Source:Fleming-street-scenes
George T. Fleming. "Street scenes change with city's growth: Familiar thoroughfares have presented many phases and made history: Wood and Sixth ave." Pittsburgh Gazette Times, Mar. 25, 1917, sec. 5, pp. 2, 5. Newspapers.com 85859202, 85859208.
EVERY street has a growth and a development. These terms are not synonymous. A street may have growth in dimensions; be widened or lengthened. Its character develops. The story of this growth and development is the history of the street.
Many of our downtown streets furnish interesting history along these lines. The transitions from a residential to a business thoroughfare or from a manufacturing one, in whole or in part, have been frequently observed in Pittsburgh. These transitions are slow; nevertheless in time they change the character, the looks, the business of the street and the trend of travel.
There is a continuous change perceptible in some streets. Modern architecture tends most forcibly to change the appearance of our streets, especially down town [sic]. Modern systems of passenger transportation have caused congested vehicular traffic. Auto vehicles have made our thoroughfares well nigh as dangerous as the tracks of any of our great railroads. We are ready for the double-decked street or sidewalk.
The changes of 50 years in many of our streets have been numerous and varied. Streets even die. Searching old street lists and old city maps one is astonished at the number of streets that have passed away. The ground is yet there, but there is no need of the sign, "No thoroughfare."
Vacations, of course, have been the chief causes of this passing of former thoroughfares and by this means the railroads have been the chief beneficiaries. We can see this in many instances. The Pennsylvania Railroad from Thirty-third street in, and its Monongahela Division from South Twelfth street eastward are familiar examples, where once were many streets and structures, a better term than dwellings, predominating.
Manufacturing concerns and even individuals have profited by the vacation of streets. Other business interests also. Witness the historic ground at the Point and note the passing forever of streets almost as old as the town.
One may speak of physical changes in our streets. Widenings for example. Diamond alley to Diamond street, Virgin alley to Oliver avenue. Lengthenings, more properly extensions, can be readily called to mind. Familiar ones downtown are Diamond street to Fifth avenue, and Forbes from Boyd street to Diamond.
All these changes are betterments. They bring about new architecture and new business relations. The transformation of lower Forbes street into a business thoroughfare is becoming more rapid. This same transformation has taken place in all our downtown streets. The old residences still standing in the lower avenues from Sixth down Seventh (entirely transformed) prove conclusively the former residential character of these avenues, originally called streets, and laid out by Col. George Woods and his assistant, Thomas Vickroy, in 1784, in the original survey of the town of Pittsburgh.
Additional evidence of this character can be seen on Ross and Grant streets. Ferry and Market streets are completely changed, yet within 30 years Ferry was almost exclusively a residence street. Sixth avenue was once noted as a quiet church and residence thoroughfare. About 1868 the Turners built a hall just about the upper corner of the William Penn Hotel. On the corner of Grant street there was a livery stable. Across was a German Lutheran Church. On the corner of Cherry way the Third Presbyterian congregation built the stone church recently razed for the William Penn Hotel. This church was completed in 1863.
Directly across the street there were residences. Many old frame shacks stood in a hollow and were torn away when the old Pittsburgh Gas Company erected its building that gave place to the present Philadelphia Company building a few years ago.
Diagonally across from the Third Presbyterian Church was the Third United Presbyterian Church, better known as Dr. Prestley's church, from its prominent pastor, the Rev. Dr. James T. Prestley. Below this church were several dwellings extending to Miltenberger alley, now Montour way, then the German Evangelical Church, but not the present structure. Across the street were dwellings, three or four still standing; a frame or two stood at the corner of Smithfield; on the corner for many years there was a plumbing shop which was also a polling place.
Below Smithfield on the South Side there were no dwellings. An old brick two stories in height, stood on the corner and can best be recalled as having been occupied as a drug store. This building was razed to make way for the Murtland building, one of the first steel frame structures in Pittsburgh, and it in turn had to go when the Henry W. Oliver building was erected.
Below Trinity Church there stood the building used by the First Presbyterian congregation as a Sunday School room and for prayer meetings and other gatherings. This building was changed into stores when the stone chapel was erected above the church on the Virgin alley side in the rear of old Third National Bank building. On the corner of Wood street were two two-story bricks with attics and dormer windows.
