Source:Fleming-tustin
George T. Fleming. "Tustin estate now part of city: Tale of three cronies and old homestead goes back to early local history: Soho's proud days." Pittsburgh Gazette Times, Nov. 7, 1915, sec. 5, p. 2. Newspapers.com 85900587.
RECENT articles in these columns have been reminiscent of, and pertained to, the history of the Hill district evoked from the consideration of its main thoroughfares, Wylie and Center avenues. Much other interesting matter could be adduced, for the subject has been but incompletely covered.
Today there will be presented a new phase of Pittsburgh history as evolved from commemorated names in our street nomenclature, and in the story three persons are considered, all of whom have interesting biographies—one a story of absorbing interest.
Two of these commemorated names have been retained; the second of the trio has long since been discarded.
For the two we go to the Soho district. Our street directory furnishes us this information:
Tustin street, from Marion to Brady, First and Fourth Wards.
De Ruad, from Wyandotte to property line, Fourth Ward.
Old directories, especially those published by George H. Thurston before and after the Civil War, give this:
Price street, from Pa. av. to Colwell between Logan and Pride.
This is now part of Stevenson street. Pennsylvania avenue, previously the Fourth Street road, for more than 40 years has been part of Fifth avenue.
James Tustin owned all the land from the river to the hillside to the line of the Yost Ruch property at Wyandotte lane, and between Miltenberger and Soho streets—approximately.
His name has come down to us in Tustin street. He named the district Soho.
Directory makers and street namers have simplified the French name De Rouaud into De Ruad, and it is well, for it found its way into print at [sic] Rowand, Ronand, Ronaud, Rouand, and various other twisted forms.
In newspaper circles it has established a reputation for news items, graded from fair to juicy, running sometimes to two column heads.
It is now a paved street with an imposing row of yellow brick apartment houses facing Fifth avenue, and passing by the despoiled tomb of the rare character whose name it took, Claire Aime Fidele de Rouaud, pioneer silk merchant of Pittsburgh, sausage maker, French refugee, alleged misanthrope, "companion of the devil," deist or pantheist, lover of dogs and nature.
Yet De Rouaud loved some men; notably James Tustin and "Billy" Price. Perhaps others—one the late John Harper, cashier and president of the old Bank of Pittsburgh, N. A. Only his relations with Tustin and Price are pertinent to this story; for these two and De Rouaud were cronies, in a sense "birds of a feather."
Each had his eccentricities, but De Rouaud's reached the verge of mental impairment in the opinion of the rabble of his day.
Tustin was a rare type of a man whose deviations from established deportment were no more than those of ordinary individuals, but "Billy" Price was a character in early Pittsburgh who left a monument to eccentricity in his famous round house mansion which, it will be remembered, stood at Fifth avenue and Price street until about 25 years ago, when it, with the modern mansion erected in front of it, were razed in order to erect the business block that now occupies the site.
Back of the round house extending to Colwell street, was the old foundry of William Price ("Billy") which he called the Berlin foundry, the firm conducting the business known to later generations as Price and Sims.
"Billy" Price was an Englishman and it is not known why he selected the name Berlin. It is a safe prediction that no Englishman will soon again use it in any such way.
He is not a well-informed Pittsburgher of the Hill district and Reisville, that section of Fifth avenue from Pride street to Dinwiddie, who will not remember that it was commonly said that "Billy" Price built his mansion round because he could then be sure the devil would never corner him in his own house.
Tustin, De Rouaud and Price intimates through their long lives, must be taken together in this story. It is not possible to tell of one without frequent reference to the others.
First, something of James Tustin, the Tustin farm and homestead and the Tustin family. And it is well to remember De Rouaud was buried on the Tustin farm.
From manuscript compiled recently by William Henry Sims of Pittsburgh, captioned:
"A history of the Tustin, Reed, Sims and Price families from the heirs now living, and from family and court records, and also a history of De Rouaud," the greater part of today's story has been extracted.
James Tustin was born in London, England, April 12, 1774, and died in Pittsburgh, Pa., July 11, 1853.
