Father Pitt

Tag: Railroads

  • The Blue Elephant

    Manor Building
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Very few people pay any attention to the Manor Building. It would be a large building except for the fact that it lives against a backdrop of much larger buildings, so its blackish bulk—which was originally blue—makes little impression in the postcard view of Pittsburgh from Mount Washington. But it has an interesting history.

    The building was announced in 1955; the design was by Wyatt C. Hedrick of Fort Worth.1 The owner was the Pennsylvania Railroad, which was investing heavily in real estate. Executives noticed that Pennsy stations often sat on valuable land in expensive business districts. Why should all that value go to waste when you can build upward and profit from rentals? “Utilization of the air rights over railroad property where the property is strategically located in Downtown areas is becoming more prevalent,” the Press reporter noted when this building was announced.

    That was what was going on here. For a long time the Pennsylvania had had a small commuter station here—the Fourth Avenue station. It was at the mouth of the tunnel that is now used by the subway. The station itself was a small building and a couple of platforms, but the land had become very valuable. So the plan was to build three floors of parking garage, and then ten floors of offices above the garage. There would still be a station in the basement. It should have been a profitable scheme.

    From the beginning, however, there seemed to be a curse on the building. “It suffered one delay after another while being built,” said a Post-Gazette story in 1961.2 “Then, after finally being completed in 1958, it was tied up for a year by litigation involving the contractor.”

    By the time it was ready for renters, the building was notorious. People called it the Blue Elephant—and nobody wanted to move in.

    Not until 1961 did the building overcome its jinx and begin to fill up. After that it prospered. By the next year, it was completely filled.

    So there you have the story of the Blue Elephant, and now that you have heard it, perhaps you will notice the building the next time you pass it on the Crosstown Boulevard or go under it on the subway. Then you will forget it again, because it does not make much of an impression on the skyline.

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  • East Busway at East Liberty Station

    East Busway at East Liberty station, with railroad

    The busways in Pittsburgh are built mostly along old railroad right-of-way, and most of the stations are placed very near where the old commuter-rail stations stood. The Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway is unique in that the railroad still runs next to it; space for the busway came from the abandonment of extra parallel tracks on the busy Pennsylvania Railroad main line. Above, an outbound bus stops at the East Liberty station.

    Pennsylvania Railroad emblem

    These views were taken from the Highland Avenue bridge across the railroad and busway. The bridge bears the Pennsylvania Railroad emblem in concrete.

    East Liberty station
    East Busway at Highland Avenue bridge
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

    The use of the old railroad right-of-way, which runs in a series of hollows below the main street level of the neighborhoods it goes through, makes the East Busway a true rapid-transit line, as much grade-separated as a subway.

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  • Crafton Station on the West Busway

    Crafton Station on the West Busway

    With St. Philip’s Church in the background.

    Most Pittsburghers probably don’t think of the busways as very interesting phenomena, so give old Pa Pitt a few moments of your time and he will try to make even a busway interesting.

    First of all, Pittsburgh is one of the very few cities that did “bus rapid transit” routes as real metro lines for buses. The three busways—South, East, and West—don’t mix with street traffic or even have at-grade intersections.

    Second, although the busways as busways are products of the late twentieth century, they all have roots much earlier. We started building the West Busway in 1851. It is a curious fact of our busways that they are almost one-to-one replacements for the old commuter-rail routes that started working in the middle 1800s. Even the stations are mostly in the same places; the Crafton busway station is just a few yards from where the railroad station used to be.

    Part of the West Busway is a subway tunnel between Sheraden and Ingram. Construction on the Cork Run Tunnel began in 1851; after many interruptions; it was finally finished in 1865.

    So if you ride the West Busway today, you are riding 174 years of history. Take time to think about that the next time you have to get somewhere, and you may conclude that even busways can be interesting as well as useful.

    West Busway crossing Crennell Avenue at the Crafton station
    The West Busway crossing Crennell Avenue at the Crafton station. Camera: Olympus E-20N.
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  • Railroad Watchtower, Carnegie

    Railroad watchtower

    Carnegie is intensely proud of this little tower—so much so that it was recently rebuilt and hoisted up to its perch looking brand new.

