McKownville
Improvement Association
- McKownville residential
neighborhoods - the alleys in the area north of Western
Avenue
The revised subdivision plan for the Country Club Highlands
development filed in December 1912 included a significantly changed
street and lot plan. It also added a system of 15-foot wide
alleyways (shown
on this map - pdf) behind the houses allowing for access to
garages from these alleys. In the original intention, this would
have kept the house lots and sidewalks from being cut and paved over
by driveways, and reduced the vehicle traffic on the streets. This
arrangement not only promoted safety for residents and their
children but, because the streets were not paved originally, also
kept the dust nuisance down in the warmer months. Possibly they may
have also made the streets a bit less slushy or ice-rutted in the
winter.
These alleys are still actively used adjacent to several of the
streets, but those next to Elmwood Street became inactive, with
driveways to the street or onto Fuller Road seeming to be
preferred for houses built from about 1930. This may have been
because these streets had been paved by then, but the alleys were
not, and also perhaps because clearing of snow from the narrow
alleys must have been a chore to be avoided if possible.
The alleys were also used to run electric utility supply lines,
making the streetscapes attractively free of cables and creosoted
utility poles, with the unfortunate exception of Norwood Street and
Waverly Place where the utility used the streets as well as the
alleys to install these. The usual butchering of street trees,
planted before the utility line was installed, has inevitably
followed.
alley between Parkwood and Glenwood Streets, with utility line.
alley between Norwood
and Glenwood Streets.
The town supervisor thinks these alleys may be unique in the State,
in the fact that there appear now to be no formal owners of most of
the sections of these alleyways as far as the property tax is
concerned (map of
present extent of the alleys - pdf). One is shown clearly marked
as "common alley" on a fairly recent engineering plan [3.4MB
pdf file] of a corner of the Country Club Highlands subdivision,
behind 1467 Western Avenue, off Elmwood Street. The county tax map also marks them with this
label. A separate web page gives the details of the
ownership history of the Country Club Highlands alleys, and
easements.
Besides the aim of keeping driveway and garage access off the
residential streets, the alleys are also where the pipes of a system
of combination septic tank overflow and storm water drains were installed in the early
years of the development. A report
of the Improvement Association Water and Sewer committee in 1946
states that ownership of the storm drain/sewer overflow system was
even then not clear, and that no one seemed to be responsible for
it. These drains were disconnected from house septic tank overflow
sewer lines sometime between 1970 and 1973, when a separate sanitary
sewer system was installed in McKownville. The remains of the
old alley drain system have later proved problematical, because they
are not systematically maintained. There have been places where
subsidence has occurred, and also blockages, which have contributed
to local high groundwater levels and individual basement flooding.
There is a separate set of alley segments in the adjacent area,
originally a narrow (12 ft wide) horse and cart access road
established in 1877 for the LaGrange lots. Parts of this common
access roadway are still accessible and used and enjoyed by
neighborhood pedestrians, and some segments are variably closed off.
The history
and property ownership aspects of the LaGrange lots and the access
roadway along their southern ends is set out on the linked web
page.
In general, residents where the alleys are still actively in use
like them, and the walking paths they provide away from the traffic
noise and fumes on Western Avenue and Fuller Road are valued assets
in this neighborhood.
The McKownville Improvement Association in
2014 distributed a explanatory flyer to residents owning
properties adjacent to the alleys, who are requested to help
maintain them so that they are usable, including not blocking access
for utilities maintenance crews to the cables and wires which run
along them.
return to history page
alley between Norwood
and Glenwood Streets.