Project:Frequently asked questions

From Pittsburgh Streets

How did Pittsburgh Streets start?

I moved to Pittsburgh in 2009 and, naturally, started to learn the names of streets so that I could find my way around. As I did so, I began to wonder idly where some of the names came from. Some were fairly obvious: Penn Avenue, for example, is clearly named for William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. Others were stranger—what kind of macabre event happened on Woolslayer Way?

A couple of years later, I was in a library researching something (now I don't remember what), when somehow I stumbled across a newspaper filler article from 1942 saying that Tokio Street and Japan Way had been renamed amid the anti-Japanese fervor of the day. I thought this was an interesting little bit of trivia. Today Pittsburgh signposts say Tokay Street—how many people know that this street used to be Tokio?

Several more years went by. One day I left my apartment on Thomas Boulevard and walked to the bus stop at the corner of Fifth Avenue and McPherson Boulevard, as I had done almost every day for years. But that day, for whatever reason, it suddenly occurred to me that Thomas and McPherson were both names of Union generals in the Civil War. And immediately afterward I realized that nearby Meade Street completes the set!

So I decided to see what else I could find about the origins of Pittsburgh street names, and that became the start of this project.

How do you do your research?

I use a number of helpful resources; some of the most useful are listed below.

The full set of sources I have used are categorized under Category:Sources.

Maps, city directories, and street guides

  • Pittsburgh Historic Maps is a great place to start, to see roughly when a street first appeared and how it has evolved over time. Many of the maps also show the names of landowners and the people who laid out plans of lots, which can be valuable clues to the origins of street names.
  • Other historical maps are listed in Project:Maps.
  • Historical city directories and street guides are listed in Project:City directories and street guides.

Newspapers

  • Newspapers.com includes over 200 years of Pittsburgh newspapers, fully searchable.

City and county records

  • The Pittsburgh Municipal Record on the Internet Archive has records of the Pittsburgh City Councils from 1868 to 1999, including ordinances and resolutions. See also Project:Municipal Record.
  • City Council records since 2000 are available from the Legislative Information Center.
  • I have copied the text of many ordinances and newspaper articles into pages in the "Source" namespace in this wiki. The "Source" namespace is excluded from searches by default, but you can search everything to include these sources. Often when researching the history of a street I find that I already have the ordinances that renamed it.
  • Plans of lots are available from the Allegheny County Division of Real Estate for a fee.

Articles and books

  • George T. Fleming was a prolific local historian from the early 20th century who was also interested in the history of street names. He wrote a weekly column for the Pittsburgh Gazette Times, which I have collected in Project:George T. Fleming's newspaper columns.
  • Annie Clark Miller wrote Early Land Marks and Names of Old Pittsburgh in 1923: see Source:Miller.
  • Bob Regan wrote The Names of Pittsburgh in 2009: see Source:Regan. This book should be read with some skepticism, though—it has a lot of incorrect claims.
  • Generally useful sources are listed in Project:Sources.

Geohistory

  • The Local Geohistory Project by Mark A. Connelly is a useful tool to find information about the evolution of municipalities in Pennsylvania. One really cool feature: The City of Pittsburgh page has an interactive map that shows the current boundary of the city. If you click on the clock icon, you can move backward and forward in time to see how the boundary has changed throughout history.

How can I contact you?

Email me at brian@zifyoip.com.

I welcome questions, feedback, and additional information. If you'd like to know the origin of a street name that I don't have yet, let me know, and I'll try to dig something up.

Are there similar projects for other cities?

I know of a few projects exploring the histories of street names in other cities:

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