This picture was taken a little more than a week ago. Beechview now finds itself suddenly without streetcar service. Some shifting was detected in the Saw Mill Run rail and busway viaduct, and Pittsburghers are in a mood to take defects in bridges very seriously. Until the bridge can be repaired, rail service on the Red Line runs only between Overbrook Junction and Potomac, with shuttle buses covering the rest of the route.
The line between artistic minimalism and dullness is thin and permeable. Which one does this picture represent? You get to decide! Old Pa Pitt intends the single dry leaf as symbolism, and you also get to decide what it symbolizes.
Trolley geeks should stay tuned for a few more pictures in the next few days. This is an inbound CAF trolley approaching the Logan Road stop on the Silver Line in Bethel Park.
A view looking south on what used to be Market Street before PPG Place took it over. The obelisk (or the Tomb of the Unknown Bowler, as Peter Leo liked to call it) is in the middle distance.
The Fallowfield viaduct is one of many engineering works necessary to get the Red Line as far as central Beechview. Its walkway is also a vital pedestrian link—vital enough that a few years ago, when the walkway was closed for repairs, the Port Authority gave free rides between Westfield and Fallowfield.
In addition to taking us from here to there, the walkway gives us interesting treetop-level views of the hilly back streets of this part of Beechview.
Fifth Avenue Place looms over the low human-sized buildings on the Diamond.
Some time ago old Pa Pitt took a picture of this silent-era neighborhood movie theater in the middle of its recent renovation. It is pleasing to see it now nicely finished and home to a video-production company. It has had an eventful and oddly circular history. It was built before 1914, since it appears in a 1914 guide to Pittsburgh (which describes Beechview as “beyond the South Hills,” showing how the definition of “South Hills” has moved with the expansion of the suburbs). After some decades as a theater, it was turned into an American Legion post. Then for a while it became a nursing home. Finally it was renovated as you see it now and brought back to its roots in the movie business.
An update: According to a 1923 map, this was called the Olympic Theater. There were at least three theaters in Beechview in 1923.
Father Pitt is convinced that the developers who laid out the streets in Beechview had never visited the site. Just draw lines north-south and east-west on a map, and you have your streets. Hills? Oh, they can’t be that bad, can they?
Here is Hampshire Avenue viewed from the Red Line streetcar crossing, with Broadway—where the Red Line crosses Hampshire again—at the top of the next hill.
Now converted to luxury apartments as “The Carlyle,” this classical Fourth Avenue bank tower was designed by the firm of MacClure and Spahr. Benno Janssen, who was working at the firm, is said to have had a large part in the design. It opened in 1906. Curiously, the building behind it, the Commonwealth Bank Building, was built at the same time and reached exactly the same height, 300 feet.
