South First Street

South First Street
Neighborhood	South Shore
Origin of name	Sequential numbering up the Monongahela River
➤ First Street (until 1881)
Origin of name	Sequential numbering up the Monongahela River

This street appears as First Street in the 1852 map of R. E. McGowin in the easternmost part of the borough of South Pittsburgh. These original numbered streets along the south bank of the Monongahela River, First through Fifth Streets, were the seed of the sequence of numbered streets that today runs from South First Street to South 33rd Street (and formerly as far as South 36th Street).

Origins

First through Fifth Streets were laid out between 1835 and 1845, probably in the first half of the 1840s. These streets do not appear in the 1835 map of Lewis Keyon, which labels this tract of land "Ormsby" (meaning the heirs of Oliver Ormsby, 1767–1832, one of the sons of John Ormsby; see Ormsby Street for more information). Fourth Street appears at the edge of a plan of lots laid out in April 1845, and First, Second, and Third Streets appear at the edge of a plan of lots laid out in November of that year. Samuel Fahnestock's 1850 Pittsburgh directory includes "Millinger [sic] James, planing mill, c[orner] First & Carson, Bir[mingham]." This was the Monongahela Planing Mill, which was established in 1847 and appears in McGowin's 1852 map.

Eastward extension of numbered streets

The borough of South Pittsburgh was incorporated on March 6, 1848; it included First through Fifth Streets. Directly to the east of South Pittsburgh lay the boroughs of Birmingham and East Birmingham. In 1869, the two borough councils continued the pattern by numbering their streets: Birmingham from Sixth to Seventeenth, and East Birmingham from Seventeenth to Twenty-Seventh. In 1871 the borough of Ormsby was laid out, extending the sequence as far as Thirty-Sixth.

Ken McFarland says that these streets were numbered in order to eliminate duplicate street names after the South Side boroughs were annexed by Pittsburgh, but he is mistaken: they were actually numbered a few years before the annexation. (And First through Fifth had been numbered decades earlier.)

Annexation and the "South" prefix

The South Side boroughs were incorporated into the City of Pittsburgh in 1872. In May 1873, City Councils appointed a committee for changing street names to fix duplicates. By September it had been proposed to add the prefix "South" to the numbered streets in the South Side to distinguish them from the ones in the old city; a competing proposal was to letter these streets A, B, C, and so forth. The committee presented its report at the last Council meeting of the year, December 29, 1873: they found there were 128 duplicated street names, not counting alleys. The committee also proposed an ordinance renaming streets, which included adding the prefix "South" to the South Side numbered streets.

But the new year brought new Councils, and the work of 1873 seems to have been mostly forgotten. Another committee was formed to continue the work, but apparently nothing was achieved.

In the meantime, South Side streets were distinguished by saying "South Side" afterward, as in "Thirteenth Street, South Side."

The "South" prefix was finally added to the numbered South Side streets (and duplicate names fixed) by an ordinance in 1881, which established the names of all streets in the city. This ordinance does not directly indicate that it is changing the names of the numbered South Side streets, but evidence demonstrates that it did: J. F. Diffenbacher's 1881 directory (presumably published before the ordinance was passed) lists the South Side streets without the "South" prefix, and the old practice of saying, for example, "Twenty-Fifth Street, South Side," continued in City Councils right up to the final passage of the 1881 ordinance.

See also

• First Street (disambiguation), for other streets that have had that name