Notes:Blockhouse Way

Source:Craig, p. 86: "The redoubt, which still remains near the point, the last relic of British labor at this place, was not erected until 1764. The other redoubt, which stood at the mouth of Redoubt Alley, was erected by Col. Wm. Grant; and our recollection is, that the year mentioned on the stone tablet was 1765, but we are not positive on that point."

Source:Fleming-old-map-4: "Neville B. Craig, in his 'History of Pittsburgh,' described the lower section of Old Pittsburgh as he knew it in his boyhood . . . ¶ . . . ¶ . . . Mr. Craig says further: ¶ '. . . At Redoubt alley there was quite a steep and stony descent down to the level of the covered archway of which I have before spoken, etc.' ¶ Name Changed. ¶ The name of Redoubt alley has been changed to Blockhouse way. Mr. Craig refers to an underground passage that extended from Fort Pitt to the Colonel Grant redoubt on Water street, just above the gully at Redoubt alley. This gully was the outlet of the pond between Fourth and Fifth streets, along Liberty avenue through which Ferry street was later extended, thus bi-secting the lots 339–342 in Mason's plan. Haumann, in his map of Pittsburgh in 1795, published in 1869, shows all these lots under water except a small portion of No. 338 at Fourth and Liberty."

Source:Swetnam: "Sometimes blunders creep in, nobody seems to know how. For instance, Redoubt Alley, which runs at The Press' side door, and never came anywhere near the old Blockhouse, came to be renamed Blockhouse Way, somewhere between 1800 and 1900."

Source:Demorest: "Following the danger [of Pontiac's War], Fort Pitt was made even stronger. The new commandant, Capt. William Grant, wrote to Colonel Bouquet early in 1764: 'All the redoubts are finished (one of them was the Blockhouse, which survives today) and the one you traced out upon the banks of the Monongahela is just begun.' (Its name survived in Redoubt Alley, now called Blockhouse Way.)"

Source:Weaver-block-house, p. 28: Captain William Grant to Colonel Henry Bouquet, May 15, 1764: "we are Just now finishing an Oven at the Redoubt in the upper Town Sufficiently large for the troops against their arrival. [T]he repairs of the Post are quite done, and the Wooden Redoubt is well picqueted." [Waddell, Papers of Henry Bouquet, vol. 6, 541.] The "Redoubt in the upper Town" was Grant's Redoubt, a large defensive structure built about February 1764. It was still standing at the foot of Redoubt Alley in the early nineteenth century, but was eventually torn down sometime before the 1850s.