Across on Wood street at the corner were one and two-story shacks razed to erect the first building of the National Bank of Commerce. This latter building was completed in 1868 and most of the upper stories occupied by the old Central High School until the fall of 1871, when the school was removed to the Fulton (Fullerton) street and Bedford avenue location.
There were three warehouses from Wood street to Liberty, two wholesale grocery houses and a wholesale clothing store—the latter at the corner of Liberty street. Across the street where the Monongahela Bank building now stands were several brick structures used as stores with a rounded end at Liberty street. This ground was the site of the "Old Round Church," the first Episcopalian edifice in Pittsburgh.
Going towards Smithfield street again—on the corner of Wood street was the first edifice of the German National Bank, now defunct, originally the German Trust and Savings Bank. Next to the bank building at the corner of the alley then called Church alley, were two small yellow frames, the upper one occupied by one Gillespie, an Englishman and a chimney sweep—a lost art in Pittsburgh. Mr. Gillespie also wove rag carpets when sweeping was bad.
Across the alley was the steepleless church of the Cumberland Presbyterian congregation. Then there were residences up to the corner of Smithfield street except that an old frame nearly opposite Trinity Church was occupied as a book and periodical store by an old gentleman named John D. Eagan, a real old-timer in that line of business. It is needles [sic] to say Mr. Eagan always had a complete line of "Beadle's Dime" and Munro's "Ten-Cent" novels, both long out of print, but bringing to the boys of the '60s recollections of real thrills in the story line.
Odd how recollections bring other recollections! How good those novels were can be ascertained from the fact that there were sold 1,000,000 copies of one written by Edmund S. Ellis. Many a reader today can imagine himself a boy again gazing into Old Man Eagan's book shop window in Sixth avenue and mentally vowing he was going to buy the novel of his choice with the next spare dime he had, or into Gildenfenny's, Henry Miner's, Frank Case's or Johnny Pittock's windows on Fifth avenue—all gone years ago—and who all kept the standard literature of the day, including Beadle's and Munro's "libraries."
Just above Eagan's store was the brick building long occupied by The Pittsburgh Gazette after the paper removed from the old Gazette Building on Fifth avenue, this latter to be occupied by the Pittsburgh Telegraph and where that paper was first issued, the building standing about opposite the Hotel Henry.
This completes the description of Sixth avenue, when Sixth street, 50 or more years ago. Go along it as opportunity may afford and in fancy try to replace the old buildings and contrast them and now. Remember no street cars came down Sixth avenue until about the spring of 1890, when the Central Traction Company, a cable line, the old Wylie avenue and Center avenue line turned in at High street and off at Wood street, thence up Fourth avenue to Grant street, to Webster avenue, to High street, and to Wylie again. There was some looping here and many a car off the track.
So much for the story of one downtown street, but we can take another equally as interesting: Wood street. The name is historic and properly commemorative of Col. William [sic] Woods, chief surveyor of the plan known as Col. Woods' plan of Pittsburgh.
We have it so and it has been Wood street for a century and a third. It was intended to have been Woods street, the pronunciation easily gliding into Wood street through lack of effort in articulating and pausing sufficiently long to separate the two s sounds. We have this excess of sibilancy in Hays street and some other names.
Wood street is a commemoration of a surveyor and a pioneer, yet not a resident of Pittsburgh, for both Col. Woods and his assistant, Thomas Vickroy, came here from their homes in Bedford county at the solicitation of Tench Francis, agent for the Penns, to lay out the town of Pittsburgh and to divide their proprietary manor here into outlots and farms. The survey began in May, 1754.
Wood street had a slow growth as a business street. Old directories, 1826, 1837, 1840, show that the bulk of Pittsburgh's business was transacted on Market street and the few cross streets, Front, afterwards First, Second, Third and Fourth, with the center of trade at Market and Third. Of 49 drapers and tailors listed by Isaac Harris in his directory of 1841 only 10 had locations on Wood street, 11 on Market and 14 on Liberty.
