The Motte

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026

93 comments - 4291 thread views 1d ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

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Tinker Tuesday for August 18th, 2026

3 comments - 117 thread views 7hr ago by ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad (text post)

Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait (Part 15)

3 comments - 101 thread views 20hr ago by Rov_Scam (text post)

The East End's Quiet Corner

This edition, the fifteenth in the series, will look at three neighborhoods in the Upper East End that never seem to get their proper due: Highland Park, Morningside, and Stanton Heights. These aren't small or out of the way places, but a contiguous mass that is often forgotten about despite not having anything wrong with it. Additionally, I want to discuss the East End's major parks and include some notes on transportation infrastructure. I had initially planned on including sections on these in the series introduction I wrote way back in 2024, but they started sounding too much like a AAA guidebook (The Pittsburgh International Airport hosts flights to over a dozen domestic and international destinations…) so I scrapped it. Now that I'm well into writing about the neighborhoods, I have a better idea of how to integrate the topics into the series, and it feels increasingly essential that I do so.

Series Index:

15. Highland Park: I Can Hear the Animals from My House

Highland Park is situated due north of East Liberty and developed around the same time as a sort of suburb of that neighborhood. Its boundaries to the north and east are tightly defined by the park with which it shares a name. To the south, the traditional dividing line is Stanton Ave., although in terms of built form there is little difference between southern Highland Park and northern East Liberty. To the west, the Heth's Run Greenway forms the border with Morningside, though the two neighborhoods share a non-park boundary along, appropriately enough, Heth Ave.
Like most of the rest of the East End, Highland Park was sparsely inhabited farmland throughout much of the 19th century and was incorporated into the City of Pittsburgh in 1868. It was part of the Negley farm and accordingly became the home of one Thomas Mellon when he married into the family. Mellon didn't particularly like living there, as it took nearly an hour to commute downtown via horse-drawn car in the pre-railroad era, but his wife didn't like living in the city and wanted to be close to her family, so he was forced to deal with it. In the years following the Civil War, Highland Park was occupied by those who inherited some part of the old Negley estate and rural emigres who saw the business opportunities Pittsburgh presented but didn't want to live an urban lifestyle. Following annexation, major thoroughfares like Highland and Stanton were paved, and the area appeared to be developing in a manner similar to Point Breeze, as a home for grand estates of the rich and famous.

Then the Panic of 1873 brought things to a crashing halt. It took five years for the economy to recover, and several more for construction to resume in Highland Park. The city had laid out a street grid prior to the depression, but thus far development had been minimal and limited to those who worked in East Liberty. Even with the arrival of the railroad in 1852, Highland Park was still a 15-to-30-minute walk to the station, and fares were too expensive for anyone but the wealthy to take the train into town on a daily basis. Even the wealthy Pittsburgh commuters there were those who either had a personal connection to the Negleys or who were homesick for a rural lifestyle. These men had, however, made Highland Park a fashionable address, and the raft of improvements the city made in the 1880s—paved roads, gas heat, running water, and electricity—made the area all the more attractive to the distinctly urban breed of men who were coming to prominence in a rapidly growing industrial city.

While some large estates were built once the economy came back, Highland Park was, in a sense, a victim of its own success. The land had come under the control of speculators, and while the wealthy could afford large plots of land, it was more affordable to divide it into small lots that could be sold to upper-middle class professionals for top dollar. This wasn't feasible until the arrival of the electric streetcar in 1889, but in the decade afterwards, things went gangbusters. Even the wealthy took part in the frenzy; there are no dead ends or creatively subdivided estates here. While most of the new development was limited to side streets, Highland Park's original wealthy realized they could make an easy dollar by selling off lots next to their houses.

Some 30 years prior, and on the other side of the Atlantic, a clothier named Thomas Burberry began his line, which was later made famous for developing the trench coat during the First World War. The brand subsequently developed an association with the genteel lifestyle of the English countryside. In an attempt to reinvigorate the brand in the late '90s, Burberry began a marketing campaign featuring aristocrat-turned-model Stella Tennant, and by 2000 the company's signature plaid began showing up everywhere—an elegant wool scarf, the lining of a jacket, a small hand clasp. Yet within two years, the brand was struggling. The bottom came in 2003 when UK Big Brother 4 contestant Tania do Nasciomento paraded around in a Burberry bikini weekly as she told an audience of millions about her sexual exploits and how she planned on spending her prize money on breast implants. This story is often told by marketing experts as a cautionary tale because, as brand expert John Williamson puts it, "As soon as you go down the mass market road you lose control of who wears your product". Burberry was supposed to be an aspirational brand, a marker of social class. Wearing Burberry said that you cared more about classic elegance than fashion. Indeed, throughout most of the brand's history, most people couldn't tell the difference between Burberry and any other plaid.

It was the same for Highland Park throughout its early history. The people who lived there before 1890 did so because their wealth made the inconveniences of living 90 minutes away from their offices tolerable. The presence of the Negleys and their old money social institutions meant that everyone knew about their little private world north of East Liberty, and upwardly mobile people were willing to pay a premium for access to that world, even if all that really entailed was the ability to say you lived in Highland Park. Of course, the doctors, merchants, and even skilled craftsmen who moved there in the streetcar era weren't in anywhere near the same league as the wealthy industrialists who lived there when it was mostly farmland. Luckily for Highland Park, it couldn't go as downmarket as Burberry did, because even in middle class neighborhoods, land is at a premium. Most brands can control who wears their product by simply setting a high price, but Burberry was handicapped by the fact that you can't trademark plaid, meaning they also had to compete with knockoffs. But reading the history of the neighborhood reminded me of that story, as a once genteel neighborhood was, quite early in its history, forced to go middle class once investors realized the demand was there.

In the early 1890s, the city acquired land surrounding a reservoir that had recently been built, on what was formerly an exclusive golf club. This land would be turned into a public park, named after Highland Ave., and the area was soon known as the Highland Park District, and took its final name of Highland Park not long after that. Public parks were established to essentially act as country clubs for the common man, and the replacement of an actual country club with one, accessible by streetcar no less, is symbolic of the area's transformation from a haven of the rich and famous to a solidly upper-middle class area. As East Liberty's fortunes dipped in the second half of the 20th century, Highland Park fell a bit, particularly in the southern part of the neighborhood near the border, but it has mostly retained its status as one of the nicer parts of the city for the better part of 130 years. Few houses were subdivided into apartments, even fewer were lost to the wrecking ball, and many parts of the neighborhood never fell in desirability at all.

Typologically, Highland Park can be divided into a few distinct areas, though these don't have names and aren't recognized by anyone other than me. Classic Highland Park, so to speak, is the area west of N. Highland Ave., with lots of larger brick houses, some of which are subdivided into rental units. As you move north towards the park, these become interspersed with more multi-family, including two/four flats, rowhouses, and small apartment buildings. Park Lane Tower is also here. I long wondered how the developers got this one past zoning and NIMBY opposition, so I decided to find out. When the streetcar tracks were torn out in the 1950s, a developer from New York purchased the old trolley barn on Bunkerhill St. They attempted to get a zoning variance but were denied and then appealed the decision to City Council. They presented a vision that the area adjacent to the park could be similar to Central Park West, with luxury apartment buildings that overlooked green space. In any event, they didn't build any more towers like that. I don't know whether this was due to public opposition or simple lack of demand, but 60 years later it looks rather incongruous. I quite like the idea of tearing down everything in that area and building similar towers like the developers envisioned.

Anyway, the area east of N. Highland was built out later and has much more of an "interwar" feel to it, architecturally. None of the houses are subdivided, it's wealthier, and honestly feels more like Squirrel Hill than Highland Park. By contrast, the area to the south of here has very modest housing and until recently was much more run down than the rest of the neighborhood. This makes sense, because the nearby portions of East Liberty are the remaining ungentrified portions, and it's also close to Larimer, which has seen very little gentrification thus far. I would also be remiss not to mention the Alexander King Estate, Baywood, the lone remaining example of what Highland Park used to be. It's on a secluded street and is surrounded by the park itself, so you even get the idyllic feel the place had pre-development. It's also a textbook example of why most of these houses have been torn down. The current owner purchased it in the mid-90s and spent the next several decades restoring it to its former glory. He put it on the market in 2020 and it hasn't sold yet, despite repeated price cuts. Hell, it's down to a price comparable to smaller houses in Squirrel Hill and Shadyside, and it still won't sell.

