Source:Fleming-old-timers-growth
George T. Fleming. "Old timers tell about city's growth: Accounts of Pittsburgh in bygone years from several sources: Big changes noted." Pittsburgh Gazette Times, Apr. 23, 1916, sec. 6, p. 2. Newspapers.com 85458904.
LAST week's story ended with some reminiscences of Mrs. Catherine Ferguson of Mt. Washington and descriptions of Pittsburgh downtown as she remembered that section from girlhood.
Before quoting others corroborating or supplementing her recollections of old Pittsburgh it will be well to finish hers, broken off suddenly last week for want of space.
Speaking of downtown business streets Mrs. Ferguson remembered Market street as the busy street previous to the removal of the postoffice from Third avenue, near Market, to Fifth avenue. She said:
Market street was teeming with people doing their shopping. The old stores on that street as I remember them were Stevenson's, dry goods; Frank H. Eaton's, trimmings; George R. White, C. H. Love, Joseph Horne and McConnell & Burchfield, dry goods; R. H. Palmer, millinery goods. Murphy & Burchfield were at Fourth and Market streets.
There was a row of jewelry stores on the north side of Market near Fifth shown in the old pictures of the old market and Court House in Diamond. Alexander Bates had the first store in this row. It was known as the Philadelphia store and he kept dry goods, but three jewelers followed.
These were John B. McFadden's, Stephenson's and Richardson's. H. P. Cain's shoe store was across Fifth avenue on the northeast corner of Market street.
There was generally a crowd around the old market, especially on Wednesdays and Saturdays, the usual market days. Grocers in those days did not keep "green goods." For vegetables recourse was had to the markets to get what the country people brought in fresh.
The opening of the government building in 1851 at Fifth and Smithfield streets first took business uptown, as people were then wont to speak of the edge of the business district.
Twenty-five years ago there was a row of bricks, three-story dwellings, on the site of the Carnegie Building, and on the other side below the old cathedral a row of old dwellings with attics and dormer windows, the first floors having been changed to storerooms. The old dwellings were in their last days largely used for lawyers' offices.
The real busy places in the old days were the wharves and the canal locks. Until long after the Civil War, 10 years or more, the numbered avenues were largely residence streets where dwelt some of Pittsburgh's most reputable people.
Ferry street was largely a residence street also, and Penn avenue from Tenth street to Third street. Liberty avenue below Hare's Hotel had many residences. The hotel and grounds were on the site of the Jenkins Arcade.
Samuel Young was born in Pittsburgh in 1821 and has left us his "Autobiography," published in 1890. He gives us in that book much interesting history of middle-aged Pittsburgh. That is to say, from 1830 until 1847, when he removed from the city.
Mr. Young, always referred to as "Sam," was a veteran editor and author, known as the "Literary Drayman," having followed that avocation in his youth. It was a peculiarity of Sam Young's writings that he always used the pronoun "we" for I, forgetful of the truism accredited to Artemas Ward that the only man entitled to use the first person plural in speaking of himself was the fellow with a tapeworm.
Sam Young recalls in his autobiography the days of his childhood, and always with pleasure. He says, writing in 1890:
In our childhood the town was comparatively small. Along Liberty, Penn and Seventh streets (now avenues) there were many vacant lots. From where the Union Station stands down to the Ross property on Grant street, nearly all was vacant. The face of the hill in Seventh street had only the hotel of Fidelis Bauer as a landmark, and the big tunnel as an evidence of the march of improvement to give the canal an outlet to the Monongahela.
Most of the property in the neighborhood belonged to the Denny estate. It is now all covered with buildings. And beyond to Pennsylvania avenue (now Fifth avenue) was a blank, save for a glass house and a factory.
Fifth avenue from Liberty street to the Court House did not show one neat building, but rows of tumble-down houses that had outlived their usefulness. On this street nearly opposite where the Exchange Bank stands there lived and kept a store Barney Coyle, father of the popular attorney, John Coyle.
At the foot of Penn street still remained the old magazine, a relic of the French sway in this region, and not far from that was the now celebrated Block House of Col. Bouquet.