A tailor shop at Wood and Water streets would not be considered an advantageous location today, yet there is where William Schoyer did a tailoring business in 1840. Many shops of this character on Market street and on Liberty were near the river and for a good enough reason. Steamboats were numerous and the river the great highway to the West. The wharves were daily thronged with people and transient trade was generally good.
As far back as 1795 we find residences on Wood street; also some public houses. The Pittsburgh Hotel at Third street, away back in 1815, the Western Hotel, the Darlington also. The street seems to have been favored by certain lines of trade. Thus in 1840 of 13 wholesale dry goods houses in the city 12 were on Wood street. Wholesale grocers were more numerous on Liberty street, getting near the canal basins at Eleventh street, 30 of the 53 then along that thoroughfare and only 11 on Wood street.
Then there were the wholesale drug stores, some hardware dealers, some wholesale and retail looking glass, comb, fancy and variety dealers, three of the four music stores in the city, three of the eight book stores, eight hat, cap and fur stores, five tin and coppersmiths, the warehouses of some glass manufacturers and Lawton's marble works opposite the First Presbyterian Church.
These brief statistics will serve to show the variety of the business carried on along the thoroughfare 75 years ago. But in a few years there came a change. The fire of 1845 transformed much of lower Pittsburgh. Wood street was devastated almost to Diamond alley on both sides of the street. But with the characteristic energy always observable here, rebuilding was rapid, so that much of the architecture of lower Pittsburgh is that erected immediately succeeding the "big fire." Quick construction was most of it.
There are only a few of these structures remaining on Wood street. It may be truthfully stated that the street has been rebuilt within the last three decades. Old-timers recognize but two landmarks—the tenantless buildings at the southwest corner of First avenue and the old St. Charles Hotel.
From the map of 1795 we find Gen. John Wilkins' mansion at the corner of Wood and Fourth on the site of the Arrott Building. The Henderson ferry house was just above the mouth of Wood, on Water street, a run between Wood and the Ferry house; this run the entrance to Hogg's Pond, which extended to Sixth street (now avenue), taking in the ground now occupied by the William Penn Hotel. This ground here was all pile-driven when the Third Presbyterian Church was built. There were other ponds in Pittsburgh, one extended from Second to Fourth, between Wood and Market streets. In fact, we are a much filled in and dug down and dug up city.
In 1795 Thomas Chapman, a traveler here, reported 200 houses in the village, 150 of them built of logs, and rough-hewn logs at that. It was a pretentious house that was constructed of sawed logs. When we can look at the map of our city in 1795, we must remember that one-fourth of all the residences depicted thereon were log structures. Wood street had three, one on the corner where the Conestoga Building now stands, Gen. Wilkins' house and a long structure of some kind at Sixth street (now avenue) opposite the log church of the First Presbyterian Congregation, which faced Virgin alley, the sides parallel to Wood street, but the church generally spoken of as situated on Wood street, built about 1785.
It is a matter of record that the first brick buildings in Pittsburgh came from the brick taken from Fort Pitt, but these brick structures were on Ferry street, Market, Second and the streets nearer the fort than Wood street.
When Chapman was in Pittsburgh in 1795 he noted that two brickyards were in operation. Doubtless brick houses were erected on Wood street soon afterward and in a decade brick houses were common in the town. Window glass came about this time also, so that pictures of log cabins prior to 1796 with modern windows may be attributed to the eyes of the artists who drew them.
We cannot boast of how nice a town this was in our early days. Samuel Jones, who was the first register and recorder of Allegheny county, resided in Pittsburgh for many years and gave us the directory of 1826. In describing the old town he wrote that the streets were "filled with hogs, dogs, drays and noisy children."
We must admit some offsets; there were no howling hawkers of fruits and vegetables, no rags nor old iron fellows and no murderous autos.
Wood street with its nearby ponds and its mud probably vied with Fifth street (now avenue) for the palm in degradation. The latter was always spoken of, up to 1840, and later, as an abominable thoroughfare.
But we grew and gradually put on some style. By 1815 Wood street had quite a few dwellers. The main thoroughfare to the Monongahela wharf was Smithfield street on account of the bridge, but Henderson's or the Middle Ferry was at the mouth of Wood and the long rows of packet boats lay along the wharf from Smithfield street down toward the Point. So that Wood street in a short time, keeping pace with the growth of steamboat traffic, became a great thoroughfare and business houses naturally sprang up upon it and its abutting lots became more and more valuable.
