[PRCo] Re: P-r-w, housing, cities, etc.

[Gray, George]

One can also look at the age of schools.  Brookline School opened in
1908.  (I suppose it had a centennial this year.)  It had a major
expansion about 10-15 years later.

-----Original Message-----
From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
[mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org] On Behalf Of
Schneider Fred
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 5:07 PM
To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
Subject: [PRCo] P-r-w, housing, cities, etc.

Uh huh.   That's because the city was unsettled then.

In 1700 the frontier was Philadelphia, Williamsburg, Boston,  
Charleston, Baltimore.

In 1750 the frontier was Lancaster or Charlottesville.

In 1800 Pittsburgh was indian territory.

In the 1880s people were beginning to move up into what is now Perry  
Hilltop.   My grandmothers neighborhood by Riverview Park off of  
Perrysville Avenue was a Watson land development from the teens of  
1920s.

West View Park was built in 1906.   The land around it was developed  
in that period.   Nothing was there.

The older homes in Brookline and Mount Lebanon and Dormont are  
largely teens, twenties, a few thirties, forties.

Penn Hills?   After World War II Levittown in Bucks County was the  
fastest growing part of Pennsylvania and Penn Hills (Penn Township,  
Allegheny County) was second.   My parents bought two adjoining  1/4  
acre lots in Crescent Hills in 1937 and built a house on one of  
them.   Meadow Gold Dairy gave customers an aerial photograph of the  
neighborhood ... about one lot in six or seven was filled in by  
1940.   The rest didn't fill in until the 1960s.    It's solid  
today.   But in the 1940s only the area around Black Ridge above  
Wilkinsburg was really filled in.

Those perfectly symmetrical square brick houses that you see all over  
Allegheny County ... walk in the front door and the living room is  
either to the right or left, the dining room is on the other side  
with the kitchen behind it.   The stair case goes up from the front  
door. with three bedrooms and bath upstairs with the bath over the  
kitchen.      The basement had a single car garage under the  
kitchen.   They are purely late 1940s.   Memorize the design and you  
can see what filled in after the war.   Go up the hill from Linden  
Grove on the interurban and you will find that area filled with  
them.   That's where John Swindler's parents moved after leaving  
Edgewood.    A lot of homes in Penn Hills are like that ... the post  
war ones.

If you local hysterical society has a person qualified to teach the  
basics of architectural history of housing, I would suggest that it  
is something any railfan interested in something more than just the  
trolley cars should attend.   Once you know the housing styles and  
when they were built, then you can tell what houses were there when  
the streetcar lines were there.   You tell which homes were there  
before the trolleys, which were build because of the convenience of  
the trolleys, which post dated the trolleys.   You will come to  
recognize trolley suburbs, bus suburbs.   You can take such a course  
in European universities but unfortunately it is very uncommon in the  
U. S. A.   However, I did find one offered by the Lancaster County  
Historical Society and you may equally lucky in your area.

You can also, with greater effort, do some of it on your own just by  
working with maps.   If this street appears first on a 1922 map then  
none of the houses could be earlier than that.   If you have enough  
maps and enough street references and you look long and hard enough,  
you will become the expert.   Sears Roebuck used to sell houses in  
their catalogs.   Bear in mind that they were never ahead of the  
curve, always a little behind it.   So if you saw something in a 1915  
catalog, it was probably at the peak of its popularity a few years  
earlier.




On Dec 10, 2008, at 4:37 PM, Barry, Matthew R wrote:

> A lot more private right of way that I had previously thought.    
> Note where the line comes off of Woodlawn Ave, crosses Forbes and  
> goes into what is most probably private right of way.   It moves on  
> in to areas that I don't think any other carline really ever replaced.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org  
> [mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org] On Behalf Of  
> Derrick J Brashear
> Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 4:07 PM
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> Subject: [PRCo] old maps of Pittsburgh and elsewhere reveal...
>
> http://lnk.nu/images.library.pitt.edu/r8v
>
> note the location of the trolley line through Schenley Park (also the
> inclines at the foot of S 21st St and the J&L Coal incline by S  
> 30th St.
>
>
>
>