[PRCo] Route 17

[Schneider Fred]

For the two outsiders to Derrick Brashear's Pittsburgh list, this  
post is about a Pittsburgh Railways obscure route.  Thought it might  
interest you because it is raw history.

Someone made a post to our list months ago asking about destination  
17 HIGH BRIDGE.   Before we go any farther, please note that there  
were three destinations using the number 17.  The original 17 HIGH  
BRIDGE was assigned in 1914.  In 1921 we have 17 MANCHESTER.   And in  
1921 we have a third iteration of route 17 and I do not know what  
head or side signs those cars carried.

I can finally add something about the High Bridge destination and  
route that makes some sense.

The only "High Bridge" by that name in the old City of Allegheny and  
the Manchester District thereof was on California Avenue where it  
passed over Jacks's Run between Pittsburgh (the old city of Allegheny  
before 1907) and the Borough of Bellevue.   It was immediately  
northwest of the loop where the Brighton Road line (route 6)  
ended.    Therefore one could speculate that route 17 terminated at  
High Bridge loop on Winthrop St. (later Wynhurst St.) just off  
California Ave.   In fact Ronald Beal refers to that loop as High  
Bridge Loop in his book but have not seen any corroborating evidence  
for that name.

The original route 114-A ran from Manchester Carbarn along Beaver  
Avenue, Pennsylvania, Allegheny Avenue, Western Avenue, Federal  
Street, Leacock St., Sandusky, Robinson to Federal and return from  
1921.   It carried destination 17 MANCHESTER.

In 1925 the route 114-A had been merged with route 16 Rogers and  
Forest and was now running from Manchester Car House to the Strip  
District via the 16th Street Bridge.

But we know from the published list of assigned destination numbers  
that in 1914 there was a destination 17 HIGH BRIDGE and it logically  
ran out of Manchester.   I cannot find that route card.  Since the  
subsequent ones are 114A, it was probably 114 and was thrown out by  
the Railways Company.   My hunch is that it might have been an  
Allegheny Avenue line, because nothing else ran north-south on that  
street, then Pennsylvania, then Beaver, Island, Preeble, Woods Run,  
Brighton Road and up to High Bridge.   Why that route?   Because that  
is the only way you could get across the Pennsylvania Railroad from  
Manchester Car House.   If I were a betting man .....

There is always a tendency to imagine places always as they were when  
we first stumbled upon them.  No?   The lower North Side in my youth  
was kind of a dump.   My grandma always worried if she knew I was  
waiting for a streetcar down at Federal and North to "come home" in  
the evening.   Manchester was even worse.  You just didn't want to go  
there in the 50s.   But thinking on this, you do not set out to build  
slums.   You build houses and neighborhoods and the subsequent  
generations turn them into slums.   What was Manchester like at its  
peak.   Well, before the merger of the two cities in 1907, Allegheny  
had about 130,000 residents and Manchester probably had 40,000 jammed  
in on the west side of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago  
Railroad (PRR).

What has given me utter amazement is how dense the human and  
industrial (job) population had to be in Manchester in the teens and  
twenties in order to support routes 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 in a one- 
square mile area.  That was not the era of government operation.   It  
was private enterprise.   You did not run empty streetcars.   You ran  
routes because you could fill the cars.

The same applied to the Strip District.   Can we imagine today that  
the area along Penn and Liberty Avenues from 11th to 33rd had so many  
jobs that it warranted an incline down from Herron Hill, a separate  
route from Manchester over the 16th Street Bridge,  the Spring Hill  
and Spring Hill and Spring Garden lines over the 16th Street Bridge,  
and rush hour trippers on East Liberty routes that didn't go downtown  
but only went to the strip district to service the factories?

Who ever it was who asked about 17 HIGH BRIDGE, did I answer the  
question?

I'm afraid it might have been Herb who I'm told doesn't have e-mail  
access any longer.