used.


2. "Manhole Cover" in sidewalk, two species:

1. Coal Chute Cover. Sometimes slightly larger than other manhole covers and sometimes with a pop-up handle. Usually close to building wall.


2. Sidewalk Basement Vent. Usually perforated and always a mystery for small children. Usually in the center of the sidewalk because most basements are arched. May also have been used as coal chute.
3. Glass "Sidewalk Lights." Round or square glass, about two inches diameter and about one inch thick, in a solid cast iron or steel frame. Often broken and filled or covered with cement. Always along the building's wall, often at the main doorway. Allowed light into sidewalk basement. Glass has turned violet with decades of ultraviolet radiation. Now being revived in modern design.
4. Sidewalk Doors:

1. Double Steel Doors. Always very polished by shoes, dished by traffic and with a few holes rusted through. Also popular with small children. Framed by stone or steel frame. May have hand-crank elevator underneath.


2. Stairway Doors. Always along building wall. Sometimes wood door survives; when located in front of shop windows, sometimes low doors under widow display floor open for headroom. Sometimes opens to coal chute or ramp for wheelbarrow.
3. Filled-in Sidewalk Door or Stairway. Evidenced by surviving stone frame or seams in cement, or change in color and weathering of cement. If the former opening is long and runs along the wall, and remains of bolts or other mounts exist in the framing, it was likely an exterior stairway into the basement.


5. Abrupt Shift in Sidewalk Level. If the street has a slight slope, the sidewalk basements are level until the end of building, and then the sidewalk drops of to follow the slope. (e.g. Waverly)
6. Vent Grille. Covers a window well usually less then a foot deep that slopes or curves directly into basement. May be bar or grill covering it.
7. Sidewalk Contractor's Stamp. A fascinating piece of urban material culture. Usually dated and with contractor's name and city. Use apparently began about 1890s and still in use. [But this is not evidence!]
8. Utility Access Cover. Usually for gas, water or electric, and usually close to curb. Probably just valves or a small chamber beneath.

1. Gas Valve Access Cover. If there are sidewalk basements, the gas meters are often in them and this allows exterior access to the pipe. Some 20th-century concrete sidewalk basements are built just for gas meters and electrical transformers. (e.g. Kresge Building, Chillicothe)



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Examples of Sidewalk Basements




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Wissler Block



North Paint Street, Chillicothe, Ohio (Illustration 3). The Wissler Block was built probably in 1852 or 1853, and remodeled in 1876 into a German social hall. The sidewalk basements may date to either time.

This photo was taken during World War I when the hall was an officers club for the army camp outside of town. Underneath the hall facade with the arched windows, you can see pipe railing on the sidewalk along the storefront. This surrounds a stairway descending to the right of the photo into a short hall that enters into the basement of the building.



My floorplan of the basement (Illustration 4) shows the hall and sidewalk basements. The stair led down into a three-foot wide hall, past two six-over-six windows and to a door leading into the basement. Apparently the basement room underneath the one store was also a social or public space, as evidenced by the pressed metal Victorian-era ceiling. This arrangement seems somewhat like the Boston basement bar in the television show "Cheers."

The same ceiling and latrines are in the two room to the left in the plan. The brick-arch sidewalk basements were apparently used only as coal bins, and were not a part of the public space. One of them was accessed through a door that led into the hall and under the stair.

All these sidewalk basements were filled with concrete slurry during the "Streetscape" sidewalk improvements in 1988.




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Nipgen Block



Corner of Paint and Second streets, Chillicothe, Ohio (Illustrations [4 and 5]). The Nipgen Block is one of the biggest buildings in downtown Chillicothe, built about 1872 in the grandiose Second Empire style by a local businessman. Surrounding the building and its addition were sidewalk basements of fascinating complexity.



In the second photo (Illustration [5]) are visible several signs of sidewalk basements. Under the sign is a stairway; under the next bay is a grille of sidewalk lights; in a line near the curb are eight sidewalk basement vents or access covers.



Illustration [6] is a sketch of the facade and sidewalk basements. On the right side are the rooms under the features in the previous photo, which are roofed with stone slabs. On the left are arched brick rooms.

Illustrations [7, 8, 9] are my floorplan sketches of the basements and sidewalk basements. These sidewalk basements were the most complex and intriguing I found in my explorations. They featured a hand-crank elevator, half-arch doorways, cast iron railroad rails supporting the ceiling, sidewalk lights, a mysterious round well-like feature, and a very uneven exterior footprint.

Unfortunately these were filled in without the least thought for historical value or potential use during the "Streetscape" construction in 1988.




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Illustrations

As observed in Chillicothe, Ohio. Items numbered in Illustration 2.

1. Architectural Subterranea (figure)
2. Evidences of Sidewalk Basements & Other Things (figure)
3. Wissler Block, North Paint Street, Chillicothe, Ohio (photo)
4. Wissler Block basement floorplan (figure)
5. Nipgen Block, corner of Paint and Second streets, Chillicothe, Ohio (photo)
6. Nipgen Block, view of sidewalk (photo)
7. The Sidewalk Basements of the Nipgen Block (figure)
8. Nipgen Block basement floorplan (figure)
9. Nipgen Block addition basement floorplan (figure)
10. Nipgen Block addition basement floorplan (figure)



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Appendices

1. Partial list of "Streetscape" schedule on sidewalk basements.

List of one-third of the 115 sidewalk basements surveyed and listed in the "Streetscape" plans. More not known of were found during construction.
2. "Tunnel Connected Two Houses, in which a Murderer Was Kept Secreted."

Story copied from an 1898 Cincinnati newspaper which concerns one of the few actual urban tunnels I know of. I believe it is filled in or sealed off now, and have not seen it or any signs of it. From the archives of the Ross County Historical Society, Chillicothe, Ohio. The article was probably written at the time the house was razed and replaced with the house currently at the site.

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Annotated Selected Sources

Macaulay, David
1976 Underground (Boston : Houghton Mifflin)
World Publishing Co.
c1972 Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language. Second College edition. (World Publishing Co.)



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9. Way up to "Geography"
   
   
10. Up and over to Place Types
11. Up and over to Architectural Location Types
12. Up and over to Structure Types
13. Up and over to Building Types
14. Up and over to Houses
15. Up and over to Barns
16. Up to Objects and Building & Structure Elements
    
    
17. You are at Sidewalk Basements And Other Architectural Subterranea
    
    
18. Up and over to Transportation Geography
19. Up and over to Inventories and Nominations

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    "Obj+Ele-SBasement.html"
    Intrepid Historical Services - Kevin B. Coleman - Columbus, Ohio, USA
    (Adapted 7/24/02 from "I_Sidewalk Basements" entitled "Sidewalk Basements And Other Architectural Subterranea" v 1.3 - Previously edited 7/7/1998, 10/5/1998)
    Presentation and paper originally given April 12, 1993
    for GHP 680, The Historic City. Ted Ligibel, Instructor.
    Historic Preservation Program, Eastern Michigan University. Ypsilanti, Michigan.