Look at the Zillow listing and it isn't hard to see why. Anyone with the money to buy this place would see the care and attention to detail taken during its restoration and immediately realize that it would be criminal to tear it all out to install quartz countertops and a surround sound system. They would also realize that there's no way they could live in a place like that. The color scheme is not, shall we say, in line with contemporary tastes, the kitchen and bath are faithful to 1880s technology, and there's no good place to put the television. There's also the ongoing expenses that nobody thinks about. Need a new roof? A normal size roof costs 10–20k to do asphalt shingles, not a small sum, but doable. Try doing a roof several times that size. In slate. Need windows? You can't buy them from Home Depot; you need custom windows that are less energy efficient and cost $4,000 apiece, and you need 40 of them. Speaking of efficiency, you'll need four air conditioners to keep this place cool, in part because one of them will always be broken down. I could go on but you get the idea.

Highland Park also has its own business district on Bryant St., which is, at first glance, unimpressive for a commercial district in a high-rent area. It's not as large as Shadyside's or as cute as the little one in Point Breeze. It was originally a residential street, as shoppers in the late 19th century would have taken the streetcar into East Liberty to go shopping. It didn't become a commercial district until the mid-20th century, when East Liberty began declining, and there are still some large gaps. That being said, it still has all the basics for a neighborhood business district, plus a few extras. As a historical note, parts of southern Highland Park, notably the 900 block of Mellon St., had storefronts as well, but those have pretty much all been abandoned and converted into living space.

Neighborhood Grade: Upper Middle Class. While there are still pockets of poverty, any residual sketchiness from the bad old days of East Liberty has subsided. In fact, the parts of East Liberty directly opposite Stanton Ave. actually have higher average incomes than the adjacent parts of Highland Park. My theory here is that the East Liberty side is now occupied by younger professionals who purchased their homes within the past 15 years, as East Liberty was on the upswing and properties were available to renovate. Highland Park, meanwhile, has more older residents who are retired and, even if wealthy, probably don't have actual incomes that amount to much.

As far as the future is concerned, the neighborhood is pretty much fully developed, with few opportunities for new infill. The one exception is on Bryant St., which could use some additional vitality, but even here I think demand is probably limited. Proximity to the park is an obvious advantage, but it's not at a major commercial crossroads, and the local population isn't that big. In 2014, a new building didn't add much to the aesthetic beauty of the place but did fill a pretty big hole in the street wall. There are still a few vacant lots that could theoretically house new businesses, but nothing on the scale of say, a major apartment complex. Highland Park will never be hip, at least not in the foreseeable future, but aside from local convenience, the business district will still have outside appeal to people looking to grab coffee or a beer after a visit to the park, and it's a good place to hide an upscale restaurant.

Interlude A: The Parks of the East End

Pittsburgh's park system operates on several tiers. At the most basic level there are neighborhood parks, which are small patches of green space with maybe a playground or picnic tables or other basic amenity that are convenient for people who live near them but don't hold much appeal to those who don't. Above that are the ten community parks, which are large enough and unique enough to have appeal beyond the neighborhood but not so much appeal that anyone is going to make a special trip just to see them. There's also the special category of riverfront parks, which are basically just landscaped areas along the river, and the included trails, about which more in a later section.

Here, I intend to focus on the regional parks, of which there are five total and three in the East End, Schenley, Frick, and Highland. These are the crown jewels of the city's park system and the ones in the East End merit individual discussion. Unlike the other categories these parks seem to stand apart from neighborhoods, with the exception of the section of Schenley Park that is widely considered part of Oakland. The father of Pittsburgh's park system was Edward Manning Bigelow. Bigelow was a civil engineer for the city who became director of the Department of Public Works upon its establishment in 1888. The mother was Mary Schenley.

Mary Elizabeth Croghan Schenley was the daughter of William Croghan and the granddaughter of Colonel James O'Hara. Following the Revolutionary War, O'Hara established a number of commercial and manufacturing establishments in Pittsburgh that played a key part in the city's early industrialization. Mary's mother died tragically when she was only an infant, and Mary inherited the colonel's vast estate, making her quite the rich little girl and one of the largest landholders in Allegheny County. She was also the subject of the city's first major scandal when, at age 15, she eloped with Captain Edward Schenley, a 42-year-old Brit who had been married twice previously. News of the elopement rocked the city, and her father sought intervention of the state legislature in Harrisburg and tried to summon the US Navy to intercept the ship they were taking to England.

Or at least that's the myth that developed around it. In any case, the birth of the couple's first child a year later gave Croghan occasion to visit his daughter in London, during which visit he decided that the sea captain wasn't so bad and invited the couple to live with him at Picnic House, his estate on what would later become the East End. The Schenley's declined due to concerns about pollution, and while Mary would visit Pittsburgh occasionally over the next several years, these visits ceased not long after her father died in 1850. Over the next several decades, Mary Schenley would become one of the more reviled figures in Pittsburgh, as she was an absentee landlord who was blamed for the deplorable conditions at the Point. When the sea captain died in 1889, Mary, by now in her 60s, began unloading her vast real estate portfolio. When rumors began circulating that developers were planning to visit her in London to make a deal for land in Oakland, Edward Bigelow, who had long wanted the land for a park, made the trip himself. Schenley was looking to rehabilitate her image in her old age, and Bigelow was able to secure a donation of 300 acres with an option to purchase 100 more, on the condition that the land be used for a park that was named after Schenley, and that the land would never be sold.

Bigelow's design for the park echoed Olmstead's design of Central Park in New York and set the stage for the City Beautiful plans for Oakland that would develop in a few years. Olmstead's most notable contribution to park design and to landscape architecture more generally was his eschewing of the geometric, symmetrical designs of the royal gardens from which early parks had taken their cues in favor of a constructed naturalism. The "constructed" part is essential here; these parks weren't meant to present the naked reality of nature as it was, but an idealized version of it. Roads and paths would be winding and serpentine, to create the illusion that the space was bigger and wilder than it really was, and rocks, trees, and vistas would be carefully placed to maximize drama. In a broad sense, this represented a change from the obsession with order and logic that characterized the Classical period to the appreciation for the sublime that characterized the Romantic, but I digress. Capping off all of this would be a grand entrance at Schenley Plaza, which would in time be flanked by the Carnegie Institute on one side and Forbes Field on the other.

When Schenley Park opened in October of 1889, it was nothing more than a barren waste that would take years to fully construct and develop. As the 19th century became the 20th, though, the Romantic idea of a park being nothing much more than landscaped paths and maybe a few picnic groves was yielding to more practical concerns of the Progressive Era. The park would eventually come to include a golf course, horse track, ice rink, swimming pool, and numerous playgrounds. While the abandonment of naturalism occurred slowly throughout the 20th century, and is more evident in county parks than city, the story of Schenley Plaza illustrates the trend. When the park opened, this area was a ravine spanned by a bridge. It was certainly natural, but not exactly grand, so designs for a more appropriate main entrance were solicited. The ravine was filled in, and the Mary Schenley Memorial Fountain was built at the plaza's rear. The rest was essentially a giant parking lot with a grassy oval in the middle that was too small to be of use for any recreational purpose. This oval was removed in 1990 so the whole thing could at least work better as a parking lot.

It wouldn't be until the 21st century that landscape architects would rediscover 19th century ideals and redesign the plaza so that it better fit Bigelow's original vision, complete with a full-scale restoration of the fountain. I'm not going to claim that the current plaza is particularly impressive, but it's a prime example of how good design trumps impressive design. While it's tempting in our postmodern age to look back at the grand designs of yesteryear in longing, the reality is more complicated. The original design for Schenley Plaza looks great in drawings, but the designers had no eye for how the plaza would look once actually built and no sense for how the space would actually be used. If nothing else, it gets used.

Highland Park was Bigelow's other big park project, and one that was more personal and, dare I say, more selfish. While Oakland in 1889 was a nascent working class area that would soon come to be dominated by City Beautiful sensibilities, Highland Park in the early 1890s was a fast-developing refuge of the upper middle class. As Director of Public Works, Bigelow had already seized the undeveloped land on the bluff overlooking the Allegheny to construct a drinking water reservoir, and he had more in his sights. This land was more rugged than residential Highland Park and thus more resistant to development, but the landowners, including the proprietors of an exclusive golf club, felt that it was only a matter of time before they'd be able to cash in. Unlike in Oakland, there would be no benefactor here. Instead, Bigelow used the power of eminent domain to condemn all the farmland he felt he needed. Highland Park was officially established in 1893.

It's no coincidence that Bigelow was himself a resident of the park's namesake neighborhood. It's hard to believe now, but Schenley was at the time in an out of the way location, as Oakland was a green field open for development. Highland, as it was then known, was already an established satellite neighborhood of East Liberty. Plenty of residents would soon live within walking distance, and plenty more would have access via the streetcar. Today, Highland Park is known for two things: The Reservoir and the Zoo. The reservoir is nothing more that the same drinking water reservoir that Bigelow established in the 1880s, except it's such a popular spot for joggers than when the city covered all of its reservoirs in the wake of 9/11, and exception was made here. I have nothing much to say about the zoo except that it has vertigo-inducing escalators from the parking lot, and that it seems odd that mid-size cities—San Diego, Cincinnati, Columbus—always seem to have the best zoos.

