Houston’s founders, Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen, hired Gail Borden and his brother, Thomas Borden, to survey and map their new Town of Houston in 1836. Gail Borden laid out the city’s streets 80 feet wide, with the principal thoroughfare, Texas Avenue, a full 100 feet wide. Early settlers jeered, hooted, and criticized such wide streets, but Borden’s plans provided ample width for downtown traffic after automobiles replaced horses. Later in life, Borden invented the condensed milk that bears his name.