[PRCo] Re: Suburban shopping areas

[Edward H. Lybarger]

I believe Isaly's has franchised its name.

-----Original Message-----
From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
[mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org]On Behalf Of Herb
Brannon
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 11:55 AM
To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
Subject: [PRCo] Re: Suburban shopping areas


A comment on this one, Fred. I went to the Giant Eagle on West 116th &
Clifton Blvd (Cleveland) the other day. I was passing by the deli section
and to my surprise, what should I see but a sign advertising Isalys Chip
Chop Ham. My mouth watered immediately. I, of course, had to get some. The
only "training" I had to give the deli salesperson was how to 'shave' the
ham off the loaf as I used to by it in Isalys on Bigelow Blvd in Pittsburgh.
The girl first ask me if I wanted thick or thinner SLICES of the meat. I had
to explain what Isalys was and generally went through half my life history
about living in Pittsburgh and the Isalys on Bigelow Blvd and how original
chip/chop ham was not sliced, but shaved. I instructed her to set the slicer
on the thinest setting and start chopping. When she fininshed I told her to
take two of the razor-thin slices off the pile and give me one to taste and
she should taste the other. I asked her if she thought it was better tasting
than
 regular thick slices of the ham and she agreed it was. I left the store
happy and confident I had introduced a member of the younger generation to a
tasteful bit of Pittsburgh history. BTW, the loaf of meat does bear Isalys
name, so I guess they are still in business someplace. Also, it does taste
the same as it did.
Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net> wrote:  My wife gets on me because
my definition of suburban and hers do not
match. I refer to suburban as anything beyond the original and then
existing core ... there were foot suburbs, then horsecar suburbs,
then trolley suburbs, then bus suburbs, and eventually automobile
suburbs, and then we got to acre building lot suburbs made possible
by expressways into the city. Her idea of a suburb is what she
called suburbs in her lifetime.

If you become adept at identifying the ages when buildings were
erected you can play a neat little game of recognizing how houses
were built when or just before the trolleys came to an area. In
Lancaster County it's astonishing how many homes alongside the major
rural highways were built in the teens and twenties because the
trolley was there, often even before the road was paved. If you are
lucky you might find a program in your local historical society that
will teach you how to recognize the ages of buildings. It can be a
lot of fun.

So go back and think of those earlier suburbs in our cities. Each of
them had their own shopping districts. Mount Lebanon, Carson
Street, McKees Rocks, Wilkinsburg, Homestead, Allegheny, Dormant
(ooops, Dormont), Mt. Lebanon, Squirrel Hill, etc.

If Rich Allman is still reading, he'll remember when 69th St.
Terminal in Upper Darby vibrant ... and Lancaster Avenue and
Frankford and we could find other neighborhoods all over Philadelpha.

Most of them also had neighborhood theaters. I think East Liberty
had seven of them at one time.

As much as I don't like chain merchandising, we can probably all
remember some early chains ... F. W. Woolworth (instead of Woolco),
S. S. Kresge (instead of K-Mart), G. C. Murphy (instead of
Murphymart), Sears Roebuck (before the malls there used to be one on
the North Side and one in East Liberty and probably quite a few
others scattered around Pittsburgh). Remember Fanny Farmer candy
stores. And all those bakeries that served wonderful granulated
sugar donuts? Thy were everywhere. Every neighborhood had them.
And Isalys was everywhere purveying chipped ham and milkshakes and
Klondikes.

As I pointed out before, my Pittsburgh grandparents lived off
Perrysville Avenue ... 3462 Delaware Avenue to be precise ... one
block up Chemung Street from the car stop. It was a streetcar
suburb. They moved there from an earlier home on Veteran Street
just off the north end of the Fineview line. Grandma patronized a
little corner grocery store down at Perrysville and Chemung; it was
still there a couple of years ago. But she was in between two
neighborhood shopping districts. One was Perrysville and Charles
Streets. I remember being asked to take a hike down there to a
hardware store once when she needed a toilet plunger. I also
remember a small store with a black sign across the front emblazoned
with gold letters with read THE GREAT ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC TEA
COMPANY. Long before A&P had supermarkets, they were the champion
of the chain corner grocery store. This one was on the west side of
Perrysville Avenue just south of Charles Street.

The other neighborhood shopping center that she could use was at
Perrysville Avenue and East Streets. My mother went to high school
at Perry High School (now Perry Academy) out there and she even
remembered a girl friend who came in on the interurban from
Warrendale (PHB&NC). Why, because cities had high schools and most
rural areas did not. Oh yes, Perrysville and East had a movie
theater. Wasn't it called the East Street Theater? I remember
that before I learned how to do, I at least knew how to watch. Went
there once when I was 14 or 15 to watch Marilyn Monroe in the movie
Niagara. As the neighborhoods turned, the shopping district at
Charles Street faltered. I'm not sure what is out at East Street any
longer.

Even the little city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where we moved in
1949, population 65,000 in 1950 and 55,000 today, once had at least
one neighborhood shopping districts. The Laurel and Filbert street
car served the intersection of Old Dorwart Street and Manor Street,
not even 3/4s of a mile from the main shopping district. Yet this
little neighborhood then nicknamed Cabbage Hill because of all the
Germans cooking sauerkraut had its own supermarket, the Manor five
and dime, a hardware store, and the Manor Theater. They're all
closed today. The highlight of the neighborhood today is a couple
that made the mistake of standing up during a wedding reception on
Old Dorwart Street last spring and got nailed by a hail of
bullets ... the court room replay was going on in the paper last
night. The wedding reception just happened to get in the way of a
drug deal gone sour. Oh yes, the Germans are gone. Columbians
moved in.

Hope it brought back a few memories.






Herb Brannon