    Watchtower
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    Watch that first step as you leave.

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  • Why We Have Pennsylvania Broad Gauge

    Pennsylvania streetcars do not run on standard-gauge track. This is not just a local quirk: it was a law of the Commonwealth. Streetcar companies must not lay standard-gauge track. Why did we have such a law? Well…

    From Pittsburgh Illustrated, 1889.

    This is Liberty Avenue in 1889, where a railroad ran down the middle to serve the wholesalers. Now imagine one backroom deal with the streetcar company, one little switch, a few extra feet of track, and suddenly the Pennsylvania Railroad has access to every major street in the city.

    But that can’t happen, because the streetcar tracks are a different gauge.

    That is why, to this day, streetcars in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia use Pennsylvania Broad Gauge or Pennsylvania Trolley Gauge, 5 feet 2½ inches, instead of the standard American rail gauge of 4 feet 8½ inches. (Actually, Philadelphia is off by a quarter-inch at 5 feet 2¼ inches.) Most other American transit systems use standard gauge, although New Orleans streetcars use Pennsylvania Broad Gauge, too.

  • Panhandle Bridge

    Panhandle Bridge with railroad ties in the foreground

    The picture above required a lot of manipulation: it was built from three separate photographs at different exposures in order to capture the detail in both the light and misty distance and the dark railroad ties in the foreground. The result may look a little artificial, but it makes a good illustration of the bridge. The pictures below, with no relevant details in the foreground, are less manipulated.

    Panhandle Bridge
    Panhandle Bridge
    Fujifilm Finepix HS10.

  • Pennsylvania Railroad Fruit Auction & Sales Building and Produce Terminal, Strip

    Pennsylvania Railroad Fruit Auction & Sales Building
    Composite of three photographs.

    In the 1800s, the produce industry was concentrated on Liberty Avenue downtown, and a railroad ran right down the middle of the street to serve the wholesalers.

    Gradually the business moved to the Strip, and in 1906 the tracks in Liberty Avenue were torn up. For a while the produce auctions were conducted in the open air straight from the freight cars, and a 1923 map shows the “produce yard” in the middle of the sea of tracks that built up in the Strip:

    In 1926, the railroad built a colossal terminal for the produce business. The Fruit Auction & Sales Building at the northeast end (above) had two tall floors; from there the Produce Terminal stretched five blocks, a quarter-mile long, making a dramatic open plaza of Smallman Street.

    Produce Terminal
    Smallman Street

    After sitting mostly vacant for a while, the building was renovated at a cost of more than $50 million and reopened as a shopping, eating, and entertainment center called “The Terminal.”

    The Terminal
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

  • Back-Channel Span of the Ohio Connecting Railroad Bridge

    Seen from West Carson Street. This railroad bridge crosses the Ohio at Brunot Island, and therefore has two main spans; we also have pictures of the front-channel span and a view of the whole bridge from the north shore.

  • Railroad YMCA, McKees Rocks

    Railroad YMCA, McKees Rocks

    The Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad had its shops just down the hill from this building, so here is a railroad men’s YMCA, now turned into an office building.

    Inscription: Railroad Young Mens Christian Association

    RAILROAD
    YOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN
    ASSOCIATION

    The inscription was probably spelled out in bronze letters; when they were removed, they left legible ghosts behind.

    Cornerstone: 1905

    The cornerstone tells us that the building was put up in 1905.

    Architectural rendering of the front of the building

    Addendum: The building was under the supervision of Chief Engineer J. A. Atwood, who may have designed it. Source: Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, January 4, 1905: “At McKees Rocks, Allegheny county, the Pittsburg & Lake Erie Railroad Company will erect a building for the Y. M. C. A.. Bids will be received until January 15th by Chief Engineer J. A. Atwood.”

  • Ohio Connecting Railroad Bridge

    This bridge crosses the Ohio at Brunot Island, and therefore has two main spans, one for each channel. Here we see them both from California Avenue to the north. We also have pictures of the Ohio Connecting Railroad Bridge from the side.