The Wabash Railroad built this picturesque structure to carry its line over Saw Mill Run and the little lane that led back into the village of Seldom Seen.
Father Pitt
Why should the beautiful die?
Seldom Seen Arch
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0 responses to “Seldom Seen Arch”
Now I am dying to know how a place got the name seldom seen.
Old Pa Pitt says that he has not worked that out. It was called Shalerville (or Shalersville) in the 1800s; at some point near the beginning of the 1900s, when Beechview was developed on the hill above it, it began to be called Seldom Seen. It certainly was seldom seen: there was only one way in, which after 1902 was through the arch. Since there was no outlet, almost no one who did not live there came into the place. It was still a rural village, though surrounded by city neighborhoods. But the last house was abandoned at some point in the 1960s—probably because Saw Mill Run had become a festering open sewer because of all the city neighborhoods built along it. (It’s much cleaner now.) The old homesites are still visible to anyone who knows how to detect old homesites.