He came to this country about 1790, and lived in Philadelphia a short time. While a resident there he married Frances Littlewood, July 4, 1804. Shortly after their marriage the couple came to Pittsburgh.
Frances Littlewood was a widow when she married James Tustin. She had several children to her first husband. A daughter, Betsy Littlewood, married Peter Crolis Cortelyou, grandfather of George Bruce Cortelyou of New York, postmaster general in President Roosevelt's cabinet.
For a few years after his arrival Mr. Tustin wore his native costume, silk stockings, low cut shoes and knee breeches, silver buckles on his breeches and shoes and his hair tied with a queue. His silver buckles are now in possession of his two granddaughters, Miss Jennie G. Reed and Mrs. Sarah F. Sims of Pittsburgh.
Soon after Mr. Tustin's arrival in Pittsburgh he purchased, June 24, 1808, from Anthony Beelen the property where he established his homestead in what was then Pitt township. This property was bounded by Fifth avenue, then the Fourth street road, Soho street and Wyandotte lane. This is north of Fifth avenue.
Shortly afterwards he started to beautify this wild and rugged hillside and build a house. He quarried large quantities of stone on the property and built the house entirely of stone without a cellar, as it was built on solid rock; the bottom of one of the quarries.
The house was about 40 feet front by 35 feet deep, with a center hall, and contained a living room, or parlor and library, on one side of the hall and the dining room on the other. The dining room was about 14 by 32 feet, occupying the entire west side of the house. The kitchen and laundry were in the rear of the main building. There were four bedrooms on the second floor and two finished rooms in the attic.
It required three or four years to complete the house, as it was necessary to quarry the stone and mechanics were scarce in those days, while the facilities for handling building materials were very crude.
It was somewhat of a task to build a rubble stone wall. The ridge of the side gables was between 35 and 40 feet from the ground. Suitable lumber for scaffolding was also very scarce. In 1811 the house was only up to the second story.
The house faced the south and stood 300 or 400 feet back from Fifth avenue, opposite Seneca street, about half way up the hill between Fifth avenue and Wyandotte lane. The house thus elevated afforded a beautiful view in all directions. It was torn down when De Rouaud street was opened in 1903.
This part of Mr. Tustin's estate was acknowledged at the time to have been the most beautiful place in Pittsburgh.
Mr. Tustin, most naturally, built the house and other buildings and laid out the grounds around with a series of walls, hedges, terraces, etc., after the English idea. All shrubs, trees and small fruits he imported from England.
The methods employed and the manner of construction of this old-time mansion vary so greatly from those of today that architects and builders will read of them with interest. Most any builder will call it good work.
The walls were 24 inches thick, built of rubble stonework and the outside was plastered and scored off into squares. The plaster was very thick and had small pebbles and iron scales from his forge mixed with it, which made a beautiful and artistic effect.
Prior to 1879, when the house was remodeled by building a porch in front and a mansard roof, it consisted of two stories and an attic of the colonial type, with two gables on each side, the large chimneys coming up at the center of each gable. There were two columns at the front door and wide stone steps. The windows had small panes of glass, 12 panes to each window.
All the sash, outside wood cornice, columns, etc., were painted white, and this, with the dark gray plaster outside, speckled with black or brown from the iron scales in the mortar, made the effect most pleasing.
All outside doors were made exceptionally strong. They were batten doors, made by using wide beaded boards, set vertically for the outside, and same kind of boards set horizontally on the inside and held together with large-headed nails, driven from the outside clear through and were clinched on the inside.
The hinges were strap hinges and clinched in the same manner and the locks were brass knobs on latches on all the doors except the front door, which had a hand-made lock with a large key and brass knobs. These keys were 6¾ inches long.
A night key of this size and weight, while rather unhandy to carry around, would doubtless yet subserve a useful purpose—especially to those persons who have trouble in finding the key hole.
This lock and three keys are now owned by William Henry Sims and are shown in the pictures today.
The inside doors had hand-made fast-pin hingles [sic]. The screws holding these hinges in place were blunt, not having any points on them. The casing around all the windows was paneled and moulded with beaded edge.
