Fort Gibson officials won’t be getting the brick sidewalks they had hoped for in the downtown area, an architect has informed city officials.

Mike Martin said he has gone over the plans for the $400,000 grant project with the Oklahoma Historical Society. They will not approve brick sidewalks because there’s no evidence the town ever had brick sidewalks.

The project is funded by the federal ISTEA (Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991) program, with the money coming through the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, with oversight by the Historical Society, Martin said.

Neither will the Historical Society approve the old-fashioned looking lamp posts included in the original drawings.

“You can put in modern because you’re not trying to impose something as historic that’s not really historic,” he said.

Martin said most towns had either mud or wooden sidewalks in their early histories. Some may have had brick streets in their early years, but not brick sidewalks.

Instead of putting in brick sidewalks in downtown Fort Gibson, Martin is proposing concrete sidewalks with a 16-inch brick edging on the street side. Occasionally, the brick would be run horizontally from the building or property front to the street.

The look would be similar to that on the Northeastern State University campus in Muskogee, he said.

“It will give a good look of the brick,” he said.

It also will help with the project cost, said Mayor Stephen Hill.

“One advantage to us is we’re only going to rehab the sidewalks as far as the money goes and the money goes further doing it this way,” Hill said.

The lamp posts Martin has proposed are “quite a bit cleaner, there’s not as much classical detail,” he said.

“The funny thing about period lights is it is each to his own,” Martin said. “There will be some people who look at a light and say that looks old-fashioned and others who look at it and say it’s very modern.”

Martin said the town board needs to meet with downtown business owners to discuss whether they want to scale back their porches and awnings for the placement of new lights in front of their stores.