[PRCo] Re: Route 17

[Schneider Fred]

I already see one typo, the third iteration is 1925.   Corrected here.

On Oct 31, 2008, at 6:42 PM, Schneider Fred wrote:

> 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
> 1925 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.
>
>
>