[PRCo] Re: Allegheny

[Fred Schneider]

I guess we all have our memories of the Nor'side.

My Grandma Rebele lived off the 3400 block of Perrysville Avenue so I  
have my memories of the former City of Allegheny too.   In fact, as  
long as Grandma lived, the lower Nor'side in her mind was still  
Allegheny.   She never adopted the word Pittsburgh.    But then she  
was married to my Grandpa and moved from Pittsburgh to Allegheny  
before it was annexed to the larger city.

My Great Grandpa Rebele, whom I never knew, lived at 1439 Sandusky  
Street in a house that, surprisingly, still exists near Allegheny  
General Hospital.   I've had conversations with a waitress of German  
ancestry, Jean Cerra, in Max's Allegheny Tavern who remembered tales  
about how her relatives were forced to lie about their ancestry in  
order to enroll their son (her grandfather or father) into a  
parochial school on the Northside.   No German's were desired in that  
neighborhood at that time because it was for English people.   The  
Germans, like my Great Grandfather and hers, lived in the triangle  
between the rivers after the War Between the States.    Eventually  
much of that part of the north shore the river and Troy Hill became  
German but not without protest.

My memories of the 1950s when I was running around the Northside was  
a of quasi-vibrant but declining area with a market at Ohio and  
Federal Streets.   Pittsburgh Railways still maintained an house on  
Sandusky Streets north of East Ohio Street with the line / inclines  
department on the first floor (Charles Shauck was the superindent in  
my era) and the track engineering department was on the second  
floor.  Shauck dragged me around to some wonderful places to eat in  
the market after, he claimed, I'd dumped all my money in company fare  
boxes.

Allegheny had its own department store.   Boggs and Buhl survived  
until 1957 I think.   Ed Lybarger could fill you in on the details:  
one of the original founders of the store was one of the founders of  
the Pittsburgh, Harmony, Butler and New Castle Railway as well as one  
of the land development schemes up north near Warrendale.   I  
remember the story that my uncle took his two daughters in to outfit  
them for school during the grand going out of business sale and the  
store forgot to send the bill.

The Garden Theater degenerated in later years to an X-rated venue on  
North Avenue.   That part of Allegheny became rather nondescript.    
My grandmother and mother used to worry about me if I was waiting for  
an 8 car down at Federal Street and North Avenue.

I can also recall when the Pennsylvania Railroad was tearing down its  
grand castle of a station on Federal Street ... also known as the  
Fort Wayne Station.   At one time the PRR station on the North Side  
was a base for some trains starting there and heading west.   It was  
also a starting point for some trains that went east via the  
Allegheny and Connemaugh River lines to Johnstown.   I'm not sure  
when the waiting room closed and it just became a non-agency stop for  
commuter trains ... probably even before World War II.   I remember  
it as a Studebaker dealer.   Then in 1954 I took some 35mm negatives  
of it being dismantled.

But I remember the Northside as a city ... blocks this way and blocks  
that way filled with buildings.   The last time I drove through there  
a few months ago I was suddenly struck by a totally different  
impression.   It was one of how many blocks of buildings had been  
bulldozed away in order to build the East Street Expressway, the  
Crosstown Expressway and the I-279 Expressway.   Perhaps 20 square  
blocks of buildings vanished.    And as the link Boris posted pointed  
out, the heart and soul is gone thanks to the loop around the middle  
of it.   Just restoring transit to the middle of Federal Street and  
East Ohio Street won't change anything ... the market is gone.    
Sears Roebuck is gone.   The Carnegie Library is empty.   The  
shoppers are out at the mall off McKnight Road.   A small number who  
are captive may still be downtown because they have no automobile to  
take them to the mall.

But, if you drive out East Ohio Street, between East Commons (we used  
to call it Sandusky Street) and East Street) there are still a couple  
of blocks of stores reminiscent of old Pittsburgh including ... get  
this guys ... a camera store and an Isalys.    I've added a link to a  
google map showing that area today.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Federal+Street+at+North+Ave., 
+Pittsburgh, 
+PA&layer=&sll=32.442523,-87.032472&sspn=0.098367,0.148659&ie=UTF8&z=16& 
ll=40.452123,-

>



> 80.006669&spn=0.011087,0.018582&om=1On Mon, 9 Apr 2007, Boris Cefer  
> wrote:
>
>> http://www.newcolonist.com/finding_allegheny.html
>
> There's an exhibit in the Heinz Architecture Hall at the Carnegie  
> Museum
> of Art which suggests other ways Allegheny might be revitalized.
>
>