Bridges then were few and far between. The old Sixth Street and the Monongahela Bridge at Smithfield street were the only ones in those days, while Jones' ferry at the "Point" was the only other way of crossing the Monongahela.
The changes about the city in the last half century are countless. Only those who beheld the scenes of the past can fully realize how vast the difference between then and now. The scenes around the old Court House and Market House in the Diamond are very fresh in my memory.
The magazine was that of Fort Pitt. The French blew up their Fort Duquesne magazines when Forbes came.
The glass house and shot factory have been mentioned and pictured in the story of "Billy" Price. The former was on Washington street and the latter on the Fourth street road, now Fifth avenue, at Price street, now Stevenson.
The Coyles, father and son, are long dead. For many years Attorney John Coyle lived in Minersville.
Mr. Young also describes Liberty street as the city's greatest thoroughfare. It led to the business center in his tender years, then at Third and Market street, and Liberty street, now a fine street of retail stores, it may be noted, has been a thriving thoroughfare since the days of the Conestoga wagons.
It is easy to place the business section as Mr. Young first knew it. Its transition and progress have been a source of wonder to those who have been permitted to be contemporaneous and view the changes of years.
Sam Young, when a boy, resided with his parents in Garrison alley, below Liberty street. An old frame house stood at the corner of Penn in which a school was conducted by a man named White.
Five doors above Garrison alley, Mr. Young says, the family of William B. Foster resided when Young attended this school. He speaks of his long acquaintance with the Foster boys, and names William B., Jr., Stephen C., Dunning and Morrison, and mentions also Morrison Foster's visits to Young at Zelienople, where Young published the Connoquennessing Valley News, about 1878.
Morrison Foster in his "Biography" of Stephen mentions another brother, Henry Baldwin Foster, who went with Morrison to New York and brought Stephen's body to Pittsburgh for interment at his death in 1864.
Young says that the home of Maj. Denny at Market and Third streets was still standing when Young wrote (1890). If so it escaped the big fire, which took a diagonal course across the block between Ferry street, Third avenue and Market street and Second avenue, and many of us can remember the building if standing as late as 1890, and recall also that it had been remodeled and burned down some years afterward.
In the early '30s Pittsburgh received some notice from a distinguished traveler. This was when Sam Young was a boy of 12.
Tyrone Powers, a celebrated Irish actor of those years, visited this city in 1833 during his American tours and on his return followed the unwritten law of travelers of his day, recording their "impressions of America," and used that title.
He was much "impressed" with Pittsburgh. He mentions the smoke clouds that overhung the city, the hills already denuded of their trees, and the inhabitants alert and full of business.
His description [sic], however, run to land and people and ris [sic] experiences, and are held by some writers to be a "perfect antidote for Charles Dickens' 'American Notes.'" They are extremely interesting.
Most visitors to Pittsburgh, however, are strong on river and steamboats in their descriptions and the Ohio is a much-written-up stream. When it is remembered that steamboat travel was luxurious and palatial compared with the stage coach, and swift compared with the canalboat, this mention of our commercial development is not strange.
The rivers brought trade and helped as much as any natural aid could help to make Pittsburgh. They have not altogether ceased.
The eight-foot stage to Cairo is or is not an iridescent dream from various stages of somnolence—and then there is the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Canal, much longer "a-bornin'" and as longinly [sic] looked for and fully believed "a-comin'."
Passing over many accounts we come to William E. Lyford's. He wrote up Pittsburgh in his "Western Address Directory," published in Baltimore, Md., in 1836. Lyford went largely into history and statistics.
Best suited to our purpose today is his prediction, made standing on the Bluff and looking over the little city spread out under his feet. He said:
Here must be a great and flourishing city; the hills will be reduced and the valleys filled and where now stand dwellings on Penn, Liberty and some others of the Court street will be stores and warehouses and Grant's, Body's [sic] and Quarry Hills will be come the onlly [sic] sites for the erection of the domiciles of the then people.
If no revolution other than the seasons occur in the meantime, it will require but a few years to verify this prediction.
