A small cave and layers of sedimentary rocks in the Saw Mill Run valley, Seldom Seen.
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Ferns in a Stone Wall
Ferns dangle from the cracks between stones in a damp stone wall above Saw Mill Run, next to the Seldom Seen Arch.
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Sun and Shade
Patterns of sun and shade on the rocks in the middle of Saw Mill Run, Seldom Seen, with a railroad bridge in the background.
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Seldom Seen Arch
This fine arched tunnel, stone faced with a brick interior, was built as part of the great Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway boondoggle, one of the boondoggliest boondoggles in a city known for boondoggles.
Just off Saw Mill Run Boulevard is a little parking lot. You have to look for it: it’s on the turnoff to Woodruff Street, and it’s almost invisible till you’re right there. From there you can reach the arch, which is well worth a visit for its own sake. The interior in particular is more interesting than interiors of tunnels usually are. The engineers had fun with this one.
If you walk through the tunnel into the green world beyond, you’ll find that you’re walking on a broad path of gravel and occasional asphalt. This was Watkins Lane, the only way into a little farm village called Seldom Seen, or Shalerville before that. Like a surprising number of isolated bits of the city of Pittsburgh, it remained a farming village, with farming, even into the twentieth century. It was abandoned by some time in the 1960s, and the forest has reclaimed it. We’ll see more of Seldom Seen in the future.
Stream valleys in the Pittsburgh area are valuable as being the only nearly level routes through the landscape, and you will never find a major stream valley without railroad tracks in it. But as we can see here, the Saw Mill Run valley has had three railroads in it at once, one of which is still active.
In the spring Saw Mill Run is often a raging torrent, but it is much more placid in the summer.
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Inbound and Outbound
At the Alfred Street crossing on the Red Line in Mount Lebanon. Above, an inbound Siemens trolley on a training run. Below, an outbound CAF trolley.
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Art Deco Details in Mount Lebanon
Colorful Art Deco ornament on a building in the Washington Road business district, the Pittsburgh area’s most thoroughly Art Deco neighborhood.
These splendid details are on a building that, at first glance, seems utterly undistinguished. A bit of sensitive restoration to the storefronts could emphasize the Art Deco character of the building and make it more of an ornament to its streetscape.
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Washington Road at Alfred Street, Mount Lebanon
Art Deco buildings line Washington Road at Alfred Street, which is about the center of the Uptown business district in Mount Lebanon. (“Uptown” in southwestern Pennsylvania is the common term for a downtown business district that happens to be on a hill.)
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Christ Blessing Arlington
A life-size statue of Christ in St. Paul’s Lutheran Cemetery, Mount Oliver, looks out over the back streets of Arlington.
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Letterbox
A brass letterbox, meticulously polished, in the lobby of the Frick Building. Many buildings downtown have letterboxes like these, with mail chutes coming down from the upper floors.