And finally, there's Frick. Bigelow had nothing to do with this park's development, as he died two years before Henry Clay Frick bequeathed the land on which it sits. It's ironic then that Frick Park is the wildest, least developed park in the city. It's doubly ironic because there's no evidence that Frick himself had any particular affinity for nature. His son would later become a professional naturalist and developed his love of natural history in the woods that would later become part of the park, but there's no evidence that his son played any role in convincing his father to make the bequest. His daughter supposedly wanted a park as her debutante gift, but her desire seems to have been to provide a place for children to play, and in any event her request wasn't honored until Frick's death over a decade later.

Pittsburgh's parks were Bigelow's pet project, and like all pet projects, they went into decline once Bigelow was no longer on the scene. Indeed, even when Bigelow was directing the Department of Public Works, the city as a whole was largely operating absent any real strategic vision. In 1918, the Citizens Committee of the City Plan of Pittsburgh was founded as a nonprofit organization that would provide long-term planning independent of government. They became involved in numerous aspects of city planning, and parks were no exception. By this point, the Progressive reform movement had fully overtaken the Romantic notions that had inspired Bigelow, and the CCCP's reports were fully in the spirit of developing the city's parks for organized recreation purposes.

For several years after Frick's death, Frick's Woods, as the property was then known, was in a sort of limbo. It was not formally opened to the public upon Frick's death and existed as a separate division within the Parks Department. Frick's bequest had included a $2 million trust fund to be used for ongoing maintenance and land acquisition, and the trustees exercised enough of their own authority to necessitate special treatment by the city. In particular, they acquired more land to add to the park before it would be formally integrated into city's park system. The CCCP had their own ideas for the park, much in line with contemporary trends. They wanted to build a golf course, meandering drives, an artificial lake, swimming pool, restaurant, picnic pavilions, and other similar amenities. This sentiment was echoed by golfers, who felt that the course at Schenley was becoming too crowded and that it was unrealistic to expect anyone but the wealthy to be able to afford private clubs. Nature lovers and a women's group, however, believed that the area should be kept natural. As a newspaper editorial at the time put it,

The forest should be preserved in its natural state as an example of the manner in which Nature clothes the land when not interfered with by man. Formal parks, with the trees planted in orderly rows and the grass carefully mowed may be found in many places ...but Pittsburgh has no extensive tract of natural woodland outside of the Frick property, and it should be permitted to remain as the Creator made it, the home of wild flowers, birds, squirrels, rabbits, opossums and other small animals.

This sentiment doesn't seem particularly controversial to us today, but in 1925, it was new. The Progressive ideas then in vogue viewed parks primarily as recreational spaces for the working class. The main focus of the CCCP at the time was completing a network of smaller neighborhood parks that would provide opportunities for casual recreation. What little interest they had in large parks revolved around dedicated recreational facilities and ranger programs that didn't scale down to the small parks. The vision of Bigelow and Olmstead may have seemed more in tune with the concept of appreciating natural beauty, theirs was purely a synthetic beauty. Nature may have provided the raw materials, but the edges were ragged, and there was nothing that couldn't be improved upon. A skilled landscape architect could make the most of any given site. Bigelow's ideas were also tied up in contemporary concepts of morality—the idea that nature would improve one's moral fiber, and the idea that the mixing of social classes would allow those of lower social standing to observe their betters, who would lead by example.

The idea of a park as a nature preserve had by the 1920s existed to a limited extent, but it always involved places like Yellowstone or Yosemite. Applying it to a city park was unprecedented, and is rare even today. Yet it soon had the backing of two important groups, the Frick trustees, and the general public. The most important group, the Parks Department, agreed, and the trustees released $50,000 for improvements, which would not include anything from the CCCP's wish list and would be limited to cleanup, access points, and construction of walking trails. In the nearly hundred years since the park's opening in 1927, there have been numerous expansions and calls for more facilities, but the Parks Department has since operated with a light touch. Development has been limited to low-impact items like playgrounds and a bowling green, and these are always situated on the park's periphery. The core of the park remains unpenetrated by automobile thoroughfares.

I don't want to create the impression that Frick Park is some kind of wilderness area; far from it. It's a mere square mile of forest heavily dissected by trails that get crowded on the weekends. In fact, it's easily the most crowded of all the city parks. But this only proves that dedicated recreational facilities and elaborate landscaping aren't necessary to create a good park experience. People just want an attractive green space where they can walk, and what nature provides is as good as anything that man can build. I also don't want to suggest that this philosophy is necessarily better than the Bigelow model or the Progressive model, or the other models that have come to inform park development in the decades since. Different parks serve different purposes.

One of the consequences of having a large undeveloped area in a city known for its topographic variation is that Frick Park has become a mountain biking destination. In 2016, Pittsburgh City Council shocked everyone by unanimously passing legislation legalizing bicycles on all forest paths within city parks. The reason this shocked everyone was that legislation confining them to paved roads was so seldom enforced that nearly everyone, including most of council, was unaware of the restriction. Volunteer groups had been maintaining the network for decades at this point, but the official legitimization of mountain biking meant that park maintenance could work directly with advocacy groups like Bike Pittsburgh to plan and coordinate trail construction and maintenance.

This partnership has led to the next frontier of park expansion. There's a parcel of land between Nine Mile Run and the Mon River that was previously a dump site for Duquesne Slag Products but is now owned by the Urban Redevelopment Authority. Volunteers built outlaw trails on this tract years ago, and the area, appropriately called The Slags, has become one of the park's more notable riding areas. Except that, despite having its own named trails, complete with signage, benches, and other small amenities, it's not actually part of the park, and trail users are technically trespassers. As part of a proposed solar project for the hilltop, however, the URA has agreed to donate the land to the city for park expansion, which will legitimize The Slags and allow them to appear on maps and the like.

One of the things I like about Pittsburgh is that it has the tendency to secretly be the best at certain things that it doesn't advertise and that nobody knows about. As an avid mountain biker, I can say that Pittsburgh may be the best city in which to own a mountain bike. The best riding is not in Frick but in the mountains some distance outside the city, and that riding compares to the best I've ridden, and I've ridden all over the country. But that's for another series. In Pittsburgh, the riding within city limits is comparable to what people in most cities have to drive an hour to get to, and it's an easy ride for anyone who lives in the East End. Most major cities have enough riding in their city limits to give mountain bikers a weekday fix, but nothing that would justify an outsider making a special trip or a resident purchasing a mountain bike if they were only going to ride that.

I can think of a few other cities with good riding, but they all come with asterisks. Toronto's Don River Valley is worth riding, but it only has a quarter of the elevation and is officially unsanctioned. The Phoenix Mountain Reserve has more elevation and is more technical, but the heat and lack of cover make it only rideable half the year, if that. San Francisco is comparable quality but is divided among two smaller areas that require road rides to connect, and there isn't as much mileage. And then there's Bentonville, which has, in the past decade, gone from being a town no one had ever heard of to a mountain biking destination. Apart from the obvious fact that as a city it isn't on anywhere near the level of the other contenders I mentioned, it's also the result of $70 million in Walton money and more marketing than you can shake a stick at. The riding itself is comparable to Frick, so long as you replace natural difficulty with constructed difficulty. I was there a few years ago and the internet description of Mountain Bike Disneyland for Dads seemed appropriate. It's fine for a family vacation, but it does not compare with the traditional Promised Lands of Western NC, North Shore BC, or Moab. It does not compare with my personal underrated favorites of PA/WV/MD or Western Colorado.

Now that I got my mountain bike rant out of the way, I'd like to mention two more things about Frick before we leave the subject of parks. First, the few improved structures that were built prior to the park's official opening include a series of gatehouses, the Reynolds St. Gate being the most notable. These aren't present at all entrances, but at one time they were manned and acted as a sort of information desk. I mention them because I like the idea, which has fallen by the wayside, and they were designed by the same guy who designed the Jefferson Memorial. The second thing is that the park was also the site of the infamous Fern Hollow Bridge collapse in 2022.

16. Morningside: The Final Frontier of Affordability Morningside occupies a long, narrow strip of land situated on a terrace between Heth's Run to the east and Stanton Heights to the west. The northern boundary is clearly the Allegheny River; on its south it merges indistinctly with Garfield, East Liberty, and Highland Park, but for simplicity's sake it's at Stanton Ave.

