Source:Trouble-coming
"Trouble coming naming streets: Duplications of many appellations to be adjusted after Allegheny is annexed: Many contests are expected." Pittsburgh Gazette Times, Nov. 18, 1906, sec. 5, p. 8. Newspapers.com 85930292.
Nobody realizes more than the city clerks the trouble which will come over the renaming of streets when Allegheny has been annexed to Pittsburgh. It used to be that people who wanted a new street named or an old street renamed, could select a cognomen without much trouble, but since Pittsburgh got so many streets the selection became harder and after Allegheny becomes part of the city it will become still more difficult.
For many of the streets in Allegheny have the names borne by streets in Pittsburgh. City clerks are in great demand as baptizers of streets and alleys, for the projectors of the streets, after casting about for names and finding that either in Allegheny or Pittsburgh there already exists a street of the name they prefer, come in desperation to the city clerks and ask them for a name.
Many streets in Allegheny were constructed during the Mexican war, and the period of their birtht [sic] can be deduced from the names of the battlefields of that war. During the civil war many of the streets then laid out in Pittsburgh are named after battles and generals of those days. A few years ago, just about the time the United States divided the Samoan islands with Germany and Great Britain, the city clearks named Samoan alley. Later, when there was talk of invoking police aid to suppress a play, Zaza alley was baptized. The Spanish war has not yet been thus commemorated, but that opportunity will come when Allegheny and Pittsburgh are one and it becomes necessary to change the names of duplicated streets.
There will be difficulties. How are the Diamond streets and squares on the South Side, in the old city and in Allegheny to be distinguished? There is a Washington street and a Washington avenue in Allegheny, and a Washington street and a Washington avenue in Pittsburgh. Federal street on the North Side can be called North Federal street to distinguish it from Federal street in Pittsburgh, Market street in Allegheny can be called North Market, but the nomenclature is extremely unscientific, for the streets in Pittsburgh which have the prefixes north and south are out in the East End, and street namers hold that because of the association of ideas no streets in an opposite end of the city should have similar prefixes. But for this theory one might prefix north to Chestnut street, Allegheny, and north to First and Seconds [sic] streets, Allegheny, to distinguish them from South First and Second streets, Pittsburgh, although this solution is complicated because there is also a First and Second street in the old city of Pittsburgh.
People become attached to the name of the street they live on, and there is no doubt that many ordinances changing names will be fought over in the city councils, each side refusing to give up the name, and the fight that may be expected was foreshadowed a few years ago when some one sought to change the name of the two Rebecca streets in the East End. Then the Baums, the street being named after a member of their family, succeeded in preventing the change of name. There is a North and a South Rebecca street in the East End, and there is a Rebecca street in Allegheny, an ancient thoroughfare. The North Side street cannot well be called North Rebecca street, therefore the names will have to be changed in some way, and Allegheny is expected to fight for its Rebecca street.
