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The process
Samuel Nicolson was the superintendent of Boston and Roxbury Mill Corporation when he invented the process. -
Boston to Chicago
Nicolson had been contracted by the city of Boston to pave a number of streets. His method made it to Chicago in November 1856, when a segment of Wells Street close to the river was paved with white pine blocks. -
Wooden Pavement
Nicolson pavement, writing in an 1859 Tribune article: “Wooden pavement…might have great advantages in a city, where suitable stone was scarce, where lumber was the great staple of the market, and where the foundation was new and yielding.