Like the rest of the East End, Morningside was annexed to the city in 1868. For the rest of the 19th century, though, it was mostly undeveloped farmland, situated in a relatively inaccessible area between Lawrenceville's uppermost reaches and the East Liberty suburbs, neither of which would see much development themselves until the century's final two decades. Around 80 homes were constructed in the 1890s in the far north of the neighborhood; small frame houses that acted as a sort of backwoods extension of Lawrenceville. Around the same time, the southern part of the neighborhood, which was within walking distance of the Negley Ave. streetcar line, saw some development as well.

The dam broke around 1906, when the streetcar lines were extended from Stanton Ave. along Chislett St. into the heart of the neighborhood. Similarly, the Allegheny Valley, which was still fairly industrial at this time (though those day were numbered), became accessible via streetcar across the 62nd St. Bridge. Developers advertised the area as a "garden retreat" from Lawrenceville, Millvale, Etna, and Sharpsburg, as well as the now overcrowded neighborhoods of the East End. As an added bonus, Heth's run was the perfect spot to convert into a sewer for indoor plumbing service. The first residents to move in were Protestants of English, Irish, Scottish, and German extraction. While there was a lull in the building boom during the First World War, it picked up again in the 1920s, with 600 homes being constructed between 1924 and 1928 alone.

The past several neighborhoods we've discussed—Shadyside, Squirrel Hill, Point Breeze, Park Place, and Highland Park—were all the refuges of professional men from the start. Most of the others were working class. Morningside represents a new stage in the city's development, a neighborhood for the upwardly mobile. The original inhabitants of Morningside were of working-class extraction but had saved enough to improve their lot and move out of Lawrenceville, which was effectively a slum. This would continue after WWII, when a new group set Morningside in its sights, Italians moving out of Bloomfield. While population peaked in 1960 and has since declined by approximately half, this is almost entirely due to declining household size, as everything has been more or less been continuously 100% occupied.

Morningside is a small neighborhood, but in terms of built form it can still be divided into four areas. The southernmost part of the neighborhood, south of Hampton St., is dominated by large foursquares built before 1910, along with a decent number of rowhouses and two-flats, and some small apartment buildings. It's basically an extension of East Liberty or Highland Park, both in terms of look and feel. Like those areas, there was some decline here in the late 20th century due to the existence of rental properties and houses that were split into apartments. While I don't have any information suggesting that it was ever seriously unsafe, it was historically the least desirable part of Morningside, though with the subsequent revival of East Liberty, it has flipped to being the most desirable.

The central part of the neighborhood is the most classically Morningside part. It was built out in the 1920s and almost every house is a variation on what I and a few other people call the "Pittsburgh Bungalow". This is a typical late streetcar suburban neighborhood, almost exclusively detached single family houses with small yards packed close together. The northern part of the neighborhood is similar to the central part, except development started earlier here and there are more detached frame "mill houses" and early 20th century row houses. This area is also home to Morningside's small business district, about which more below, and is easily the most urban feeling part of the neighborhood. Finally, there's also a far northern portion around Butler St. that is only part of Morningside because it's too far upriver to be Lawrenceville and too small to be its own neighborhood. It's cut off from the rest of Morningside and has a kind of sketchy, backwoods feel, similar to Upper Lawrenceville above 57th St.

Morningside's business district is not among the more well-regarded ones in the city, but it punches above its weight and is larger than it immediately seems. Rather than stretching along a main drag, it's more of a cluster of commercial establishments that form around a central node but are somewhat spread out, so it's not as immediately noticeable. And while it has a decent number of businesses, none of them are of the type that would attract many outsiders. There's a coffee shop, a fabric store, a drug store, several hair salons, a VFW, medical and dental offices, a daycare center, a barber shop, an Italian club, a tanning salon, a pizza place, a photography studio, an independent convenience store, and a few random offices. The closest thing to a destination is the Bulldog Pub, which is fine as a local watering hole but about as basic as you can get otherwise.

Neighborhood Grade: Stable. The first time I ever entered Morningside was when the dean of my law school had people over to his house, and while I had heard of the neighborhood I had no idea how to get to it and needed to ask for directions in the age before GPS. My impression at the time was that it was pleasant but very quiet, and things haven't changed much in the past 15 years. There are few road connections to the east or west, and the connection with Butler St. is in an obscure location far from any action. The only real connection with other neighborhoods is to the south but nonetheless does not include any major thoroughfares. Combine this with the unexciting business district and you have a neighborhood that few outsiders have reason to visit and that few will inadvertently find themselves in.

Morningside has thus been pretty much off the map for most of Pittsburgh's post-2000 gentrification wave. That has begun to change somewhat, though, as more and more young professionals find themselves priced out of the East End's trendier neighborhoods, especially if they're looking to buy. The result is that the past several years have seen a low-key resurgence. Though the neighborhood is far from trendy, home sale prices have been steadily creeping upward. Will it ever become Upper Middle Class? I wouldn't count it out, but there are several factors going against it. The first is that the houses, while larger than the dumps in Lawrenceville and Polish Hill that people will pay an arm and a leg for, are still smaller than what one can find in Point Breeze and Squirrel Hill. It thus inhabits an in-between zone where it isn't exciting enough to be trendy but isn't opulent enough to be rich from the get-go. And the millennials who are currently buying houses there are past the age where they're going to support hip clubs. The business district is neither large enough nor cohesive enough to be anything more than it already is, which is fine but not exciting; in other words, I don't see it as a location where trendy businesses are tripping over each other to sign leases.

Interlude B: The Transportation Network

Few would argue that the mountain biking that goes on in Frick Park, as well as other parks, is a purely recreational activity. As for other biking, well, it depends. Whether or not cycling is a legitimate means of getting from Point A to Point B is a politically contentious matter, particularly in Pittsburgh. According to the most recent ACS data, 1.6% of Pittsburghers commute by bicycle. That may not sound like a lot, but it's good enough for 12th nationwide among the country's 60 largest cities, and accounts for nearly 3,000 fewer cars on the roads daily, more when you account for non-residents and people who commute by car but use a bike for other trips. Pittsburgh may not initially come across as the ideal city for bicycle commuting, as the terrain would not appear to lend itself to easy riding. But apart from the South Hills and West End, the terrain is actually rather agreeable, and the distances are short enough to be easily traversed.

The issue came to a forefront during the administration of mayor William Peduto, which lasted from 2014 to 2022. Peduto took a highly publicized trip to The Netherlands to view their bicycle infrastructure and meet with local leaders. Upon his return, he launched plans to further develop such infrastructure in Pittsburgh. This was not a popular decision. His opponents christened him "Bike Lane Bill" and used the moniker derisively any time they wished to criticize him, whatever the topic. The usual suspects made the usual arguments: They take away traffic lanes, they take away street parking, and can you believe that price tag? Some offered a measure of phony sympathy for the plan before pointing out that this wasn't the Sun Belt and nobody would use the bike lanes to commute due to the combination of weather and hills.

To be sure, there were some legitimate difficulties with the plan, namely the one of necessity versus political expediency. If a cyclist were to look at a map of Pittsburgh and offer his opinion on where new routes should be located, he would likely put them in useful areas that are underserved and would close gaps in the existing network. Which is the way to go if the goal is building a useful bike network. On the other hand, if the goal is simply building more bike lanes then it makes sense to build them in the areas where it's easiest to build them. If this sounds snarky, keep in mind the advice about making the perfect the enemy of the good and looking gift horses in the mouth. I don't want to suggest that the mayor simply wanted something he could take credit for; he has to live in the real world like everyone else, and by accomplishing what he could, he took a political hit but took bike lanes off the table as something people could get pissed about. Had he insisted on the ideal network he may have faced real opposition and the project would have been stalled. Now that bike lanes are an accepted part of the landscape, expansion of the network isn't as controversial as it was a decade ago. And the actual routes weren't useless, they just weren't what one would do if designing the system from scratch.

This political hit turned out to be mild to nonexistent. Most of the criticism didn't come from constituents, but from people who lived outside the city, and in many cases, outside the county. These are the same MAGA types who think that they should be able to vote in mayoral elections because "the city is important to the region", even though they don't live in the city and visit as little as possible. Suggest the opposite and they're appalled that big city liberals dare have a say in their exurban paradises. They might even vote to install bike lanes.

Luckily, the crown jewel of Pittsburgh's bike network is 100% uncontroversial. The Great Allegheny Passage extends from The Point to Cumberland, MD, and when combined with the C&O Canal Towpath enables one to travel all the way to Washington, DC. The overabundance of abandoned industrial railroads means that several similar trails run along all three rivers and in a few other random places. The GAP is one of the region's underappreciated gems, not because it is underused (quite the contrary) but because its national and even international appeal is rarely mentioned. If you were to draw out a bicycle route on a map based on nothing but what you think would have the widest appeal, you couldn't do better than the GAP/C&O combo. On one end is an international city, on the other is a more typical city that's off the beaten tourist path. At 334 miles, it's long enough to plan a vacation around but short enough that it doesn't require an inordinate time commitment. And the scenery in between is as good as it gets for a trail that doesn't exceed 2% grade.

