The City of Springfi eld’s Offi ce of Public Works is currently resurfacing several streets in the city’s older core, and that process is revealing some hidden history. In some places, like Laurel Avenue between Fourth and Fifth streets, removing the worn out asphalt has exposed older brick that still lines the roadbed. The city isn’t sure exactly how old those bricks are, but it’s possible they could be around 100 years old. A street in Logan County, Ohio, claims to be the fi rst one paved with concrete in the U.S. in 1893, and asphalt gained favor as a road surface sometime in the early 1900s. Some residential streets in Springfi eld still have brick surfaces, of course, and others have recent simulated brick created by imprinting concrete with a brick mold. It just goes to show that this town is built, both fi guratively and literally, on history.