Old Photo Challenge #3 (Pittsburgh, Progress, Carnegie: apartments, neighborhood, electric)

[ossewa]

Did you know Pittsburgh used to have a Swiss neighborhood? We complain about racial relations today, but back in the 1800's the Germans and Swiss-Germans disliked each other enough to want keep the other group out. Wild.
Anyway, here's a busy intersection in that neighborhood after a 1913 flood.

Its very densely built-up, with Belgian block streets and electric wiring, but almost no sewer line connections until the 1950's, if you can believe it. Asking people to name this street corner would be super hard because this is what it looks like now...

But on second thought, go ahead and try to name this intersection that once was the heart my ancestor's neighborhood.

[Faer]

That's the corner of Madison and the ironically named Progress Street on the north side/shore, between East Allegheny and the river. Man that neighborhood got wiped out by road expansion.

[ossewa]

Wow. I thought nobody would get that one...

I'll have to go through my Lightroom folders for a really tough one.

[nuwaver88]

Wow! This is the neighborhood that used to sit just west of the 16th Street Bridge and just east of Linclon North shore apartments. There is an old rectory and small church still there from yesteryear and some old buildings here and there, but not much else.

Here they are.
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=4...51.92,,0,-0.92

Still a lot of room for development down there between the Vets Bridge and the 16th Street Bridge on the North Shore.

BTW..this next aerial shot has to be thirty acres of nothing on prime land. http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=h&...,0.006845&z=18

[ossewa]

After the 1907 annexation the Northside had to rename dozens and dozens of streets so they wouldn't duplicate existing street names in Pittsburgh. Main Street was renamed Progress, I think, because it was the entrance road for the HJ Heinz complex. Compared to the medieval attitudes of Carnegie and Frick, I'm sure Heinz was definitely considered "progress."

[I_Like_Spam]

The church in that neighborhood was St. Wenceclaus at the 16th St. Bridge, it was a Bohemian parish- Pittsburgh's only Bohemian church.

So I guess there were more than Bohemians down there, they had Swiss as well.

[ossewa]

Churches often change hands when the original population leaves. This 1872 map show that St. Wenceslaus was originally a Lutheran church, sold to the new congregation as the Germans began leaving the neighborhood.

The Germans of Deutschtown called this neighborhood the "Schweizer Loch" or "Swiss-hole." It was meant to be as disparaging as it sounds.

[nuwaver88]

I enjoy this stuff. Keep it coming.

[szug-bot]

me, too - love these 'old photo challenges'. to me its fascinating to think of the culture and history that, well, was there, but now is wiped out by roads and bridges.

[polo15129]

you'r doing a great job . keep'm comming. thnx