Only slightly less controversial than bike infrastructure is mass transit. I've mentioned quite a bit in this series how streetcars often acted as catalysts for development in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The various competing lines of the early days were eventually consolidated under the aegis of the Pittsburgh Railroad (PRR), which operated the system during its heyday. As in most cities, streetcars were considered obsolete in the postwar era, and Pittsburgh slowly replaced them with buses, though they hung on longer here than in other places. While some lines were decommissioned in the 1950s, plans for the system's ultimate future didn't solidify until PRR was taken over by the Allegheny County Port Authority in 1963, and the majority of the system remained operational until 1968.

The Port Authority's long-term plan at this point was, of course, to run buses on the old streetcar lines, but this was quickly interrupted by one of the oddities of transit history. Skybus was a system of autonomous rubber-tired buses that ran on an elevated concrete track. The idea was that it would extend to the southern suburbs along an old interurban right-of-way between the city and Washington, PA. A test track was constructed at the county fairgrounds, and the attraction proved to be a hit between its construction in 1965 and the fair's demise in 1971. Although technically a county project, Skybus met stiff opposition when Pete Flaherty became mayor in 1970. If you recall, Flaherty was elected largely due to his opposition to large, expensive projects, and he was particularly vocal in his opposition to Skybus. Though the county and port authority had technically approved the project in 1969, before Flaherty became mayor, he flat-out refused to provide the cooperation necessary for its completion.

The root of Flaherty's opposition was that Skybus was an unproven technology that would cost orders of magnitude more than its boosters were projecting. As the county tried to move forward, Flaherty threw up roadblock after roadblock, eventually getting the Federal DOT to admit that the project would not be feasible without substantial Federal money, which money would not be forthcoming. Skybus was killed for good in 1976, and development of the current system began. Throughout this period, streetcars continued to run in a loop Downtown, before crossing the bridge and heading south to the suburbs. Unlike in the rest of the city, these trains ran mostly on grade-separated lines, and were thus ripe for conversion to a modern light rail system. In the early 1980s, the Downtown loop was moved underground into a small subway system, the rest of the system was upgraded, and the new "T" opened at the end of 1985. The system has seen a few expansions over the years, most notably an extension to the North Side in 2009.

The opinion among a lot of Pittsburghers and all of the armchair urbanists is that this extension was a mistake, because it should have gone to Oakland instead. At a superficial level, this makes perfect sense. Oakland is a large employment center and currently requires a bus transfer to access via the T. All extending the line to the North Side did was make it easier for suburbanites to get to Pirates and Steelers games, and, of course, the casino. Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world. The North Side option was less expensive overall, subsidized by a large Federal grant to test new drilling technology for the tunnel under the river. A study done in 1993 had looked at 3 alternatives for a possible T extension to Oakland: The first was a surface right-of-way that was later turned into part of the GAP, the second was a subway option that was by then blocked by the foundation for the new Penguins arena. The only alternative still viable in 2009 was an expensive subway under the Hill District, an indirect route that would cost close to a billion dollars. There are certainly many infrastructure projects, including local ones, that cost more than that despite making less sense, but there's a reason why tunneling to Oakland has never been seriously considered.

Related to this armchair urbanist gripe is that Pittsburgh got rid of its streetcar network entirely. People regularly look at old streetcar maps and act like we'd be living in a walkability paradise had the old network been left intact. Well, in part of my research for this series I came across a quote from the 1930s that reflected the opinion that in order to shed its bad image and become a desirable place to live and work, Pittsburgh had to overcome three problems: Pollution, flooding, and lack of a mass transit system. This last item was tongue-in-cheek, but it reflects that the system was considered inadequate well before it was dismantled. Indeed, PRR admitted that they had been steadily losing money since the 1930s. The disadvantages of streetcars are obvious to anyone who thinks about it for more than 30 seconds. Since they run on rails, they can't pull off to the side when loading and unloading, meaning they delay traffic at every stop. They get stuck in traffic and have to wait at red lights. They can't be rerouted due to emergencies or maintenance. And they're expensive to run. Also, these urbanists assume that the trains would be similar to the 1980s models that currently run. But the county did not retire the old PRR cars until 1999, and I had the displeasure of riding on one as a kid. They're noisy, and they sway to such a degree that they're liable to give one motion sickness. These are the cars the system was designed for, and expensive upgrades would have been required to retrofit the entire network. Meanwhile, buses did not need any additional infrastructure.

At least at the outset. Pittsburgh has three busways that run regular buses on dedicated rights of way, and online urbanists such as Ray Delahney (who actually knows what he's talking about) approve of them. The armchair urbanists don't dislike them, but don't understand why they can't be light rail, especially since they run on old railroad rights of way. The answer is that light rail is fucking expensive. The retort is always that rail can technically carry more passengers, which may be technically correct, but is ultimately pointless. Around the time that the busways officially opened, in the early 1980s, the Parkway East was closed for an extended period, and a passenger rail service was implemented on the current busway route (the corridor still has active rail lines). Of all the various strategies PennDOT tried to reduce the disruption (van pools, HOV ramps, express bus lanes, park and ride lots), the train was the only one that was an unmitigated failure and was scrapped halfway through the project.

At the other end of the spectrum are those who think the entire transit system is too expensive and is in need of a haircut. Indeed, fares only cover about a quarter of total operating costs, the rest made up by the state and the Feds. Last year, the state budget was held up for months as Republicans in Harrisburg refused to pass anything that would fund the PRT (nee Port Authority) at anything close to what was necessary. They tried to frame the issue as one that was benefitting cities at the expense of poor rural areas; one lawmaker described transit drivers as "chauffeurs" for those who had the luxury of sitting on a bus while some guy in Clearfield County has to drive 60 miles one-way to get to work. Of course, the Democrats took the bait in the most obvious way and emphasized that most transit users are the poor, elderly, and disabled, and that they were in favor of increasing funding for rural transit, too.

I believe that pro-transit people tend to overplay their hand in these arguments, and the armchair urbanists are the worst. They criticize their opponents as being car-brained without realizing that insulting them does nothing to get their support. If you want to convince these people to back transit, don't try to convince them that their lifestyle choices are inferior; convince them that transit reduces traffic. At nearly 50%, a surprisingly large number of Pittsburghers commute by a means other than their own car. While not exactly New York, living without a car here is feasible, and transit is the preferred commuting choice among anyone for whom it is feasible, regardless of political party. This is especially true south of the city, which lacks good highway connections but does have light rail service.

What critics of transit don't seem to understand is that, by subsidizing it, they're paying people not to drive. People complain about traffic as it is, and they couldn't imagine what a nightmare it would become if traffic nearly doubled. At that point the same people who don't want to fund transit would be calling for massive highway improvement projects that are orders of magnitude more expensive, and will disrupt traffic long before they alleviate it. And God forbid if the population ever starts increasing again. Unless we get to some full-on libertarian system where all roads are privatized and we leave poor people to their own devices, we're going to be subsidizing somebody else's trip from Point A to Point B. The question is what makes sense overall.

Any discussion about transit in Pittsburgh would be incomplete without touching on the inclines. Properly called funiculars, they are railways that operate for the sole purpose of gaining a steep slope, and there used to be scores of them throughout the country. A few still operate today as tourist attractions, but Pittsburgh has what I believe is the only one still in regular use for its intended purpose. Throughout its history, Pittsburgh has had a total of 24 inclines, though these were not all in operation simultaneously, some of the early ones were unpowered "inclined planes" that were only used to transport coal downhill, and others were strictly for freight. The Monongahela Incline is run by the PRT and still carries honest to goodness commuters to the tune of several hundred per day. It's a big enough deal that whenever it's down, they have to run shuttle buses to get people up the hill. The nearby Duquesne incline is run by a private trust and is not nearly as useful for commuting, as its lower station isn't right next to a light rail station. Its cars are prettier, though, than the more utilitarian Mon Incline, so it's more of a symbol of the city and less of a workhorse. I only rode one once, in 1989, but if you're ever in town, either is a must-see for the views on the way up.

A less glamorous way to deal with the hills is with staircases, which are abundant. Pittsburgh's 739 sets of staircases are by far the most in the country, with only Seattle, at 650, coming anywhere close. The steps were originally made out of wood back in the days when most people walked to work, and while there are still a few wooden staircases left, most of the current versions were rebuilt out of concrete in the years following WWII, as Mayor Lawrence launched various public works projects in an effort to make the city something approaching livable. It is only recently that Pittsburghers have begun to appreciate the steps, and even then, it's a muted appreciation. While there is acknowledgement that they are an important asset, nobody seems quite sure what to do with them. Unlike the inclines, there is nothing about a staircase that makes it unique to Pittsburgh. As such, there's no way to exploit them for tourist purposes. No individual staircase has the kind of fame as say, the Spanish Steps in Rome, or the Laurel and Hardy Steps in Los Angeles, even locally.

