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

[Schneider Fred]

I agree with your last sentence even if you delete the last five words.

On Dec 11, 2008, at 12:33 PM, Jerry MATT Matsick wrote:

> Fred on the subject of Churches and locations, I invite you and all  
> of the group to Jacksonville, get on
> board the Skyway Express and get off at the First Baptist Church  
> stop, here you will be in the middle
> of 12 city blocks filled with church buildings, a church school, a  
> worship center sanctuary seating 10,000, a church membership of  
> 28,000 and growing, we also have the original Sanctuary (seating  
> 1200) my wife and I were married back in 1969, a middle sanctuary  
> seating 3,400,  people will travel to a great restaurant
> to get a good meal, likewise, people will travel to a church where  
> they will receive a good spiritual
> meal.   And that is the secret to one of America's fastest growing  
> churches.  Condos on the rise downtown
> have friend living on the 38th floor of one of the many new Condos  
> being built downtown, moved into
> town from a suburban plat 18 miles out.   I believe all of America  
> will experience growth in the core
> city if they prepare for it.
> Jerrry Matsick
> Jacksonville
> --
> From: Jerry "Matt" Matsick
>
> AGING: Eventually you will reach a point when you
> stop lying about your age and start Bragging
> about it.
>
> -------------- Original message from Schneider Fred  
> <fwschneider at comcast.net>: --------------
>
>
>> OK, Ken, let me take that one on for size and play devils advocate.
>> Americans have gradually moved away from their churches in the 20th
>> century. "Mainstream" denominations have become smaller while some
>> of the more radical churches of the open door (for want of a better
>> word) or independents have become huge. I have not followed this
>> but I suspect in this era of automobiles, churches may not be as
>> concerned with locating in the geographic center of their membership
>> as they are with finding a huge plot of land for a sanctuary, Sunday
>> school building, office building, and parking lot in a place where
>> they can also beat the zoning board to death.
>>
>> Right now your own church (Latter Day Saints) wants to build a new
>> church near Landisville, Lancaster County. East Hempfield zoning
>> people are having a field day and so are the neighbors. How dare
>> you build here. It will cause unpredented congestion. Have you no
>> feelings for us people who live here. And of course the zoning board
>> said people leaving the church will not be able to turn left onto the
>> Harrisburg Pike, they will be required to go through the development
>> to the next traffic light further infuriating the neighbors who don't
>> want them on their asphalt. (My God is better than your God.
>> People worshiping your God shouldn't use our streets. Cynical Fred
>> is at it again. I think the hope is that they will give up and build
>> somewhere else and perhaps they will. Some do. Even Wal*Mart
>> sometimes gives up those battles.
>>
>> I think churches often, like carbarns, reflected where there was a
>> large vacant lot available, i.e. at the edge of town that was still a
>> farm field. They may very well be markers or flags for the edge of
>> development at the time they were built. That concept is even more
>> valid today because they need huge parking lots, often for 200 or 300
>> cars. (The parking lots have to cause storm water runoff issues
>> too.) But it was probably also true in 1800 and 1900. If I look
>> at Williamsburg, Virginia, Bruton Parish Church was not near the
>> capitol or the middle of town ... it was out in the low rent
>> district. This was probably the case because they were built using
>> members money. They didn't have a lot of money for expensive land
>> unless they had a major donor. Shadyside Presbyterian on Amberson
>> in Pittsburgh could be an exception because there was a lot of money
>> there. There will always be exceptions ... National Cathedral in
>> Washington, St. Patricks in New York but for the most part I think
>> churches were probably on the fringes and on cheaper turf.
>>
>> In this county all or probably all of the chuches built in the last
>> half century have been on farmland in the suburbs. The most
>> controversial was when Calvary Independent decided they no longer
>> wanted to hold three separate services and wanted a sanctuary to hold
>> up to 1,000 members at once. Can you imagine the traffic jams?
>> Even the Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County was fighting
>> them because the farm they bought included a 1760s farm house. (They
>> kept the farm house as a place to house visiting speakers.) When
>> the first announced plans, the opposition was so loud you would have
>> thought Wal*Mart wanted to build a Super Store in the middle of a
>> golf course at a gated community with multi-million dollar homes.
>>
>> But the oldest churches probably give an inkling of the possible age
>> of the city. Certainly the fact that Lancaster has three churches
>> older than the signing of the Declaration of Independence says we've
>> been around for a while. But if you looked at East Liberty
>> Presbyterian at Penn and Highland, you could get the false impression
>> that East Liberty is a late 1920s early 1930s locality if you didn't
