[PRCo] Re: North Jersey architecture in 1900

[Fred Schneider]

You are correct, Rich.   

It has nothing to do directly with Pittsburgh history.

However, it serves to illustrate that our schools including universities neglect what some our European brethren teach and that is how to recognize the ages of different architectural styles.   We're clueless in so many areas ... not just geography (my favorite way to embarrass the fools is to ask them to name the six countries that surround Iraq.).    Perhaps I should update that and admit that even I have trouble and ask then to name the five countries surrounding Afghanistan.  The problem is remember the four -stans than surround in addition to Iran.  Not just history too.   

For a railfan, knowing the ages of buildings allows you to understand what was there when your favorite trolley or interurban line was running.   Were all these houses there or were there farms there?   Why did the Observatory Hill Passenger Railway only go a half mile up Perrysville Avenue from Federal Street originally?   If you know something about architecture, it might give you a clue that the houses along the Perrysville Plank Road beyond the original university and observatory might just have been built later.   

By the way ... from where the Federal rejoined Perrysville at the top of the hill to where the East Street Extension met Perrysville, there were 23 houses in 1882, four years before the car line began to inch its way up the hill, and perhaps 30 to the city limits.   

My grandparents were married about 1905 and moved into a house on Veteran Street, which runs north from Pusey (you like that?) to Kennedy Avenue on the east side of Perrysville Avenue.   About half those houses have since been demolished as the neighborhood turned sour.    Then in the teens or twenties they bought a new house at 3462 Delaware Avenue, a block up from the Venture Street car stop ... I suspect they were the first owners.   By then the development was pretty solid out to Riverview Park.  

By the 1930s we were filling in the South Hills.      


On Jul 17, 2010, at 10:24 AM, Rich Rockwell wrote:

> This has nothing to do with PRCo, but if you are interested in a
> representation of architectural styles in Bloomfield and Glen Ridge, NJ
> between 1890 and 1915, I scanned a collection of glass plate negatives that
> belonged to a realtor who photographed the houses he sold.  Many were new at
> the time of sale/photograph.
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> http://historicalsocietyofbloomfield.org/zenphoto/RussellCollection/
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> Bloomfield is the next town northwest of Newark.  It is now served by a
> light rail/subway line to Newark that was built in the abandoned bed of the
> Morris Canal.  This collection of photos represents a building boom period
> that was influenced by the expansion of railroads and streetcars in the
> area.
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> Rich Rockwell
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