To the people who use them regularly, the stairs are just another piece of infrastructure, suitable for an episode of 99% Invisible. It would thus take outsiders to bring them to prominence. In the late 1990s, Bob Regan, a geophysicist at the University of Pittsburgh, had recently moved to the city from Boston and was fascinated the fact that they existed. He and a photographer spent the next several years attempting to track down every last public staircase in Pittsburgh, documenting all kinds of technical details like the total length and number of treads. The fruit of this work was a book published in 2004, that got local media attention and quickly sold out. Regan published an expanded second edition in 2014, which spurred Bill Peduto, a mayor in the Lawrencian mold, to have the city conduct a formal survey and publish a long-term plan.

Unfortunately, years of neglect has taken its toll on the steps. Many flights have been closed for safety reasons, many that are open should be closed for safety reasons, many are overgrown, and some have disappeared entirely. Rising Main, the third longest flight in the city, looks like something out of Dr. Seuss. There's obviously some appeal here to urban explorers, but otherwise? Photographer and artist Laura Zurowski documented her attempt to climb each staircase between 2017 and 2022 and ended up publishing a book about it (with a foreword by Regan), that rather than comprehensively document each stairwell acts as a more practical guide, complete with a series of self-guided walking tours. Whether the city uses this as a launching point to advertise the steps and perhaps derive some value of them (which could be used to assist rehabilitation) remains to be seen.

As for the steps themselves, they are more varied than one would think. Some are simply normal sidewalks that got too steep, some have intersections with other stairways, some are integrated with pedestrian bridges, and some are marvels of engineering. Sometimes a street appears to end at a steep hillside, only to continue as a staircase until the top, where it then resumes as a normal street. Sometimes the staircase is signed as a street and has houses with no other access. People make much out of this fact, but the truth is that these places are rare and are becoming rarer. Having a house without any access to the street is a pain in the ass for residents and a nightmare for contractors, and houses orphaned like this are slowly becoming abandoned.

How many are there? I've been quoting the 738 number because that's the number Regan gives in his book, and because that's the most conservative estimate I've seen. The city's official report from 2017 doesn't provide an exact number, but says there are over 800. In 2020 they published a database that included 877 flights, but has since grown to 1,134, and this number simultaneously overstates and understates the true amount. It turns out that counting staircases isn't as straightforward as one would think. Regan's original tally only included staircases that were effectively public sidewalks, and everyone can agree that these count. But if there is a set of four stairs on a walkway in a park, does that count? What about stairs leading to public building entrances? What about stairs that, while not officially closed, are impassible and effectively abandoned? The city's official number includes all of these, whether you think they should or not, because they're all stairways that they're theoretically responsible for maintaining. But the list also undercounts because it doesn't include anything that the city isn't responsible for maintaining, even if it's obviously a public staircase. Which is why the city is hesitant to give a specific number. But they don't care too much about this, because however you choose to count, we still have the most.

The same cannot be said for the infrastructure element in which the city takes the most pride: Bridges. That Pittsburgh has 446 bridges and that this is the most of any city in America is simply not true, in both respects. Or at least misleading. While the 738 number for steps is almost certainly an undercount, counting bridges is just as hard as counting staircases. So what counts as a bridge? The Feds have a very strict definition that includes both decks of a double-decked bridge, highway overpasses, and elevated onramps, but excludes pedestrian and railroad bridges. If you go by this definition, Pittsburgh only has 297 bridges, per the National Bridge Inventory, which probably doesn't even put the city in the top 50. Who came up with 446? Bob Regan, of course, who "just started counting", and included anything with piers and a span. If you want an even bigger number, engineer Todd Wilson counted 700 if you include small private bridges and walkways between buildings and anything else that could conceivably be called a bridge, which still doesn't put Pittsburgh anywhere near other cities Federal numbers (Houston is at over 2,000). So why is Pittsburgh proud of its bridges?

As one would expect, it's not a question of quantity, but of how bridges define the city. Houston may have ten times the bridges but it also has ten times the land area. Yet Buffalo Bayou, the city's primary body of water, is only one-tenth the width of any of Pittsburgh's three rivers. And I'd be willing to bet that a disproportionate amount of those bridges are highway ramps and overpasses. This isn't to crap on Houston, but to point out that numbers aren't everything; I don't think anyone from Houston would even make the claim that it's a bridge city on the scale of Portland or New York.

So what does make a bridge city? Are the bridges worth photographing? Are they iconic? Do they span important bodies of water? Is there variety? Do they complement the setting? Pittsburgh passes all these tests except possibly the second, as there is nothing as iconic as say the Golden Gate Bridge or Brooklyn Bridge. The elegant repetition of the Three Sisters, to the carnival atmosphere of the Smithfield St. Bridge at night, the raw industrial beauty of the Hot Metal, and even the symmetry of the Fort Pitt and Fort Duquesne are all crammed together in a setting that looks like it was made for someone to build them there. The Allegheny River has 7 bridges in the first mile and a half, and the Monongahela has 5. It is for this reason that Pittsburgh is America's Bridgiest City. And that's without even taking into account the numerous "inland" bridges over ravines that can come out of nowhere on otherwise boring stretches of road, or the parts of the city where the infrastructure just smacks you over the head.

But I must admit that as much as bridges define the city in the eyes of the public, the real winner is the tunnels. Bridges, like mountains, are easy to admire, as they are as beautiful to look at as to look out from. Tunnels are dark, and dank, and often impart a sense of claustrophobia. There are no views from inside, and there is not much variation in the outside portal between one tunnel and another. Pittsburgh has six vehicular tunnels, three of which I will call minor and three major.

The first minor tunnel is the Corliss Tunnel. I have never actually been in this tunnel, because it's somewhere in the West End and the West End is off limits. What is notable about this tunnel is that some time in the 90s, a group thought it would be a good place for a rave. The problem was that any rave would block traffic, and the police would quickly shut them down. To get around this problem, the organizers decided to get a film permit. Not only did the city shut down the road, they agreed to provide security. The problem was that the rave went late into the night, and nearby residents flooded the police with noise complaints. When they were told the police couldn't do anything because they had a permit, they redirected the calls to their councilman to figure out what was going on. It was then discovered that the movie that was being filmed was really just one guy with a camera taping the rave for a home video release, and that the ravers were just partiers and not actors. The residents were even more infuriated upon discovering that the security police provided consisted of one officer who was mainly there to tell drivers the tunnel was closed. He would have been powerless to do anything had a fight broken out. Of course, no fights had broken out, and the organizers didn't even allow alcohol. The incident quickly blew over, but it went down in Pittsburgh legend as the time a bunch of kids tricked the city into sanctioning a rave in a tunnel.

The second minor tunnel is the Armstrong Tunnel, which goes underneath Duquesne University between Forbes Ave. and the Tenth St. Bridge. An unhelmeted Ben Roethlisberger was famously injured in a motorcycle accident at the south portal due to his lack of familiarity with the Pittsburgh Left, and no discussion of transportation in Pittsburgh is complete without an explanation of what a Pittsburgh Left is. Due to the topography, roads tend to be narrow and often don't include dedicated left turn lanes. As a consequence of this, a driver making a left turn at a light without the benefit of an arrow can hold up traffic for some time while waiting for the intersection to clear. To prevent this, it's customary for a driver waiting at a light to allow the opposing driver to make a left turn upon the light turning green. Note that this only applies to the first driver at the light extending this courtesy to the first opposing driver. Accidents can ensue when a driver making a left incorrectly assumes that the opposing driver will extend this courtesy; as an Ohioan, Ben was unaware that this folkway existed and proceeded straight ahead while a woman was turning against traffic. The woman was at fault, but Ben still should have been wearing a helmet, or, better yet, saving the motorcycle for retirement.

The final minor tunnel is the Wabash Tunnel, and, is not, like the others, minor because of its size, but because everyone forgets it exists, including me in the first draft of this post. The Wabash Tunnel was the first to bore through the eminence known as Mt. Washington, and though it's been 120 years since it was bored, still nobody knows what to do with it. It was originally build for use by the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway, but that company went bankrupt a mere four years following the tunnel's completion. It then sat dormant for nearly a decade until another railroad bought the property in 1916 and reopened it for limited service, but the tunnel was a money pit. A landslide in 1925 took it out of commission for a few years, and when it reopened, the railroad company was looking for something to do with it.