>> know that Mellon paid to tear down the older church and build his
>> "Fire Escape" or "Stairway to Heaven" in its place.
>>
>> Caution is dictated.
>>
>> On Dec 11, 2008, at 11:29 AM, Ken and Tracie wrote:
>>
>>> Churches may be a better indicator than school buildings as to the
>>> age of a
>>> neighborhood.
>>>
>>> K.
>>>
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Schneider Fred"
>>> To:
>>> Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2008 8:03 AM
>>> Subject: [PRCo] Re: P-r-w, housing, cities, etc.
>>>
>>>
>>>> Certainly. Any buildings are clues.
>>>>
>>>> Downtown buildings are probably better clues because they tell when
>>>> the city was built. Western cities (Phoenix, San Jose, Los Angeles
>>>> are much newer than eastern. Seattle and San Francisco are somewhat
>>>> older than Phoenix and San Jose and Los Angeles and you can see  
>>>> it in
>>>> the principal downtown buildings.)
>>>>
>>>> But the best clues are still private homes along the older streets.
>>>> For every school or store or factory, there are probably 50 houses
>>>> that will confirm the age of an area.
>>>>
>>>> But a school is not reflective of neighborhoods in general because
>>>> they do tear them down and replace them with newer buildings,  
>>>> because
>>>> there are few of them, and because they reflect legislation more  
>>>> than
>>>> demand. High schools were common in cities while rural kids did not
>>>> often go to high school. My mother, who went to Perry High
>>>> (Perrysville Avenue and East Street) had rural friends who came  
>>>> in on
>>>> the Harmony interurban because there were no high schools out near
>>>> Warrendale. My late mother-in-law grew up in southern Lancaster
>>>> County in a town called Kirkwood; she moved in with relatives in
>>>> Lancaster City to go to high school. My high school in Manheim
>>>> Township was not built until 1930 until an older 1st through 8th
>>>> grade building was destroyed by fire in 1928 or 1929 and that  
>>>> became
>>>> the reason to finally extend public education beyond the 8th grade
>>>> in that rural township of 6,300 people. (By the way it was up to
>>>> about 8,000 when I graduated in 1958 and today the township is  
>>>> larger
>>>> than at least eight cities in the state ... about 37,000 ... more
>>>> populous than Easton, New Castle, Sharon, Johnstown, Chester,  
>>>> Lebanon
>>>> and a couple of others whose names I've forgotten.)
>>>>
>>>> If we were to only look at schools in my township, one would get  
>>>> the
>>>> false impression that no one lived here before the 1930s. Why,
>>>> because in the 1930s we went from small elementary schools that
>>>> everyone came to on foot to four elementary schools and school
>>>> buses. It was a massive building program that also included the  
>>>> high
>>>> school. Seven or eight or more one to four room schools were
>>>> recycled as housing. Some you can easily identify today. Some
>>>> have been torn down. However, we had our first streetcar service
>>>> (the Lititz - Lancaster interurban) in 1895, the second service  
>>>> (the
>>>> Ephrata -Lancaster interurban and New Holland - Lancaster  
>>>> interurban)
>>>> in 1900, the third (the interurban to Manheim) in 1901 and a  
>>>> Rossmere
>>>> city car sometime after 1907. We even used school streetcars until
>>>> 1931 when the township bought a fleet of school buses. But existing
>>>> school buildings give very few clues.
>>>>
>>>> George, you understand that Fred is trying to nudge railfans into
>>>> looking beyond the just the trolley car and into making it what it
>>>> really was, a part of an entire community. It was only a
>>>> part of history ... something we used to shop every day because we
>>>> had ice boxes instead of refrigerators and freezers; something we
>>>> used to go downtown to the cinema because we didn't have this box
>>>> that flashed inane pictures of people trying to vote each other off
>>>> an island; something you used on All-Saints day to go to Homewood
>>>> Cemtery to put flowers on Uncle Harry's grave; something you  
>>>> used to
>>>> go to Oakland to view the Pirates in a winning streak; something  
>>>> you
>>>> used to ride to the mill in Homestead or the Strip District or East
>>>> Pittsburgh; something we used to go to Gimbels or Rosenbaums or
>>>> Kaufmans or Hornes or Boggs & Buhl for the kids back to school
>>>> clothes; and something you rode to the school picnic at Kennywood.
>>>>
>>>> And to understand it well, you need to know more than a smattering
>>>> about history.
>>>>
>>>> Look at the streetcars in the south. The Birney cars almost always
>>>> had doors at both ends. All the cars had doors at both ends except
>>>> perhaps Birmingham which ran a large fleet of center door cars.
>>>> Why? Jim Crow laws. It was considered socially improper for a
>>>> black person to walk twice past a white person. So after entering
>>>> the car and paying the fare, the white man or lady had to get  
>>>> off the
>>>> rear of the car. History is something you need to understand to
>>>> comprehend the hobby. The more of it you learn, the more of the
>>>> hobby you understand.
>>>>
>>>> But after a while all that history becomes a lot more fun.
>>>>
>>>> On Dec 11, 2008, at 10:12 AM, Gray, George wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> 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.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>