Pittsburgh's crazy streets and old houses (Wilkinsburg, Washington: countertops, construction, tile)

[Squeamish]

I just got back from Pittsburgh. Here are some of my favorites from this trip. I'm not a great photographer so the quality isn't that great but the pics give an idea of some of the things that make Pittsburgh my favorite city.

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Here's more.

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Originally Posted by creepsinc

*I had those for a few years in San Francisco, except for maybe the crazy streets. Outside of a few like Lombard St., SF has one of the most boring and predictable grids I've ever seen. Also, who can afford that place long-term?

I completely agree about SF not having the crazy streets! It has the reputation of being the hilliest city because it's well-known but, with the exception of the great neighborhood with winding streets around the Twin Peaks, it's a giant grid or grid(s) with very little variation from the grid.

I'd argue that Pittsburgh is _by far_ the hilliest city in the US, but outside of Pittsburgh itself, sadly, I doubt many people would want to listen because they already have their minds made up on SF or wherever else and have never been to Pittsburgh. SF has hills that are about as steep as a vehicle can handle, but Pittsburgh has many hills that are so steep it's impossible to put a road in! Hence the staircase street, or a street going up at an angle relative to the hill.

[Squeamish]

Other random things from this past trip -

I went to the Heinz History Center (thanks for the suggestion!) to research the dates of the row houses, and ended up spending most of my time looking at detailed plat maps from 1872, 1882, 1890, 1910, and 1916. I also browsed through news articles from specific neighborhoods. One of them showed a picture of the entrance to the Liberty Tubes with, guess what, the end of a pedestrian walkway was visible! It appears from the picture that you could walk through the tubes way back when! Too bad that's not possible anymore, but it's understandable because there's barely enough room for 2 lanes of traffic.

One thing that was very clear looking at the plat maps is that the flat neighborhoods alongside the rivers - even those farther away from downtown - were settled before the hilly neighborhoods - even those closer to downtown. I didn't know this before this trip, but it makes sense because it costs less to build on the flats.

The 1876 plat maps showed many houses in the north and south flats and Lower Hill, but not much developed beyond those flat areas, although the close hilly neighborhoods were mostly platted out back then. The city overall was not as developed as I had expected in 1870-1900. By 1910, the city was many times larger, with most of the neighborhoods that today have the typical narrow row-ish houses being built by 1916. The West End is a lot newer than expected - few houses were built in 1910 even though it was mostly platted out. The East End was also developed later than most other neighborhoods.

I created two puzzle geocaches on the South Side Slopes highlighting some of my favorite things - the staircase streets and winding driving streets. One of the most interesting corners is Billy Buck Hill (as per the sign at the top of the hill "Welcome to Billy Buck Hill.") There's only one way to drive through this tiny enclave: East on St. Paul, north on Yard Way, east on Shamokin, north on Oporto, west on Baldauf, east on Roscoe, lastly north on Oporto. Or vice versa. The reason there's only one route through the neighborhood is that the hill is too steep for multiple streets! If you drive, you basically zigzag between Yard and Oporto with both being staircase streets in the areas that they're not drivable.

[Urban_HillBilly]

Originally Posted by Squeamish

I just got back from Pittsburgh. Here are some of my favorites from this trip. I'm not a great photographer so the quality isn't that great but the pics give an idea of some of the things that make Pittsburgh my favorite city.

Those are excellent photos. You're a very good photographer, and know how to capture what is unique to Pittsburgh. I always read blogs and such about people who just don't get what makes this city unique. My brother and sister law are home from the West. They give the whole typical Western Smug saying, "All there is to do in Pittsburgh is eat food and sit around at home." It really makes me angry. All they do is come home and sit at my parents house, and sit around in their home. I offered to take them to museums, tour of the city, etc. They turned it down. Now they will go back to their Western Ski town telling everybody that all there was to do was sit around and eat cookies. It ticks me off. It is their own ignorance.

I am glad that there are people like you who are intelligent and know what makes a place unique. Great photos!

[BrianTH]

Those are some great photos. The one with the steps in the second set is a particular favorite, but they are all good.

Generally, I'm glad you found your trip informative. I've also studied old maps a bit, and I have similarly found it fascinating to watch the topography influence development patterns over time. Squirrel Hill, for example, was really quite sparsely settled for a long time. If you read up on the history of the neighborhood, that is in part because it was extremely hard for people to navigate those hills back in the pre-automobile era (even streetcars only helped a bit, right along the streetcar lines).

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Thanks! I would sooo love to see a streetcar map of Pittsburgh, shortly before they took them down when the system was at its largest. I should've asked the history center about it. Maybe next time. It's clear that the location of the streetcar lines was a big factor in which neighborhoods developed when.

It surprises me that Shadyside and Squirrel Hill were developed comparatively later, because they're generally flatter than a lot of the older neighborhoods in the hills of the Northside and Southside.

"All there is to do in Pittsburgh is eat food and sit around at home." -- Wow what a waste of time in such a great unique city! I guess it relates to what they always say that a place is what you make of it and what you do there. Which doesn't entirely apply to me but only because certain hobbies/interests of mine can only be done in certain places. People who watch TV all day could live anywhere and have the same lifestyle but people who enjoy roaming around unique, historic urban areas will appreciate Pittsburgh many times more than anything west or south of it for sure and likely more than anything east of it too

But Pittsburgh isn't for everyone. I showed the above pics to my dad, and sadly he thinks they're run-down and ugly. Slumerica, he says. Different people have different ideas of what is beautiful. I love the exact same street scenes that he hates.

[BrianTH]

By the way, this is a great online resource:

Historic Pittsburgh - Maps Collection

Anyway, Shadyside was actually extensively developed a lot sooner than Squirrel Hill. There is a path through the East End (from Wilkinsburg down to the Strip) that links several flatter neighborhoods located between the Runs (river/stream valley systems) going down to the rivers on either side. This path was used by the Pennsylvania Road and the Main Line of the Pennsylvania Rail Road, and now by Penn Avenue and the East Busway. Anyway, the late-19th Century development in this area mostly occurred in these flatter neighborhoods along this path, including Shadyside.

[Squeamish]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

By the way, this is a great online resource:

Historic Pittsburgh - Maps Collection

Great resource! Many of those are the same that I was looking over in print at the history center, didn't know they were online, this will be very helpful.

One of the first things that I noticed just now is then/now name changes: Norwalk was Norwood, Stratmore was Stratford, Earlham was Earl, Oakmont was Oakdene, Clairtonica was Clarendon...wow this must be a joke! All of these are in the same neighborhood, will check other parts of town later. There's one on the Northside I remember from the history center - Kirkbride was Kirkpatrick. Name changes do happen, but it's odd that they'd choose a name with the same first syllable multiple times. There must be a story behind that. (This is plate 21, 1905). A quick glance over plate 20, 1905 shows that many of the streets have changed names since then but in that area (Sheraden) they only share the similarity of the first letter of their name.

[ctoocheck]

Streetcar map! Unfortunately the west end gets cut-off:
http://www.mapsofpa.com/pitts/1959_1729.jpg