Passenger service ended in 1931, and the tunnel was purchased by the county for conversion to vehicular traffic. Unfortunately, the low clearance and lack of ventilation meant that such a conversion wasn't feasible, and the idea was abandoned. What little freight service the line saw ended permanently when the Wabash Terminal was destroyed by fire in 1946, conveniently clearing the way for Point State Park. The tunnel sat abandoned for another 25 years until Skybus was approved in 1969. At that point, the tunnel underwent a full-scale conversion, complete with ramps and a track. It was all in vain, though, as Skybus was canceled, and the tunnel became a parking garage for decommissioned buses. The county apparently liked this result and wanted to repeat it. After the tunnel was idle for another 20 years, the Port Authority tore out the Skybus improvements as part of a conversion for use as part of the busway. $7 million was spent on this project between 1994 and 1998, but the Port Authority scrapped the busway plan in 2000, and the tunnel sat idle again, eagerly awaiting its next victim.

Finally, in 2003, the county Feds offered a grant to convert the tunnel for normal vehicular traffic. Of course, the money came with a catch: It had to be an HOV tunnel. The idea that a tunnel nobody has ever heard of with no connecting bridge on the other side would be popular enough among HOVs to make any impact at all was laughable, but with upgrades already done and Uncle Sam footing the bill for the necessary connecting ramps, the county agreed, and on December 26, 2004, a mere 59 years after being semi-permanently mothballed, the Wabash Tunnel was once again open. It proved so popular that HOV restrictions were suspended in 2013 and eliminated in 2017.

Aside from the fact that the Wabash Tunnel doesn't go anywhere or save any time, the biggest problem is the goofy rules. It was originally HOV sometimes but sometimes not, and nobody knew when. It's wide enough to carry two lanes of traffic, but not in opposite directions, and only one lane is usually open. So it's effectively a one-way tunnel. The rules are as follows: The tunnel is open inbound from 6 am to 2 pm. Then it closes to reverse traffic and is open outbound from 3 pm to 11 pm. Then it closes again overnight and opens again at 6…except on weekends, when it's open from 6 am to 11 pm outbound only. At least those are the official rules. The unofficial rules are that every time I drive by the ramps to the southern portal the sign says that the tunnel is closed inbound, so I assume that it's never open. Although on the rare times I see that it is open I take it for the novelty, though this is maybe once per decade.

As one would expect, the checkered history of the tunnel has some new developments. Last fall, the PRT announced that the Federal subsidy hasn't increased since the tunnel's opening, and there is no money to pay for the $38 million in necessary repairs. Considering that nobody uses the tunnel, they were considering closing it or selling it, though the repair bill makes a private buyer unlikely. The worst part of this whole, century-long fiasco is that Mount Washington still acts as a formidable barrier to getting into the city from the south via bicycle. Saw Mill Run Blvd. runs through the valley south of the hill and skirts around its edge at the West End Bridge, but anyone biking on it has a death wish. The only way to go is over, and that involves a lung-busting climb and harrowing descent, though one of these legs can be avoided if you use the incline. The Wabash would be perfect for a bicycle/pedestrian route, but Federal rules said that the tunnel had to be used for what the subsidy was for, not what made the most sense. Additionally, dedicated infrastructure would need to be built at either end, especially on the south, which would prove expensive and controversial among those worried about Bike Lane Bill making a comeback.

Early in the automotive days, cars faced the same frustrations that cyclists do now when it comes to getting around Mt. Washington. By the 1910s, Pittsburgh's southern neighborhoods were beginning to develop in earnest, and while streetcar connections were available, development was hampered by the lack of automobile accessibility. Motorists had to go up and over Mt. Washington, and the city streets available for this purpose were steep and choked with traffic. None other than Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr., was involved in the plan to improve traffic circulation in the city, and he was one of many to recommend a tunnel, though further refinements would be made to his plan. To the armchair urbanists out there: Traffic was bad enough to necessitate "car-brained" infrastructure in 1919. The tunnel opened in 1924, and the corresponding bridge in 1928.

The Squirrel Hill tunnel ranks as Pittsburgh's most infuriating. Both portals are backed up to a dead stop for miles, seemingly permanently, even on weekends. Locals jokingly chalk this up to the "tunnel monster", a mythical creature that causes motorists to slam on their brakes before entering. All kidding aside, there seems to be a common belief that the majority (or at least a sizeable minority) of people illogically brake before entering the tunnel. At least a sizeable minority of other people; everyone is guilty of this, and nobody wants to admit it. Aside from the fact that the highway goes from three lanes down to two shortly before the tunnels, and has ramps merging shortly before the tunnels, and is sloped in one direction severe enough that tractor trailers slow down slightly, which are all big enough factors to explain the delays on their own, everyone is slowing down at the tunnel. The lanes get narrower. The visual space gets smaller. There's no shoulder or room for error. Every visual cue is telling your brain that more caution is needed, because it is, and your natural reaction is to slow down a touch. Which is all it takes to cause permanent, rolling backups.

Finally, there's the Fort Pitt Tunnel. As I said in the intro to this installment, the goal was to make this less of a catalog of highways and where they go and more of a discussion of cool stories, things that say something about urbanism, and things that make Pittsburgh interesting or unique. With respect to that last item, I talked about several things—the GAP, the inclines, the stairs, the Bridgiest City—and none of them compare to the Fort Pitt Tunnel.

When researching this series, I came across a paper about neighborhood development, and it talked about how neighborhood groups need to develop a neighborhood portal, a "main entrance" of sorts. The overall idea was that the most commonly used entrances should be done up in a way that clearly delineates when one is entering the neighborhood and is made attractive so as to welcome visitors. What the paper had in mind was the kind of thing that's within the grasp of most civic groups: A sign, some landscaping, maybe an archway or some public art if the budget allows for it. But what's befitting of a city? Should a city have a Main Entrance? Do cities have main entrances?

So I started thinking about cities I've been to and what their main entrances would be. Take New York, for instance. The best way to enter New York is by taking the New Jersey Turnpike to the George Washington Bridge. There are two problems, though. The first is that the GWB doesn't really take you into any part of New York that you're likely to want to go to. The second is that you wouldn't take it at all when coming in from the airport. So it's a good entrance but not a Main Entrance. And entering NYC from the airport is rather underwhelming.

Denver has a similar problem. It's spectacular descending into the city from the mountains, with practically the entire metro laid out below, the prairie visible in the far distance. For obvious reasons, the airport is not located in the mountains, but on the edge of that prairie. Taking the opposite entrance is spectacular as well, though; Pike's Peak is visible from as far away as Limon on a clear day if you know where to look, and you can see the Rockies from Byers if you don't know where to look. The problem here is that the focus is on the mountains, and by the time the Denver skyline comes into view, the city is an afterthought.

And those are cities with good entrances. I've been to Charlotte more times than I've been to New York, but I couldn't begin to describe the entrance. Ditto for Cleveland, Winston-Salem, Columbus, Richmond, and Indianapolis. Chicago is nice coming in on the Dan Ryan, though not especially dramatic. Cincinnati is the best yet if you're coming from the north on I-75, as you dive through the ravine into Downtown. And Baltimore is great coming across the bridge. But none of them, and I mean none, even come close to Pittsburgh.

The Fort Pitt Tunnel contains the Parkway West, which is the main approach from the west, and thus the airport, as well as the south. Accordingly, it is the direction the majority of visitors will be entering from. The airport is on the edge of nowhere, and the parkway from there passes through a few scattered shopping areas and office parks, but the route isn't particularly urban. The last of these is at the top of Green Tree Hill, from which the Parkway descends into a wooded valley. The tunnel portal is at the bottom of the hill; enter it, and a few minutes later, you're there, Downtown. The city jumps on top of you without warning. People have obviously filmed this and put it on YouTube, but I'm not going to link to any videos, because none do the experience any justice. I'm not even happy with that description. I'll let Paul Goldberger, architecture critic from the New York Times, elaborate:

It is an entrance that combines the controlled quality of a classical, Beaux-Arts axial approach with the rapid movement of automobile travel, and this is perhaps why it seems so unreal, so cinematic, to us today. From tunnel to bridge to city is only a matter of seconds. The moment of Pittsburgh's revelation is so brief that one's first instinct is to push the rewind button and see it all again: we are hardly accustomed to any visual drama in cities, let alone such power in so tightly compressed a time frame.

Goldberger himself said that Pittsburgh was the only city with an entrance, and while I don't necessarily agree with that, he is correct in that the effect entering the city through the Fort Pitt Tunnel has on oneself. It is an indescribable, singular experience. My first comparison was going to be to the Grand Canyon; no matter how many photos you've seen or how many descriptions you've hear, absolutely nothing can compare you for the Grand Canyon. But even this isn't entirely accurate. While the Grand Canyon is big on a scale that's difficult to comprehend, it's at least describable in understandable terms. It's not that entering Pittsburgh is a particular superlative experienced to an incomprehensible degree, it's that the experience itself is incomprehensible.

