[PRCo] Museum Policy - Continued

[Fred W. Schneider III]

None of this necessarily relates to specifically to Pittsburgh, but
Derrick, I'm letting it continue because I think it is relevant to our
interests.  John's statements were all correct; I'm just willing to
expand on them.  Sort of like the husband and wife trying to get in the
last word!

John Swindler wrote:
> 
> >Fred W. Schneider III commented:
> >
> >I'm suggesting that we be capable of recreating 1900 or 1920, and how
> >people lived, and why they used the trolley, and why they went shopping
> >for perishable groceries at the corner store every day (because
> >refrigerators were a 1930s thing), why you rode the trolley to work
> >instead of your horse (old Dobbin didn't like standing in the sun for
> >twelve hours like your car does) and why twelve hours (because it was
> >simply accepted that people worked 60 to 80 hours a week).
> 
> People didn't ride the trolley to work instead of a horse.  They rode the
> trolley to work because the alternative was walking. 
> 
> People who rode the trolley could not afford a horse, and besides, would not
> have anyplace to store one (unless reference is to interurban lines).

Correct.  Most city people had no need for a horse.  Of course, if your
name was Bigelow, Heinz, Frick, Westinghouse, Mellon, Carnegie, et al,
then you could afford the horse and the footman and the driver.  When
Carnegie sold off his steel interests, he got $22.5 million in 1902 cash
dollars (equals about 2.2 billion in today's deflated values) plus bonds
in U S Steel, at a time when the average working man lived on $475 a
year.  Did you get that --- just the cash portion of his interest in U S
Steel was as much as 5,000 peons earned in one year. (You think the kids
in McDonalds get taken to the cleaners today, you have no idea what it
was like in 1900.)
> 
> Cities were congested beyond the comprehension of people today.  But I
> suspect trolleys florished because of several factors:  expanding
> industrialization created high job concentrations, some labor shortages
> helped create better incomes around turn of century, and the start of
> suburban development, such as Oakland, Homewood and Perrysville Ave. (check
> the want ads for Pittsburgh newspapers, circa 1904.  Also there were a lot
> of boarding houses that have now been replaced by apartment complexes -
> browse census data for circa 1880 and 1900).

Again, correct.  I live in the post congested suburban township in
Lancaster County.  We have about 1300 people per square mile.  Now if
you want to go back to the inner cores of cities like Pittsburgh or
Baltimore or Philadelphia ... with people living in 15 foot wide houses,
three floors high (or four floors) filled with mom, dad, five kids, and
a border (I'm playing back to John's telephone statement today about
boarding houses), were talking not the suburbs with 1000 to 1500 people
per square mile, but in the area of magnitude of 80,000 people per
square mile.
John is absolutely correct about how incredibly congested these
neighborhoods were.  And think how wonderful it was when you got up on
Perrysville Avenue and there were only 10,000 per square mile!!! (To, go
back to my local frame of reference, Lancaster city peaked at 16,000 per
square mile.)  WITH THOSE DENSITY NUMBERS, AND WITH THE DESTINATIONS
CENTRALIZED, IT SHOO AIN'T HARD TO UNDERSTAND WHY PLACES LIKE BALTIMORE
COULD GENERATE 2 MILLION WEEKDAY FARES OUT OF 700,000 PEOPLE.  
> 
> As for refrigeration, there was a ice house still in business in late 1950s
> adjacent to PRR near Wilkinsburg-Edgewood boundry.  It was coin operated,
> but don't remember if block of ice or bag of ice cubes was dispensed.  Ice
> box came first, then mechanical refrigeration (such as kitchen refrigerators
> of today).

Lancaster had battery powered ice trucks (Herr's Ice Plant) until about
1949.  Baltimore still had ice trucks into the 1950s.  (By the way,
there are still horse drawn hucksters in Baltimore -- I passed one
Saturday night.)
> 
> And that
> >they used the trolley to go to the cemetery on Sunday afternoon to lay
> >flowers on Aunt Matilda's grave because that is just the thing you did
> >on Sunday.
> 
> Bottom land was valuable for both housing and industry (because railroads
> followed the rivers).  The cemetaries around Pittsburgh's city churches are
> small, with tombstones from only early 1800s.  Trinity Cathedral would be
> good example.   I had some relatives living in 7th ward around what is now
> Civic Arena in mid-late 1800s.  That's why they were 'planted' in Allegheny
> Cemetery in Lawrenceville dist.  So I guess they took 'the cable' to visit
> Uncle George. (and 17 others who must have been stacked like cord wood).

My early relatives from Trinity Cathedral were interred in Voegtly
Cemetery on Troy Hill. The later ones out in Homewood Cemetery between
Squirrel Hill and Wilkensburg.  In each case, they, like railroad yards,
were built out in the country where land was cheap...then the city
caught up to and surrounded them.  
> 
> And I'm suggesting that, if needed, we even have people with
> >props on the car ... the lady with flowers who gets off at the grave
> >yard and the woman with a live chicken for dinner (caged of course), and
> >the kid who gets on the car to peddle newspapers.
> 
> I'll have to check what was available at Market Square stores.  Yes, I like
> the newspaper bit.
> 
> >
> >Or am I not making sense?
> >
> >
> 
> Your making sense, Fred.
>