Quarry Hill is the hill along the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks, Grant's Hill has gone. We knew it best as the "Hump." Boyd's Hill, formerly called Ayres' is yet with us. Its future in a business way can not be said to promise great things.
Quarry Hill we call simply the "Hill"—Wylie avenue way. Its main streets, Wylie and Center avenues, are rapidly developing into streets of retail business, entirely. Many old residences having been changed by having store fronts put in. These streets, Outer Fifth avenue, or the avenue beyond the downtown bend, and Forbes street are undergoing the changes that the older streets downtown experienced years ago. Where thousands dwelt below Washington street in 1840, there are today but few.
Sherman Day was here in 1840, or prior to that date. At any rate he follows the stereotyped description of Pittsburgh in his "Historical Collections of Pennsylvania," published that year. He says:
The alluvial bottom on which the city is built is quite limited; for immediately back of it, and at less than a mile from the point, rises Grant's Hill (on which the courthouse stands), with Ayre's Hill on the west and Quarry Hill on the east of Grant's.
At the foot of these hills there extends up the Allegheny a strip of alluvial land about a quarter of a mile wide, on which the suburb of Bayardstown is built; and on the Monongahela side a still narrower margin.
The city is rapidly pushing its eastern limits on to the sides and summits of these hills. Grant's Hill is already occupied. Opposite to Pittsburgh, on a beautiful plain on the north bank of the Allegheny, is the large city of Allegheny; below it a mile or two is the more rural village of Manchester; while on the other side of Pittsburgh, across the Monongahela, the smoky street of Sligo, with its noisy manufactories, is nestled under the high precipice of Coal Hill; and about two miles above Sligo, where the alluvial bottom spreads out wider, lies the large manufacturing town of Birmingham.
All these villages may be considered as belonging to and forming part of one great manufacturing and commercial city.
Day quotes the editor of the Wheeling Times, in speaking of the visit of a board of inquiry to Pittsburgh in 1841 for the purpose of selecting a site for the United States Marine Hospital, as saying, concerning the prospect from this hill:
This board found Pittsburgh a much larger place than Wheeling; they found it a thriving place, with numerous engines, furnaces and machinery; they found it with a rich and industrious population—a people that would work and would therefore prosper—at the same time they found them an hospitable, gentlemanly class of beings, possesseed [sic] of intelligence and willing to impart it.
They doubtless took an early excursion upon the hills that environ the city. They looked down and a sea of smoke lay like the clouds upon Chomgorazo's base. No breath of air moved its surface; but a sound rose from its depths like the roar of Niagara's waters, or the warring of the spirits in the cavern of storms. They looked around them and saw no signs of life or human habitation. They looked above them, and the summer sun, like a haughty warrior, was driving his coursers up the Eastern sky.
Then from the sea of smoke a vapor rose—another and another cloud rode away, and a speck of silvery sheen glittered in the sunbeams.
Again, a spirit came into view, pointing heavenward its long, slim finger; then a roof—a housetop—a street! and lo! a city lay like a map spread out by magic hand and 10,000 busy martals [sic] were seen in the pursuit of wealth, of fame, of love and fashion. On the left a noble river came heaving onward from the wilderness of the north, bearing on its bosom the treasures of the forest. On the right, an unassuming but not less useful current quietly yielded to the vessel's prow that bore from a more genial soil the products of the earth.
They looked again, and extending downward through fertile and cultivated vales, checkered with gently swelling hills, they saw the giant trunk formed by the union of these two noble branches.
Ruffling its mirrored surface, they saw the noble steamer leaping like the panting courser, bearing a rich burden from the far, sunny South; another, gathering strength and rolling onward to commence its long journey past fertile fields, high hills, rich and flourishing cities, and forests wide and drear, bearing the handwork of her artisans to Mississippi, Texas, Mexico, the groves of India and the hills of Pernambuco—nay, to every land to which the sun in its daily course gives light.
Such they saw Pittsburgh; and as such as a citizen of the West, we are proud of her.