The fire of 1845 was costly enough, but it removed from Pittsburgh much that was unsightly and made way for better architecture, the best the times afforded.
The coming of the canal necessitating the reshipping of merchandise, usually of a bulky nature, required the use of many vehicles. Hundreds of drays turned from Wood street into Liberty on their way to the canal basins and warehouses at what is now Liberty and Eleventh street, and on the return trip carried full loads to the steamers and warehouses along the wharf. This made a busy street.
First recollections of Wood street present it as paved with cobblestones, usually procured from the Allegheny River. In fact there were no streets paved otherwise. Along about 1868 there came the wonderful invention of the wooden block pavement, usually square blocks, sometimes conical. Wood street and Fifth avenue were paved with square blocks. It was very, very nice at first—the new pavement certainly contributing quiet and ease, quiet to the business people, ease to the teamsters. The jolt was almost gone.
No class of people on the street realized the quiet part more than the professors and pupils in the Central High School at Sixth avenue. There were no car tracks on Wood street until about 1887. The Tranverse [sic] Line was the first, coming in from Forty-eighth street via Charlotte, Butler, Smallman, Liberty to the Baltimore and Ohio Station. Hence the rattle of drays and the heavy hauling over the rough cobblestones on Wood street made a racket all day long and when the softening came all was well.
But, alas, all did not stay well. The blocks rotted and by the spring of 1875 had gradually become loosened, so that the pavement of both Fifth avenue and Wood street became a mixture of sand, rotten foundation boards and rotten blocks, oozy in wet weather—sometimes a quagmire.
Teamsters shunned these streets if possible, also the fire department, for two or three jolts of the men from their machines invoked caution. Fortunately the tumbling ones did not alight hard, usually in mud. By 1876 Councils took pity and repaved both streets, Fifth with granite blocks and Wood street with Ligonier blocks. Now enters Ligonier into Pittsburgh street paving.
Wood street never was much of a manufacturing street. In the 60's and early 70's there was a tobacco manufactory opposite the First Presbyterian Church. This was a "plug" factory and owned by W. & D. Rinehart. The firm has long since passed, and the business in Pittsburgh, once a leading one, is virtually dead.
The young fellows working in the tobacco factory were wont to play ball during their noon hour and utilized the street in front of the church. Some exciting games were played. Soft balls of rags, of course, were in use, but catching practice was with the regulation balls of the period. The audiences were the high school pupils from the upper windows of the National Bank of Commerce Building.
There is much more interesting matter that can be written of Wood street and many reminiscences. It is not possible to enumerate and describe the buildings as in the case of Sixth avenue, neither is it necessary. However, some historic Wood street buildings may receive notice later.
The picture of the First Presbyterian Church shown today is from one in the collection of Pittsburgh views in the reference department of the Carnegie Library. It differs from ordinary views by the exhibit of a dwelling to the right on the side next to Virgin alley (now Oliver avenue). On this site the bank building shown was subsequently erected.
The church picture is from a print, a wood cut engraving, most probably taken from "Ballou's Drawing Room Companion," a magazine published in Boston, prior to the Civil War, that had a great circulation and made a special feature in illustrating after the manner of the old Harper's and Leslie's weeklies. The church was the third edifice of the congregation and was erected in 1851 and razed in 1903, when the McCreery Building was put up.
The corner now occupied by the Farmers Bank Building is shown with the adjacent buildings on Wood street and on Fifth avenue. On the Fifth avenue side the billiard saloon became in the '70's Burnell's Museum. About 1880 it was bought by the Sportsmen's Association of Western Pennsylvania and used by them as their headquarters. The corner building was razed in 1903 for the present great structure.
Hill & Co. a few years later became the Pittsburgh National Bank of Commerce, Joseph H. Hill president. This bank was absorbed a few years ago by the Mellon National Bank. The first building of the bank, that housed the old Central High School from April, 1868, until October, 1871, is also shown.
The stone chapel of the First Church in the rear of the bank building will be a familiar structure to many, but few will remember the old warehouse of 1851.
