Source:What-might-have-been/content
If all things were fixed right from the beginning we would miss a lot of health provoking excitement. If the old worthies whom we delight to commemorate, the ones who butted into the situation at the forks of the Ohio lang syne and changed Fort Duquesne to Pittsburgh, had been foresighted they might have headed off controversy as to whether it should be Beechwood or William Pitt boulevard, if they had been so disposed. But if they had done so and if all things had been so ordered when the world or the community was young as to obviate differences of opinion in the present a lot of us would be very unhappy—would hardly consider life worth living even on the family washday when there is no peace on earth. But the Englishmen who chased out the French did not and could not look into the far future and see how members of the Western Pennsylvania Historical Society and the mayor of a great city and residents along a great thoroughfare were going to feel about it, or in the goodness of their hearts they might have taken time from their other employments to run out and plant a few beech trees in the primeval forest where they would do the most good, or they might have provided for monumenting the situation in favor of Willim [sic] Pitt in a manner which did not occur to them.
The anti-Beechwood orators wax eloquent on the theme that there are no beech trees along the highway, but towering above that is their complaint that unless the boulevard be called in his honor William Pitt is not given the right sort of a show and is likely to be forgotten in this community. The proponents of Beechwood might ask where are the William Pitts along the boulevard and why, even with a celebration of a hundred years of peace threatening to rob Fourths of July of the tail twisting joys we have known, should the community to go further to honor his memory when the city is Pittsburgh? No doubt the proper answer to this is that the charter name does not make the intention unmistakably clear. There are coal pits and also pit bosses in this region and Pittsburgh might have been named in honor of one or other of them as a tribute to industry. So, to demonstrate that we know our history, and to make it clearer to rank outsiders as well as to show proper appreciation of a great Briton, William Pitt should remain blazoned along the windings of a boulevard which made its bow in municipal history as Beechwood. What's in a name? A whole lot, it seems. There is importance even in a letter in a name, as witness our insistence upon having the h at the end of Pittsburgh.
It is clear at this distance from their time that the men who put Fort Duquesne out of business and substituted for it Pittsburgh were practical men of their day, concerned for their immediate present and the near future rather than the things that would stir the sentiment and imagination of posterity. Also they were believers in brevity and no proponents of polysyllabic nomenclature. Furthermore, it is clear now that they were less concerned for the perpetuation of the name of Pitt in the political geography of the continent than are some of us of today. If they could have foreseen how the historical society and the mayor were going to feel about it they might have done better than they did and this magnificent city at the forks of the Ohio might as well have been William Pittsburgh as what it is. But then would we have had this Beechwood–William Pitt boulevard controversy to enliven a dull season between May moving and fly swatting time?
However, all's well that ends well, or all's well when there's an end. The veto of the mayor has been overridden by council and the boulevard is to be Beechwood. William Pitt's proponents may content themselves that the city, at least, commemorates their favorite, though perhaps not in that clear, loud mouthful they might wish.
