I have sometimes heard tour guides repeat the story that the Belgian block paving some Philadelphia streets was brought across the Atlantic as ballast in ships--ballast is basically heavy stuff loaded onto a ship to weigh it down as though it was holding cargo. While it is possible that some ships coming to the British colonies in North America did require ballast, and even that some of that ballast, in the form of stones, was put to use in building and/or paving, this story is largely a myth….I realized that while I am confident in the debunking of the ballast-to-paving myth, I know next to nothing about early street surfaces in Philadelphia. So I set out to find out more! Here are some of my preliminary discoveries, and I hope to find out more when I have the time to read up further on this topic.