Is it big? Yes, but if you've been to a major US city you've seen taller buildings. Is it beautiful? Yes, but unless you've spent your life living on an abstract plane or the planet Zog you've seen beautiful landscapes before. Is it surprising? Yes and no. The effect is certainly surprising, but the surprising thing is that it has an effect at all. It's not like you got confused and expected Pittsburgh was 100 miles further down the road and you were entering a rural Appalachian tunnel. You know what's on the other side, you've seen the pictures, you've maybe even seen video. But there's still nothing you can do to prepare. It's like trying to explain what being on a roller coaster is like to someone who has never been on one. So if you want to, watch a video. It will give you a feel for it. But it won't spoil the experience.

17. Stanton Heights: Suburb in the City

Since we've discussed all the land surrounding it, Stanton Heights can be described as that which isn't Upper Lawrenceville, Garfield, Morningside, Highland Park, or East Liberty. Specifically, as you travel up the hill in Upper Lawrenceville, there's a break in development where the slope becomes too steep. The northern border of Stanton Heights follows this break from Allegheny Cemetery to where it approaches the Morningside border near Duffield St. From there, it wraps around the knoll and runs along a similar break with Morningside below El Paso St. As Duffield converges on Stanton Ave., the line breaks through the woods along the hillside back to the cemetery, which forms the neighborhood's western border. As the name suggests, it occupies a height of land that is separated from other neighborhoods by slopes that were too steep to develop.

Stanton Heights was late to develop as far as Pittsburgh neighborhoods are concerned, and very late as far as East End Neighborhoods are concerned. The area south of Stanton Ave. was home to Picnic House, the Croghan Estate, which was later inherited by Mary Schenley, and in 1909 it became the largest private golf club in the city. So that at least explains why it took so long to develop. But I can't find any explanation for the area north of Stanton. Historical maps show parts near Morningside platted as early as 1882, and most of the neighborhood laid out by 1923, but little actual development. In the course of the East End's history, this is understandable, as the area is less accessible than in other places and its time hadn't come yet. But as I mentioned before, the areas south of Mt. Washington were developing in the teens and 20s despite considerable distance and geographic barriers.

Aside from a few clumps of houses near Upper Lawrenceville and along Stanton, the only development predating 1940 is the Stanton Courts, which dates from the late 1920s and early 1930s. My own theory for why this area didn't develop earlier is that there was no streetcar line. A report on transit from the 1920s contains a map of city lines shaded with areas a quarter and half mile from stops, adjusted for topography. The shaded areas could just as easily have represented the built-up areas of the city and its vicinity. In the first decades of the 20th century, streetcar service was a virtual necessity, especially in an area like Stanton Heights where getting to a streetcar meant a long walk downhill, with a corresponding walk back up on the return trip. This doesn't really answer the question, though, just pushes it back another degree. Now we have to ask why there was never a streetcar line on Stanton Ave. (or another nearby road), and why it didn't develop as an early auto suburb. The obvious answer is that Stanton Heights is on a hill, and trains have trouble going up hills. Except they had no trouble going up hills in the neighborhoods to the south, and in some cases the railroads had no trouble building bridges and boring expensive tunnels to get access. A Stanton Ave. streetcar would have been comparatively easy.

The map, I think, provides the answer. If you look at the neighborhoods to the south that developed around streetcar lines despite the challenges of running those lines, you'll notice that any given area is significantly larger than the northern portion of Stanton Heights. A streetcar line on Stanton Ave. would have meant building 2 miles of track, of which less than a half mile would have stops servicing anything other than houses on Stanton or parts of Lawrenceville that were already close enough to streetcar lines, and even then it only would have opened up one side of the road, as the other side was occupied by a golf course. Despite this, the report I reference above does predict that Staton Heights will eventually become a major residential area, and it contemplates the future expansion of the transit network to include Stanton Ave., or an alternative on a new right of way.

This would never happen, as, at the time the report was completed in 1923, streetcars were already on their way out. PRC had filed for bankruptcy in 1918 and wouldn't emerge until 1924, and they would file again in 1938, this time not emerging until 1951. The company's precarious financial position foreclosed the possibility of opening up new lines, the most recent of which had been constructed prior to America's entry in WWI. Though the Depression would retard the kind of full-scale auto adoption that happened after WWI, ownership continued to increase, with over half of all American families owning a car by 1927. Stanton Ave. did see transit access arrive in 1934, in the form of a bus, which did not require the kind of expensive capital investment necessary to open up what was a speculative route.

This leads us to the second question: If Stanton Heights was ill-suited to streetcar access, what about automobile access? I think the reason that it didn't become an early automobile suburb is because, in the earliest days, there simply wasn't enough demand, the demand that existed was more easily satisfied elsewhere. Squirrel Hill was larger and had more to offer in terms of amenities, owing to its large business district, which was in turn owing to the establishment of the streetcar there in 1890. Point Breeze had less of a business district, but it was an established high-end community, and those with the means could purchase a lot on a subdivided estate. Stanton Heights was an isolated hilltop with no businesses to speak of. By 1940, however, Squirrel Hill was mostly built out, and auto ownership had expanded to include people who couldn't afford to build in Squirrel Hill. There was now a market for more modest houses that required a car for access, and as Stanton Heights was some of the last buildable land in the East End, its time had come.

The northern half of the neighborhood was built by a number of smaller developers and contains heterogenous, and rather ugly, housing stock. I've written before about how the heterogeneity of Pittsburgh is one of the things that distinguishes it from other cities, but in some instances, it just doesn't work. The 1940s was an odd era for American houses, a transitional period between traditional design and mass-produced tract housing. The combination of cost-cutting and the new expectation of car storage among working class families led to what I call the "bunker colonial". It's a fairly common style among Pittsburgh area houses built in the 1940s and 1950s, and is characterized by a boxy appearance, ill-proportioned windows that look like they were tacked onto the house, and an integral one-car garage in the basement.

The area south of Stanton was, by contrast, mostly a planned development that began construction in 1947. The closure of the golf club in 1952 made a lot of land available at a time when there was both high demand and the money to satisfy it, and the neighborhood, built out in stages over the following decades, is representative of what I call the "classical" postwar style (which I will hereinafter refer to as a classical suburb, as distinguished from an early-auto suburb). Most of these are single family homes, but there are a surprising number of duplexes as well. Another notable characteristic distinguishing it from the area north of Stanton is the winding street grid and absence of alleys, as opposed to a more traditional grid system. The areas near Garfield were built out the latest, with development not wrapping up until the early 1970s.

Demographically, Stanton Heights began as a largely Jewish neighborhood; a number of recollections I've read from Jews who grew up there refer to it as Pittsburgh's "other" Jewish neighborhood (The Jewish Neighborhood being Squirrel Hill). There were, however, never any synagogues or other notable Jewish institutions, and by the mid-1970s, this population began to decline, as it became consolidated in other neighborhoods with more institutional support. They were slowly replaced by Italians, who couldn't get out of Bloomfield and Larimer fast enough, and, later, blacks. One of the more unfortunate events in Pittsburgh's history came in 1962 when Dr. Oswald Nickens, a black OB/GYN, was refused sale of a lot in Stanton Heights. The city had passed a housing discrimination ordinance in 1958, and he promptly brought a claim. The developer argued, unconvincingly, that he wasn't discriminating based on race but on the fact that the existing residents of the neighborhood didn't want him there, probably on account of his demeanor. The city tribunal was not convinced, and ordered the lot sold. The developer then appealed the case to court, where he lost again, and appealed. I'd like to say that this resulted in landmark jurisprudence, but Nickens dropped the case in 1965 when he found someone willing to sell him a lot nearby.

Neighborhood Grade: Stable. There's a notable racial divide with the area north of Stanton being about 80% white and the area south of Stanton being about 2/3 black. It is, however, a stable, middle-class black area that is more desirable than the area to the north on account of the higher housing quality. Apart from a notorious incident in 2009 when three officers were shot and killed, there is virtually no crime anywhere in the neighborhood, and very little blight or abandonment. That being said, there is little to recommend it as a "hot" location. There are no businesses, let alone a business district, the houses are small and undistinguished, and classical suburbs in general aren't hip from an urbanist's point of view. Nevertheless, there is one use case I can see. If you're a young professional who wants a house with a yard and a garage to tool around in, yet still a few minutes from Lawrenceville and other trendy parts of the city, Stanton Heights may be perfect for you. But I'd bet that there isn't a ton of overlap on that Venn diagram, so there's an upper limit to where the neighborhood can get due to its strictly residential status.

That's it for now. Next time we'll dive into the East End hoods of Homewood, Larimer, Lincoln-Lemington, and East Hills.

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