south side trackage

[Donald Galt]

On 2 May 00, at 11:10, Derrick J Brashear wrote:
> 
> What I also got from you was a copy of the western portion of an 1885
> "Fairbanks" map of Pittsburgh. On it was a (horse?)car line running from
> 2nd and Grant, east on 2nd, south on the "Birmingham Bridge" and
> continuing south on S. 10th St. to Warren, which was 2 streets south of
> Carson.
> 
> It then turned east on Warren and ran on it until S. 17th, where it
> doglegged north half a block to Sarah St, also 2 blocks south of Carson.
> It ran on Sarah as far as the edge of the portion of map I got from you,
> which is about S. 29th.
> 
> 

Oof! I meant to check those old maps before writing that last piece, but it 
slipped my mind (I have been entertaining out-of-town visitors here for the 
60th anniversary of Seattle trolleybuses).

The line you describe is more or less the Sarah Street route. But the 1885 
Fairbanks map is suspect: The "Warren Street" you mention appears to be 
what is now Bradish, but I question whether it carried a car line eastward 
from 12th to 17th as is shown - at least, in the 1900 map the street lines 
are as at present, with Bradish stopping at 12th and Sarah picking up a 
short distance north at that point as it does now. The 1886 Fairbanks map 
shows the street lines and carline the same as in 1885, but Warren Street 
is now renamed Sarah.

Details of the 1880s can be found in Hopkins' Atlas of the cities of 
Pittsburgh and Allegheny which, I believe, was reprinted a few years ago by 
the Western Penna Historical Society (and if anybody knows how to get 
hold of a copy I'd be awfully grateful to hear about it.) The area we are 
discussing is on sheet 26, which I don't happen to have copied. You should 
be able to find the atlas at any local library.

I do have a rather poor copy of the Pittsburgh city map from Biehn's Atlas of 
Pennsylvania (1900) which appears to show my Bingham-17th-Jane route 
but not the Sarah Street line.
 
HOWEVER, SHADOW, THESE ARE NOT THE MAPS I WAS 
REFERRING TO. I'm all but certain I sent you an index map, compiled by 
myself, with sheets shown in pink. Unquestionably I showed you an 
advance copy (uncoloured) when in Pittsburgh a year ago. This is for the 
following:

 City of Pittsburgh
 Geodetic & Topographic Survey
 Scale 1:2400

This is a series that was issued and updated with some regularity (in some 
form and at some scale I'm sure it is kept current today) but there is a more-
or-less complete collection, dating primarily from the 1930s, in the map 
room at the Hillman Library. Unfortunately, the sheets are fairly fragile and 
are bound flat in a very large, heavy volume, which makes them essentially 
un-copyable. By dint of my best schmoozing the librarian agreed to un-bind 
them and to put them where I could copy the better part of the lot after 
regular hours (that was the day I had an appointment with Ed Lybarger at 
Arden) and one of my arguments was that by making these copies I could 
make them available to others and thus forestall the hordes descending 
upon the Hillman. It's a project that I still hope to accomplish, but it hasn't 
happened yet.

Anyway, the South Side in 1930/31 is shown on sheets 3 and 12 of the 
series, with all the streetcar lines and inclines you would expect for that era 
and also the remnants described earlier.

It's possible that the collection - or perhaps several collections spanning the 
years - are to be found at some city office. My experience with such offices 
is that they will make copies for you, but only at a hefty fee for ordinary 
8½x11's. And a single sheet of the series would require something like 7 or 
8 such. At the Hillman I was able to get by on 4 11x17's per sheet.

Don