Quite a pleasant example of old time "fine writing," especially pleasing in the characterization of Pittsburgh people. No doubt true and written with a spirit of envy.
The old Marine Hospital was located in the district we know now as Woods Run, the site a little above the present penitentiary buildings. It stood alone as late as 1870 in the middle of a big lot, with a beautiful view up and down the river.
With the decadence of steamboating it became tenantless and was abandoned.
Evidently descriptions of this decade 1830–1840 can be extended indefinitely. They are always interesting for folks who now like to read the story of our city's growth.
It certainly was a queer old town, a busy contented town.
George Armor came to Pittsburgh from Carlisle in 1836. He first secured a dwelling house on Ferry street. When the first Monongahela House was built, about 1840, he secured a store room for his tailor shop. This was on the corner of Front street, now First avenue. This property was burned April 10, 1845, in the "Big Fire."
When Mr. Armor purchased the Ferry street property he could have bought for less money a property on Fifth street, now avenue, but that was considered too far uptown. It was far beyond the business district, a muddy, unpaved street running into a steep hill.
William G. Armor, son of George Armor, states that in his boyhood the city limits did not extend beyond Ross street. Grant's Hill was a small mountain at least 30 feet higher than the grade of Fifth avenue before the last hump cut. The hill was covered with grass and trees.
Mr. Armor refers to that part of the hill now occupied by the Frick and Carnegie Buildings, the second court house having been completed and occupied about 1841, and the hill on that side of Grant street having been previously leveled off, but not graded down to the street levels.
The hill on that square was not finally graded away until the erection of the present court house was begun in 1884.
The late James Owens, a well-known citizen during his long residence here, came to the city in 1845. He relates that about that time a large building on Fifth avenue was built by a merchant named Mason for a dry goods store, but even then it was so remote from the center of the trade district that people would not go so far through the muddy streets and Mason failed for want of business.
This building was later purchased by George R. White, who remodeled it and it became a successful retail dry goods store until the late 70s, conducted under the last firm name, White, Orr & Co.
This was on Fifth avenue, not quite in the middle of the block between Market and Wood streets, on the East side.
Controller Morrow has many interesting reminiscences of his boyhood spent on lower Fifth avenue. He recalls the Second Presbyterian Church that stood on the site of the Reymer Building and the adjoining houses. This was previous to the removal of the church to Penn and Irwin streets, now Sandusky street, and formerly Seventh street.
Mr. Morrow recalls an imposing block two stories high that stood on Fifth avenue across from the church, known as Ryan's Block. Residents of that section used to sit out on their doorsteps on summer evenings and sniff the sweet odor of a soap factory that stood in the middle of the block between Market and Broad streets.
There were soap factories downtown for many years after that. As late as 1881 one was on the site of the morgue.
The factories that once did the smoking in the downtown district have gone. The old rolling mill at Duquesne way and Tenth street is one of the last remaining; Reese's shops on Duquesne way another.
The Point district has long been cleared of manufacturing plants. The mills on Second avenue, the steel works at Ross street and First avenue, the Novelty Works at Grant street and Second avenue, the Variety Works on Diamond alley above Cherry, are all gone, mostly burned.
Middle-aged persons can easily recall any and all of these works mentioned.
The days of manufacturing with bituminous coal as a fuel in downtown Pittsburgh is a memory now.
The picture of Pittsburgh shown today is from a sketch by A. R. Wand, a celebrated Civil War time artist. The picture appears in "Picturesque America," a high-class art work published in 1876.
The log cabin in Fourth avenue and Gen. Richard Butler's house on Third street, formerly Marbury, were described in last week's story.
The warehouse and old tavern subsequently a dwelling, both on Water street below the grade of the approaches to the Point Bridge, will be remembered by many. They were very old.
The house at 72 Water street stood for nearly a century. In 1888 it was the oldest house in Pittsburgh.
Maj. Denny's residence is shown as it appeared prior to 1888.
The two Wood street stores will also be familiar and recall the tragedy of the Willey building January 8, 1887, or within a day of that date.
The Wood street stores occupied as a book store were entirely destroyed when the Willey building was blown over on them.