[PRCo] Re: Assorted Photos Off The 'Net

[Fred Schneider]

The real gem is the first one … the picture of the rear of the 4000  (Brill 1909) on one of the Highland Park lines probably around 1920.  I printed it but I still cannot read the street name behind the tree above the man.   I drove my Google-Mobile over all the logical streets and I cannot locate those buildings … i.e. Highland, Negley, Centre, lower Fifth, lower Forbes.   I know the caption reads 5th Avenue but South Highland ran via Forbes so my first instinct was to try all sorts of combinations.   Nothing works today because too many buildings have been torn down.  I would relish having a 110 year old geezer tell me, "I know where it is … I lived there."  Unfortunately a lot of the heart of East Liberty was been demolished by Urban Ruinall.   Lower Forbes was wiped out by the Crosstown Expressway and the Boulevard of the Allies.  Many of the homes on very lower Herron Hill disappeared in the Civic Arena project.   Since then the next mile has had many of the old homes replaced by newer ones.   And farther out Centre more than half the buildings simply disappeared …looks like Euclid Avenue in Cleveland.  The hill does feel right for lower Forbes or lower 5th, however; it's just that the buildings are there today.   

And guys, how would you like to carry that suitcase  (sitting on the curb)  filled with glass plate holders when you go out to take pictures?   And the tripod? And a 4x5 or 8x10 view camera and several lenses and lensboards?   A dozen years ago I bought a 4x5 view camera and then built a wooden case to hold it and all the trappings … weighs a ton.   I think by the time I was done it had cost me close to $100 for every picture I took before I gave up the experiment.  My wife is using the case as a table to hold a lamp in the back bedroom.   And if I wanted to use it, where the hell would I get fil-em today?   Kodak quit making all the good stuff like TriX and SuperpanchroPress B and PlusX.   

The second one is the Brookline loop.

The third would be Tunnel Yard during the Deiselheimer Era.  For those who don't know that moniker, there were a number of Electric Railroaders Association members who applied it to Harold G because he worked for a bus company.

The fourth looks up Diamond Alley from Liberty.   You don't get it?   Well they changed the name from Diamond Alley to Diamond St. to Forbes Avenue but the city fathers never actually widened that street.   The building on the right with the Corinthian Columns is the Wabash Terminal. Judging by the automobiles and the presence of a 1700, its after the fire that destroyed the trainshed and before the redevelopment in the Point.

And the last one was taken when route 56 was the only carline left in McKeesport.   McKeesport was one of the worst hurt of the suburban towns first because the United Steel Workers employes got wages high enough to get out of that smog infested valley and move to the suburbs and drive to work in their new cars, and then because those higher wages were more than foreign steel workers were paying, steel simply collapsed.   McKeesport's population peaked in1940at 55,355.  In 1930, with a cluster of West Penn and Pittsburgh Railways carlines, it had almost 55,000 people.  But then after the war people began to leave for the suburbs.  The 2010 census showed only 17,731 left … it had dropped 18% since 2000.  Wikipedia has a fairly decent description of the town and they actually included the last 160 years of population data in one of the most recent changes.

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKeesport,_Pennsylvania








On Nov 12, 2012, at 11:56 PM, Herb Brannon wrote:

> If anyone has anything to add concerning location, photographer, etc., have
> at it. These I found during random searches of the Internet. I don't
> remember these being shown before on The List, however, they may have been.
> -- 
> Herb Brannon
> In Cuyahoga Valley National Park
> 
> 
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