Father Pitt

Why should the beautiful die?


Arlington Avenue, 1968 and Today

Arlington Avenue at the streetcar loop, 1968
Arlington Avenue on March 30, 1968, with Route 48 streetcar coming out of the streetcar loop, by David Wilson from Oak Park, Illinois, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Arlington Avenue was already looking a bit bedraggled in 1968, when David Wilson, a streetcar fanatic who documented the streetcar lines of Pittsburgh with hundreds of pictures, caught the Route 48 car peeking out of the streetcar loop.

Most of the buildings in this picture are still there on Arlington Avenue, but the Arlington business district has mostly been abandoned by business. The storefronts that are not empty have been filled in for apartments.

Arlington Avenue
Buildings on Arlington Avenue

This one, with a much-altered ground floor, is still going as a convenience store. Because the street plan in Arlington is irregular, many of the commercial buildings on Arlington Avenue are odd shapes.

2403 Arlington Avenue
2405 Arlington Avenue

This little storefront has been filled in by a contractor who had no need of a busybody architect to tell him what to do. The original building is a pleasing little composition by someone who might have seen some of the German art magazines that circulated among architects in Pittsburgh.

2439 Arlington Avenue

A little of the Kittanning brick facing has come down from the front of this building, revealing the cheaper ordinary brick behind it.

2439 Arlington Avenue
Canopy with carved brackets
2335 Arlington Avenue
2233 Arlington Avenue
Date stone with the date 1921
2223 Arlington Avenue
2311 Arlington Avenue
2311 Arlington Avenue
2311 Arlington Avenue
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

Now, about that streetcar loop: we’ll be seeing that very soon, because it is still there as well, or at least partly so.

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