[PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh---Then___And___Now

[Derrick J Brashear]

On Wed, 24 Dec 2003, Harold Geissenheimer wrote:

> Greetings
> About the Braddock Ave shopping area.
>
> This was a street for furniture stores.  The father in law of one of my
> National Guard Sgts had a store here for decades.  Kalabus Furniture.
> Old man was of Croation descent.  Mostly Croation customers for many
> generations..  Good man, good furniture.  He sold me mine in 1965...I still
> have most of it.

Looking at the storefronts of what can be seen to have been there I
wouldn't have guessed it. However:

Alexander's Supermarket
Alexander's Theater (which no doubt was something more than that before
they bought it)
Cuda's Italian Store
Several banks, built to last (all as it happens now owned by a company
that does regional food distribution, and they actually still use them as
offices)

and an assortment of smaller things. One, the "Main Hotel" which is down
at the Edgar Thomson end of Braddock (maybe 9th or 10th and Braddock on
the river side) is a gorgeous building... with no windows left in it,
ceilings devoid of covering, obviously at the end of its life, and it's a
crying shame. Nothing I can do about it: cost to restore well beyond what
I could muster.

Buses still run along the old carlines along both Braddock and Talbot,
and where people still live (along Talbot, and up the hill from Braddock)
and work (Braddock Hospital) there's still some traffic one those bus
lines.

> Now only freeways and redevelopment.

The freeways are there, not really being added to. The East St project was
the last I really expect, obliterated some traces of what came before,
before I was old enough to get there and see it. PennDOT talking about
rebuilding East Ohio from 16th to past 31st Street; Aside from the church,
nothing really distinguished in that stretch. No real trace of the rail
line that ran up East Ohio. For that matter the Heinz plant was the last
thing served by a B&O (CSX) branch over there, and it's been lifted. As
recently as 5 years ago I sat and watched crews switch the main Heinz
plant while my wife had viola lessons with a guy who at the time lived on
one of the Mexican War streets. Now that plant makes stuff for Del Monte.
At least it's still there.

The world is chaging around us, not just in western Pennsylvania.
Sometimes it's even for the better.

Merry Christmas.