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51 - some controversy as to who laid the first brick pavement as one historian has • /. reported that James Nelson "put in the first single layer of brick pavement done in the city of South Bend, on North and South Main streets."(8) A similar claim was made for Calvert H. Defrees in his obituary published in the South Bend Tribune on April 10, 1933. The earliest brick paving was more costly than the cedar block. In 1890 cedar was reported at $4 per yqrd whereas brick cost $6.87. However by 1892 the cost of brick had been brought down to $1.72 compared to the also' lower cost of $3.21 for cedar. Brick quickly became the preferred pavement. Although two and three quarter miles of street, including the section of Lafayette Street from Colfax to Navarre, were paved with cedar block within a four year period, the last use of this material as street pavement was in 1892. In 1901 a small section. creosote block pavement was constructed, being the last wood pavement as a public street improvement. Asphalt was introduced as a • pavement with an installation on West Washington Street in 1898.(9) In'January of that year W.H Rosenkrants, the city engineer, had published a street map (figure 1) denoting pavements where they were present. By this time most of the central business district had some kind of pavement: South Michigan Street was paved to Elder; South Main to Broadway, West Washington -to its termination at the Circle Drive;; and Michigan Avenue on the west and Vistula Avenue on the east (both sections of the old native trail system) were paved to the City limits.. Most streets of'the new residential subdivisions of the Horatio Chapin estate had been paved with brick in 1897. (8) Anderson & Cooley, comps. South Bend and the Men Who Made It; Historical Descriptive, Biographical. South Bend, The Tribune Printing Company, 1901; p. 350 • (9) Howard, p. 370 page 3