Lay a street
About a hundred bricks make this slice of street. The city counted about 12.6 million in 2015.1 Set them yourself, with a finger, a mouse or the keyboard.
Setting bricks needs JavaScript. With it on, you tap, drag or use the keyboard to lay this slice, about a hundred bricks.
Tap or drag across the street. With a keyboard: arrows move the frame, Space sets or lifts a brick, Shift and an arrow lays as it goes, L switches between laying and lifting.
The arithmetic
- 913,000
bricks to an average mile, roughly: about 12.6 million bricks over 13.8 miles of street, the city's 2015 count.1
- 96–100
bricks in this slice, depending on the pattern you choose: about 0.011 percent of that average mile.
- 3
people on the city's own repair crew in 2015, working by hand; utility crews lift old bricks one by one and stack them for city workers to relay.2
Notes
Every source is listed on Sources and methods.
Note 1. As of 2015, the city counted nearly 14 miles (13.8) of brick streets made of about 12.6 million bricks, of three types no longer manufactured, so repairs draw on stockpiled bricks. Counts differ by year and source: about 20 miles of brick by about 1942 and about seven in 2000–03 (National Register documents), about 15 in 2013 (a city planner), 13 in 2023 (the city).
- Tyler Morning Telegraph, 2015-08-17: Tyler's 13.8 Miles of Brick Streets Give East Texas Town Historic Charm tylerpaper.com
- Tyler Morning Telegraph, 2025-09-17: Crews Remove Historic Bricks on College Avenue to Make Way for Infrastructure Work in Downtown Tyler tylerpaper.com
- Historic Tyler: Brick Streets Neighborhood Historic District historictyler.org
Note 2. Because the old bricks are a finite resource, the city requires utility crews to lift them one by one and stack them for city workers to relay, and as of 2015 a dedicated three-person city crew repaired brick streets by hand.