Notes:Wolfrum Street

From Pittsburgh Streets

1872: Source:Hopkins-1872, pp. 76–77: Shows "Asylum Al." leading to "Widows Home."

1874-10-22 (recorded): Source:William-graham-plan: Asylum Alley. Also shows "Asylum Property" to the north.

1887-08-03: "Allegheny ordinances," Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette, p. 6 (Newspapers.com 85625683): "Mr. W. J. McDonald—Ordinances for the grading and paving of Grant avenue and changing the name of Asylum alley to Winters street."

1887-10-07: "Allegheny street contracts," Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette, p. 6 (Newspapers.com 85626167): "Ordinances were approved for changing . . . the name of Asylum alley to Winters street, . . . ."

1887-11-10: Source:Ordinance-1887-asylum-alley: Asylum Alley changed to Winters Street.

1909-07-28: Source:Citizens-will-be-strangers: "Winters / [changed to] Wolfrum"

1910-03-31

1916-07-09: Source:Fleming-mexican: "Alexander Hays, his children state, gave the names to the streets in the Buena Vista plan, such as we know them—or once knew them—in order from east to west: Palo Alto, Resaca, Monterey, Buena Vista. The plan ended at Pasture lane, since Irwin avenue, on the west and began at Webster street, now Wolfrum, on the east, between the north line of the west common, now North avenue, and Jackson street, now Jarvella street, on the north Taylor avenue intervening, the latter now Tarleton avenue. ¶ These streets are in the present Twenty-second Ward, formerly part of the old Second Ward of Allegheny. ¶ Webster street was changed in name to Winters street and again to Wolfrum, and the street guide informs us that this street extends from Eloise street to Tarleton avenue." Fleming is wrong about Webster Street—it was slightly east and became Sherman Avenue.

1941: Source:Old-allegheny-city, pp. 90–91: "Protestant Orphan Asylum of Pittsburgh and Allegheny, originally called Orphan Asylum Society of Pittsburgh and Allegheny, was organized in the old Presbyterian Church, in Pittsburgh, in April of 1832; and two months later opened the Orphan Asylum of Pittsburgh and Allegheny on Montgomery Avenue. Two orphan boys were the only inmates of the institution until September of the same year when three girls were admitted. The society was incorporated by an act of Assembly in 1834. New buildings [p. 91] were erected at Ridge and Galveston Avenues in 1866 to accommodate an influx of orphans of soldiers killed in the Civil War. The State appropriated funds for this purpose and more than 230 children were cared for. The name was changed to the present one in 1872. The buildings, formerly occupied by the Western University of Pennsylvania (University of Pittsburgh), were taken over by the asylum when the university moved to Oakland in 1908."

1985-03-19: Source:Donalson: "Alleys are frequently renamed: ¶ . . . Asylum Way in Brighton Heights became Winters Street, since renamed San Pedro Street, in 1887." This is the wrong neighborhood, and San Pedro Street is unrelated. The 1923 layer shows Winters Way near San Pedro Street, now part of Drexel Road; this is probably the source of the confusion.

2007: Source:Allegheny-city

  • p. 21: "Protestant Orphans Home. As the population of Allegheny Town increased in the 1820s, an awareness of children without parental support caused a group of citizens to establish an orphanage. The Protestant Orphan Asylum of Pittsburgh and Allegheny was incorporated in 1834. William Robinson donated $7,500 and land on Webster (Sherman) Avenue as a site for the building designed by architect John Chislett. The building was opened in 1836."
  • p. 63: "Protestant Orphan Asylum. In American cities throughout the 19th century, the issues of sickness, disease, agedness, destitution, and death were visible in every neighborhood. Allegheny City was no exception. The most vulnerable were the young and the old. The issue of caring for those who had no one to advocate their cause was frequently brought to the fore by religious institutions. In 1832, a group of women from Allegheny and Pittsburgh formed the Orphan Asylum of Pittsburgh and Allegheny and opened a building to house the children in 1838. In 1860, a larger and better-appointed orphans' home was constructed at the corner of Ridge and Grant (Galveston) Avenues."
  • p. 69: "The Civil War Widows Home. The focus of the Allegheny Widows' Home Association, incorporated in 1860, was to provide decent housing for 'poor widows and elderly maidens.' During the Civil War years, the association advocated for the widows of fallen soldiers. The original building of the Protestant Orphan Asylum was purchased and opened to widows in 1866. In 1904, the association expanded to this home on Arlington (Armandale) Street."

2009: Source:Toker-new, p. 122: "Not many American cities contain a functioning monastery in their midst, as Pittsburgh does on the South Side, and fewer still preserve almshouses, which is essentially what the Allegheny Widows' Home on North Taylor Avenue was until 1983. The three-story Greek Revival main building was erected in 1838 as the Orphan Asylum of Pittsburgh and Allegheny. In 1866, it also became a home for Civil War widows, and six years after that the City of Pittsburgh constructed rowhouses on three sides of the main building, where widows could live with their families in small townhouses. The institution continued in that mode for more than a century. In 1984 and 2006 the complex was rehabilitated under HUD section VIII funding as federally subsidized housing for the elderly and disabled."

2013: Source:Rooney-peterson, p. 19: "Also on lower Federal Street, as noted earlier, was prominent Pittsburgh architect John Chislett, who donated his design of the Orphan Asylum of Pittsburgh and Allegheny, on present-day North Taylor Avenue in the Mexican War Streets, a few years after he moved to Allegheny from Pittsburgh. This building (constructed in 1837–38) remains a landmark in its neighborhood and is probably the most significant structure remaining from Allegheny's borough era. Its Greek Revival features are similar to those of the 1836 Burke Building that Chislett designed on Fourth Avenue, Downtown. . . . Chislett also dealt in stone on lower Federal Street and may have supplied façade and foundation materials for the orphan asylum and other buildings that he designed. . . . He probably also designed the landscaping in the open land that originally surrounded the orphan asylum. The asylum property was taken over in the 1860s by the Allegheny Widows Home, which commissioned the construction of the well-preserved red-brick rowhouses that still stand along Sherman and North Taylor avenues."

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