Father Pitt

Tag: Monongahela River

  • Night Scene on the Monongahela

    “Night Scene on the Monongahela River Near Pittsburgh, Pa., Showing a Portion of the Plants of the Pittsburgh Steel Co.” A striking view from a booklet published by the Pittsburgh Steel Company in 1911.

  • Station Square from Across the River

    A large panorama (click on it to see it at full size) of Station Square in the winter as seen from across the Monongahela. The bluff of Mount Washington lowers behind, with the Monongahela Incline at the left of the picture.

  • Panhandle Bridge

    An outbound Blue Line car heads toward Station Square on the Panhandle Bridge, an old railroad bridge repurposed, along with the railroad tunnel under downtown, for the subway in the 1980s.

  • Hot Metal Bridge

    This rehabilitated pair of bridges gets its name from the fact that the downstream span was used to transport hot metal across the river between the two sections of the giant J&L steel plant. The upstream span (which technically used to be the Monongahela Connecting Railroad Bridge) is now open to automobile traffic; the downstream span is reserved for bicycles.

    Although official records spell this “Hot Metal Bridge,” it is always pronounced “Hotmetal Bridge,” with the accent on the first syllable.

  • Birmingham Bridge

    This is a lot of bridge for its location. It was originally meant to carry an expressway that would connect Oakland with the South Hills, merrily destroying huge tracts of city along the way. Fortunately this is the only part of it that was built. In the picture below you can see, in the lower right corner, the stub of an entrance ramp that was never completed.