The girders supporting the floors were made from large oak trees, on the ground, hewed off on top and resting on stone piers. The rafters were long pine trees hewed off on the upper side so they could be brought up to a line to nail the sheathing to, and they were fastened together at the ridge, or top, with locust pins. The roof was covered with split oak shingles.
The partitions were mortised and tenoned into the girders and sills. The flooring was wide tongued and grooves [sic] clear white pine, not secret nailed, but nailed twice at each bearing with hand made nails, made at Mr. Tustin's forge. The nails were all well countersunk.
The fire places were large, with high colonial mantels. The one in the living room had a hand-made wrought iron grate, the bars running horizontally and rounding out, and had brass balls on each side. This grate is now in the possession of Mr. Sims, just as it was removed from the chimney in 1879.
Back of the main building was a large kitchen, one story high. It had a large open fire place with a crane, an oven, with ash pit under hearth, a large coal and wood bin, and a stone floor. In one corner stood a cupboard, and opposite the fire place was the kitchen dresser. Both were painted a light gray and penciled in blue. On top of the dresser were kept yellow and blue bowls and blue dishes.
From the kitchen one could enter a cave that was built in the bank, walled up and arched over with stone. This cave took the place of a cellar for keeping vegetables, etc., and five or six feet from the western outside kitchen door there was a similar cave with a never failing spring. The water from this spring was exceptionally pure and flowed into a large wooden trough hewn from the trunk of a tree.
Over the kitchen and spring house doors hung an English jasmine vine. A short distance from the spring house was the smoke house.
On the east side of the kitchen the door opened into another vine-covered yard paved with irregular stone. At the end of this yard was the cistern for filtered rain water, used for all purposes except cooking.
In front of the house some 50 or more feet beyond the driveway was a circular wall about eight feet high in the center and tapered down to about two feet on each end. English gooseberry bushes covered and hung down over the top of the wall and back of these were large clumps of peonies, phlox, iris, sweet william and roses. Directly in front of the face, or at the bottom of the wall, close up against it, grew hollyhocks in a great variety of colors.
The driveway from Fifth avenue up to the house and around to the east side continued on to the picturesque fruit house and cave, just below De Rouaud's tomb. This driveway extended on around the hill to the Yost Ruch property, a distance of fully 600 feet.
On the east side of the house there were built seven or eight heavy stone walls, running from 300 to 350 feet in length and from 8 to 12 feet high, forming terraces from 20 to 30 feet wide. On top of several of these walls were planted English gooseberry bushes of different varieties and growing against the other walls were choice grape vines. As the walls neared the house they were covered mostly with the old-fashioned red honeysuckle, roses, jasmine vines and many other shrubs and vines.
The wall near De Rouaud's tomb and forming the front of the vault where James Tustin was buried was covered with English ivy. On top of thi swall and surrounding De Rouaud's tomb was a boxwood hedge and here and there, in close proximity to the tomb and vault, were red cedar and arbor vitae trees and several large pear trees.
Just below the tomb on the large driveway was the stone fruit house. From the driveway one entered a cave walled up and arched over with stone. This cave was about 20 feet long or deep by 12 feet wide.
Above this cave was a second story partly built in the hill, but it could be entered on a level from one of the upper terraces, as all the walls had stone steps which lead [sic] from one terrace to the other.
One hundred feet or more east of the fruit house, down from the driveway, was the stable, built of clapboards with shingle roof.
On top of nearly all the terraces and over the entire property of 11 acres there were planted in systematic manner 18 or more varieties of the English standard pear trees and many apple, peach and quince trees.
There were many smaller fruits, and below the driveway and some distance around the hill from the fruit house, stood a large mulberry tree. Near this was a great hedge of lilac bushes, fully 80 or 90 feet long and from 12 to 16 feet high.
Just back of De Rouaud's tomb, on top of a wall that rounded at the foot of the upper driveway, there was a summer house covered with vines and commanding a very fine view of the Monongahela River.
Some distance away from the summer house and close against the fence dividing the Tustin and Yost Ruch properties was a rustic summer house on a shady flat, built of cedar posts, over which wild grape vines twisted.
