Graeme Street

Graeme Street
Neighborhood	Central Business District
Origin of name	Graeme Stewart, character in "The Head of Iron"
➤ Union Street (ca. 1800 – 1910)

Graeme Street, from Fifth Avenue to the northwest corner of Market Square (see Market Place), was not part of George Woods' original plan of Pittsburgh in 1784, but it was created as Union Street shortly thereafter. An 1807 advertisement in the Pittsburgh Gazette offered for sale "Two brick houses, & lots, Situate on Union Street and the Diamond, and on the same range with George Stevenson's tavern." The 1819 directory of James M. Riddle and M. M. Murray, in its street listing, includes "Union street, from the N. W. corner of the Diamond to 5th street." "The Diamond" or Diamond Square was today's Market Square, so called because of its shape. Other markets in the city were also called diamonds, such as the Allegheny Diamond (today's Allegheny Commons). Through the latter half of the nineteenth century, the western side of the Diamond was considered part of Union Street, but by the beginning of the twentieth century the perimeter of the Diamond had become known as North, East, South, and West Diamond Streets.

The name Union probably referred to the United States. In 1923, Annie Clark Miller wrote, "The street names Liberty, Union, Congress, Federal, Penn and Webster are reminiscent of the patriotic spirit of the early times." However, it is likely that she was referring to Union Avenue on the North Side (today's Union Place).

In 1910, over 900 streets were renamed to eliminate duplicates. Both Diamond Square and the Allegheny Diamond were bounded by streets named North, East, South, and West Diamond Streets, so both sets of streets were renamed. Since Union Street was viewed as an extension of West Diamond Street, it was renamed along with it to Graeme Street. The other streets around the Diamond were renamed Byng, Drummond, and Marjorie: these are all characters in an obscure 1908 historical novel, "The Head of Iron," written by Pittsburgh journalist Burd Shippen Patterson for the sesquicentennial celebration of John Forbes' 1758 founding of Pittsburgh (see Market Place). Graeme Street is named for the main character, Graeme Stewart, partly inspired by Hugh Mercer, for whom Mercer Street is named. Patterson was the secretary of the Western Pennsylvania Historical Society and was consulted by Robert Clark, the Pittsburgh deputy city clerk, in the process of choosing the new street names.

George T. Fleming assumed that Graeme Street was named for Dr. Graeme, "a member of Gov. Denny's council, and the father-in-law of Lieut.-Col. Joseph Shippen, who served on the staff during the [Forbes] expedition."

Just four years later, in 1914, the streets around the perimeter of Market Square, including the part of Graeme Street that had been West Diamond Street, were renamed Market Place. But the segment of Graeme Street from Fifth Avenue to the northwest corner of Market Square still carries that name today.

See also

• Union Street, for other streets that have had that name