Eighth Street

For other streets that have been named Eighth Street, see Eighth Street (disambiguation).

Eighth Street
Neighborhood	Central Business District
Origin of name	Sequential numbering up the Allegheny River
➤ Irwin's Alley (1810s – ca. 1875)
Origin of name	James Irwin
➤ Hancock Street (mid-1840s – 1868)
Origin of name	John Hancock
➤ Ellesmere Street (1910–1914)
Origin of name	Perhaps Ellesmere Island

George Woods' 1784 plan of Pittsburgh included an unnamed alley running from Liberty Street (today's Liberty Avenue) to the Allegheny River between Irwin Street (today's Seventh Street) and Hand Street (today's Ninth Street). James M. Riddle's 1815 Pittsburgh directory lists Irwin's Alley between Irwin and Hand Streets, and it also appears as Irwin's Alley in the 1830 map of Barbeau and Keyon.

The name may refer to James Irwin, who is listed in the 1815 directory as a carpenter on the west side of Penn Street (today's Penn Avenue) between Irwin and Hand Streets, i.e., at the location of this alley. (Compare nearby Cecil Place, Barkers Place, Scott Place, and Maddock Place, which were similarly named for people living at those locations.) James Irwin was mentioned in a letter from Isaac Craig to James O'Hara, dated June 12, 1797, as the carpenter building the first glassworks in Pittsburgh. Note that Irwin Street was named for John Irwin, a Revolutionary War hero (see Irwin Avenue), so it seems unlikely that Irwin Street and Irwin's Alley were named for the same person.

Other similar alleys (Cecil Place, Barkers Place, and Garrison Place) remained of minor importance, but Irwin's Alley was unique—its location directly across Liberty Street from Wood Street meant that it could be part of a link between the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. The portion of Irwin's Alley from Penn Street to Duquesne Way (today's Fort Duquesne Boulevard) was opened as Hancock Street in the mid-1840s to provide access to the Allegheny Wharf, perhaps with such a link in mind. This street was named after John Hancock (1737–1793).

In 1850, a petition signed by Pittsburgh citizens was submitted to the Pennsylvania legislature asking for the passage of an act to open Hancock Street between Penn and Liberty Streets to complete the link. The petition read, in part:

[O]wing to the unfortunate original Law of the said City, no one of its streets connects directly the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers, as all of said streets might have done. This radical defect of intercommunication, although universally felt and deplored, is now beyond general remedy. But it so happens that near the middle of the City, and of course where most desirable, one thorough avenue can yet be perfected. Wood street commencing on the Monongahela, extends to Liberty st., opposite Irwin's Alley, now but twenty feet wide, for two hundred and forty feet to Hancock street, which, by the commendable liberality of the adjacent property holders, has been opened as a street. All that is now necessary, is legislative provision for opening said alley, and thus connecting Wood and Hancock streets and through them both said way by an almost direct line across, and through the heart of said City, its trade and business.

This effort was led primarily by John F. Perry, a wholesale grocer who had moved his business to Hancock Street in 1849, and his lawyer T. J. Bigham. The act was passed by the legislature, authorizing a committee of appointed assessors to determine the damages that would be caused by widening the street and to assess those damages against properties that would benefit. However, when the report of the assessors was delivered, public opinion (including many signers of the petition) turned against the project, saying that the signatures had been obtained dishonestly and the taxes to be collected for damages had been assessed unfairly. The act of the legislature was soon repealed, and the project was abandoned.

McGowin's maps of 1852 and 1856 show Hancock Street between Penn Street and Duquesne Way, and Irwins [sic] Alley between Penn Street and Liberty Street. These seem to be the last maps in which the name Irwin's Alley appears; later maps generally leave the alley unlabeled.

In 1868, Pittsburgh's modern sequence of numbered streets was created by renaming all the streets perpendicular to the Allegheny River; Hancock Street became Eighth Street. The renaming ordinance did not mention Irwin's Alley. (Eighth Street's origin as an alley is the reason that the Three Sisters bridges—the Roberto Clemente, Andy Warhol, and Rachel Carson Bridges—are on Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Streets, even though they are equally spaced.)

Irwins [sic] Alley was still listed in Thurston & Diffenbacher's 1875 street directory, but it no longer appeared in the 1876 edition. At some point, Eighth Street was extended to Liberty Avenue: Diffenbacher's 1881 street directory lists "Eighth, from Penn ave. to Duquesne way, 4th ward," while the 1882 edition lists "Eighth, from Liberty ave. to Duquesne way, 4th ward." In the Hopkins atlases of 1889, 1900, 1903, and 1910, both parts of the street, on either side of Penn Avenue, are labeled "8th St." But as late as 1903, "Irwin alley" was still in use at least occasionally.

In 1910 a city ordinance renamed over 900 streets, including Third through Ninth Streets. Eighth Street, "from Liberty av. to Duquesne way," was renamed Ellesmere Street. George T. Fleming, writing in 1914, had a low opinion of this apparently arbitrary name, asking, "Who the (word deleted) is Ellsmere [sic]?" He suggested that it might be "a chilly place near the North Pole" (Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic, visited by Robert Peary in his 1906 expedition) or "a novel" (Robert Elsmere by Mrs. Humphry Ward, published in 1888).

In any case, the name Ellesmere Street lasted only four years. In 1914, it was changed back to Eighth Street.

In the late 1990s, the portion of Eighth Street between Penn and Liberty Avenues (i.e., the old Irwin's Alley) was named Tito Way for Tito Capobianco, artistic director of the Pittsburgh Opera.

See also

• Hancock Street (disambiguation), for other streets that have had that name
• Irwin Street, for other streets that have been named Irwin