Source:Vale/content
Now that Old avenue is about to be wiped off the map and become in a few years a mere reminiscence, it is fitting that it get some recognition in an obituary notice.
The adjective significance is slight, so slight that in a more antiquated country the appellation old would be absurd, but in one where we have nothing ancient except rock-ribbed hills, rivers and the monuments of the mound builders, even 40 years' endurance becomes venerable. Old avenue, in its present shape, is only about that age. There are still some people in the flesh who can remember it as a part of an old plank road; others as the city end of the Fourth street road, in the days when upper Diamond street was a part of the hill known as the gravel bank to boys of Controller Morrow's age. It got its name about the time that Fifth avenue was opened to Chatham street and all beyond Miltenberger street and Lippincott's lane was Pitt township.
Jacob A. Keating can remember when the Fourth street road was the only outlet the city had to the region lying in and around Soho, and when his mother, who lived in the Minersville district, was forced frequently to ride home from market in a coal wagon up Coal lane, now Bedford avenue, as there were no public conveyances in that direction.
James Irvin called to mind the days when Old avenue, then a part of the Fourth street road, and a time more recent when it was a part of Pennsylvania avenue and still further back, when it was a portion of the Farmers' and Mechanics' turnpike, that it was a famous democratic stamping ground. The local democracy was not at that time split into factions, fighting like Kilkenny cats, as at present, and Mr. Irvin states that the population did not then enjoy the unenviable notoriety that characterized the thoroughfare at a quite recent date. The people, he states, were generally "poor but honest," and highly respectable.
Until 1849, almost everything east of the canal basin and Tunnel street savored of what the ancients would have termed paganism, and there was still a belief that there were squirrels on Squirrel hill, as, in fact, there were to a limited extent. From this time on the city began to overflow its ancient limits, but very slowly, until about 1861, when Fifth avenue was cut through to Pennsylvania avenue, for the purpose of relieving congestion. The raging canal had become a thing of the past and the land beyond Tunnel street came into the market. The old turnpike gates had been torn down and it seems there had been no gate nearer than the one in the deep hollow at Soho for more than half a century past.
One notable old building was Alexander's tobacco factory, at the corner of Old avenue and Boyd street. Mr. Morrow has a lively recollection of this establishment, as in it he got his first chew of tobacco, and he'll never forget the agony that followed its mastication. In those days an American boy felt as proud when he had inured himself to the weed to such an extent as not to become pale behind the ears when rolling a quid of cavendish or of Baltimore twist around in his mouth as did a Roman youth when first he donned the togavirillis [sic].
Faas' bakery was another celebrated institution. It was located at the corner of Old avenue and High street. Most of the buildings were wood. Councils did not draw the line on wooden buildings as at present. A famous old buttonwood tree stood just east of Gist street. It was headquarters for the line of hacks run by Sam Ward. There were no street cars, but hacks ran to Soho and contiguous districts. Ward announced their arrival by blowing a horn which, when the air was humid, could be heard as far as the Point—in fact all over Pittsburg, which faded into Byardstown [sic] not far from the Union station.
Later, when a street car line was established, Sohoites began to put on airs and to feel that they had got out of the woods. One of Mr. Morrow's recollections is that of N. P. Sawyer riding day after day in a palace car to hold the right of way, about which there was a contention. The car was called a palace car because a small section in front was gorgeously upholstered with plush, suggestive of magnificence half a century ago. The line had one set of tracks with turnouts. Other prominent buildings which will be remembered by older citizens were White's stable, at the corner of Pride street and Fifth avenue, and the Rice and Price houses.
Old avenue got its name because it was a hold-over when the city began to put on airs under the impetus given by the war and inflation, and concluded to have avenues as well as streets. Old avenue was a left-over, Fifth avenue deserted it, and for some reason it was decided to cut the contiguity of Fourth street, and Diamond alley wasn't in its present important situation. As it appeared to belong to the old order of things it was called "Old."
The unenviable notoriety of the thoroughfare came to it naturally. There is an aristocracy among the demi-monde, and as the sisterhood of crime descend in the social scale they must find a lower and a still lower strata. A section slightly east of Old avenue, and extending to Federal street, had long been noted for immorality, and the opening of Fifth avenue extension drove away such characters as Madam Bliss and Eliza Brown. By and by they crowded into Old avenue and its respectable residents very largely moved out, though there has never been a time when it has not had a number of orderly and respectable people as residents.
Old avenue in time became the sedimentary depository of wrecks whose career of crime lasts from 5 to 20 years, generally speaking. It became what yellow row has been to the lower avenues generally during 10 years past—the last ditch where the unfortunates shuffled off the sub-lunar stage. Like those on whom the tower of Silvan fell, however, they were not so very much worse than more respectable criminals and the desperate crimes attributed to them generally exist in the imagination of people who never studied Old avenue or yellow row. Though among the denizens of these places there were generally to be found some things, yet they were, as a class, so terrorized by society which is responsible for their existence that they were generally powerless for harm to any but themselves. They might steal a few dollars from unwary ruralite who thought he was seeing life when he went among them and once in a while one of them might kill some one—they were not able to commit murder in a strictly legal sense—and they were so completely disheartened that the cry of "police" would send them to cover like quail when they hear the shriek of the hawk. There are not two streets between union station and the point which have not been the scene of more murders and robberies than either Old avenue or yellow row in the last 20 years. Amid the squalor in which they lived, it was as impossible to generate deeds of desperation as it would have been to start a home for the fallen. They came there to die and they did die unwept, unhonored and unsung by those who had paid court to them when first their feet were planted on the road to ruin. Many famous beauties among the fallen, who subsequently became acquainted with the police and the police court reporter, could be picked out among the horrid looking hags of Old avenue and yellow row. Those still hanging on to life by their eyebrows are of the vintage of 1885 to 1890, with an occasional one who came on the stage as far back as 1870.
One is tempted to wonder why people nowadays do not take their children to those sedimentary places to each them a moral object lesson, as did the Spartans. It would show them that verily the wages of sin is horrible death.
But the time came when business wanted more room and Old avenue dives were mostly wiped out. The few that are left are in the glare of publicity and they too will be forced to follow ere long. Hardscrabble, within a stone's throw, is ordinarily as well behaved as the average neighborhood. The fact is that the denizens of those supposed plague spots never have any political pull worth speaking of and exhibit fewer orgies than places that consider themselves entitled to respect.