James Tustin's forge stood nearly opposite Moultrie street, above Fifth avenue. He manufactured various kinds of machinery and tools, such as hatchets, hammers and the like. He also made tomahawks, which were sold to the Indians.
Mr. Tustin called his forge and the estate "Soho," after Soho in England, where he learned his trade.
Mr. Tustin had the distinction of building the first engine for the celebrated New Orleans, the first steamboat that ran on Western waters, built at Pittsburgh in 1811.
The following facts were obtained from Miss Jennie G. Reed and Mrs. Sarah F. Sims a few days ago from certain fixed dates and from the stories they heard their mother, Mrs. Ann Tustin Reed, and James Tustin, their grandfather, himself relate.
The engine for the New Orleans was ordered by Nicholas Roosevelt and Robert Fulton from James Tustin, who was a long time in the building, as it was made mostly by hand. It was installed on the New Orleans, which lay on the Monongahela River near the present Lock No. 1.
The only recompense he ever received was to see the engine working on the trial trip of the boat for a short distance up and down the river. When Mr. Tustin went to the river to see the boat depart for the South he was amazed and dumfounded to find it gone, without a word of explanation or a penny in payment.
Although he made all the inquiries and search that were possible in those days he never received any word as to the whereabouts of either Nicholas Roosevelt, Robert Fulton or the New Orleans and they seemed to have dropped into oblivion. He was greatly discouraged and disheartened, so much so that he closed up his forge and workshop. He became very ill—a nervous breakdown—and his shop remained closed for more than a year.
These facts were not recited in the ample accounts published at the centennial celebration of the New Orleans in November, 1911, at Pittsburgh.
From S. Johns' [sic] Directory of Pittsburgh, 1826, in his description of boats and boating of that day, we find the following:
The steamer New Orleans, 400 tons, was built by Mr. Fulton of New York. She ran between New Orleans and Natchez for about two years when she was wrecked near Baton Rouge.
James Tustin was buried in the vault near De Rouaud's tomb, but his remains were lifted and taken to his daughter's (Mrs. Reed's) lot in Allegheny Cemetery, November 19, 1887, by William Henry Sims, his great grandson. Part of the old vault is still visible.
At Mr. Tustin's death he devised the homestead property to his only daughter, Ann Tustin, who married Ralph Reed of Virginia, and the Reeds lived in the Tustin homestead during their entire lives.
Ralph Reed was born in Virginia November 17, 1811, and died at Pittsburgh July 21, 1869. Mrs. Reed was born in the old homestead December 31, 1813, and died in the same house November 6, 1881.
The other portion of the James Tustin estate, which was south of Fifth avenue and known as Tustin's orchard, began about half way between Seneca and Jumonville streets and extended out Fifth avenue to Madison street, now Moultrie street, and from Fifth avenue to the Monongahela River.
In later years on the bank of the river two of Mr. Tustin's sons, Reuben and James, Jr., operated two large saw mills.
This tract, after the death of James Tustin, Sr., was divided among his sons, Reuben, William and James, Jr. It included what is now Forbes street, Tustin street, Bluff street and Second avenue, and the enclosed blocks down to the Monongahela River, with a large frontage along the river, containing about nine acres.
Adjoining the eastern line of the homestead property on Fifth avenue was the old toll gate at the head of Brady street. The toll gate was at the end of the old stone bridge that spanned the Two-Mile Run, or Yellow Run, as it was originally called, over Fifth avenue, or the Fourth street road.
Mr. Tustin gave a knoll that was situated on what is now the southwest corner of Forbes and Seneca streets as a burial ground for poor people who could not afford to pay for a grave in any cemetery. Some of the bodies buried there were never disinterred.
The body of a colored man created a great deal of curiosity at the time of its burial, as he was the first colored person to be buried in that suburb of the city.
The photographs of the old homestead and the fruit house shown today were taken for William Henry Sims in November, 1885; photographs of De Rouaud's tomb and several other views of the old place were taken in October, 1886.
The boy seated on the porch of the homestead is the son of Controller Morrow, whose wife was a daughter of Hugh and Ann Tustin Reed.
