You might think this was a building that had been abandoned a century ago and somehow pickled in an unusually intact state (though a few bricks have crumbled off the top). But in fact the Allegheny Auto Spring Co. is still in business, still serving the people who need auto springs and need them done well. The painted signs are legible, so why replace them? Thus we have a glimpse of the Pittsburgh of the early automobile age surviving into the twenty-first century.
The building itself predates the current business. It was probably built in the 1890s; in the early 1900s it appears on old maps marked “Wisconsin Granite Co. Lessee”; in 1910 it is marked “Paint Whs.”; and in 1923 “Thompson & Co.” Old Pa Pitt does not know when the Allegheny Auto Spring Co. moved in, but it has to have been a couple of generations ago at the latest.
One response to “Allegheny Auto Spring Co., North Side”
I used to purchase springs (and other things) for a local steam turbine manufacturer. Springmakers were some of my favorite to visit because of the wonderful old machinery that many still operated (and continue to do so). Until fairly recently, automated spring making machines were contained a series of rotating cams which controlled the extrusion, angle, cutoff, etc. These cams were carefully planned by a draftsman and cut by a skilled machinist before being stacked in the spring maker. Modern machines are controlled electronically, of course, but you’ll still find some of the older type, though their numbers do continue to decline every year with no sign of bouncing back.