Frederick Law Olmsted

“ The location of a Civic Center, where the city offices can be grouped in a convenient and dignified manner, ought to connect with the main transportation lines. It ought, if possible, to embrace the county buildings. It ought, if possible, to occupy land which is not of such high cost as to preclude the setting apart of the open space which is requisite to the highest dignity and beauty of public buildings. All these [Pg 12] advantages are embraced to a high degree in a locality now so unpromising and unattractive that it is hard not to feel an unfair prejudice against it. ”

“ At river ports throughout the world, the first primitive step, beyond the mere dumping of stuff and passengers on the natural shelving bank or river bed of mud or gravel, is the paving of the slope, as at Pittsburgh, still leaving the goods to be dragged up and down the bank by main force. ”

“ In a city where rivers play so vital a part in the commercial development, and form a most telling and characteristic element in the landscape, every opportunity should be seized to enjoy as well as utilize them.
To be well above a maximum flood line, a boulevard along the water's edge would have to be nearly as high as the railroad grade; but to avoid the large cost for river walls and filling, which such a construction would imply, the road could be built at a level only rarely flooded without sacrificing an appreciable amount of its essential value for recreative purposes. ”

“ In Washington this crowding forward cannot be done; but when a reasonably large proportion of the owners on any street, or any block of a street, are ready for the change, the front yards are abolished and the sidewalk is moved over into contact with the buildings. If a single owner wants to put in a store long before his neighbors are ready to give up their front yards and long before the City is ready to widen the street to increase its traffic capacity, he is of course at liberty to do so; but he must not move forward of the general building line. ”

“ PITTSBURGH
MAIN THOROUGHFARES AND THE DOWN TOWN DISTRICT
Introduction There are two main divisions of City Planning. One looks to the rearrangement and improvement of what has already been unwisely done through lack of proper planning or through force of adverse circumstances of any sort. The other looks to the wise and economical layout of what still remains to be done, especially at the outskirts of the city where the major part of the city's growth is bound to occur, and where the city plan is daily taking shape out of nothing, whether it is intelligently designed or not. ”

“ The location of this street, high on the hillside above the Monongahela River, presents unusual opportunities incidental to serving its primary purpose as a main thoroughfare. With an ample roadway for all kinds of traffic, with trees for shade and decoration, with a broad promenade overlooking the river and the hills to the south, it would furnish rare and much-needed facilities for recreation; and, further, it would have a distinctive character most appropriate to the rugged topography of the Pittsburgh District. ”

“ In the first instance public market places have always been established as a convenient means of purchasing provisions in an "open market," a place where prices are supposed to be determined by free competition among the producers with the minimum absorption of profit by the agencies roughly indicated by the term "middlemen." Under modern conditions, as the gap between the producer and the consumer has grown steadily bigger, the mere providing of a convenient vacant space in the city, where producer and consumer could meet and do their bargaining, has proved utterly insufficient. ”

“ In every street, vehicles must be free to stop for loading and unloading, and on a busy thoroughfare the space next the curb is so much used in this manner as to become merely a series of sidings into which slow-moving vehicles can turn from time to time in order to clear the main passageway. The result of the conditions above described is that practically the whole wheeled traffic in Pittsburgh streets is inevitably concentrated on the eighteen-foot width where the cars run. ”

“ The plateau land above is thickly settled, and the valley banks are mere dumps of the most unsightly and objectionable character, which rob the Boulevard of much of its value as a pleasure drive. These banks are commercially of little use. In some portions of the valley there is sufficient depth of private property between the Boulevard and the foot of the bank to give usable frontage on the parkway, but the location, in the bottom of a valley, is so undesirable for house sites that a very cheap and unsightly development is apt to take place. ”

“ People in Pittsburgh are so accustomed to steep gradients in the adjacent hill districts that they are apt to ignore the fact that there is a city within their city, and that this inner manufacturing and business city is closely confined to the long drawn-out, irregular, level river-bottoms and is much freer from hills than New York, almost as much so as Chicago. ”

“ Another use, shown by the varied experiences of other river cities, is that, in a commercial water front on modern lines, there is generally opportunity for a wide marginal thoroughfare for the relief of traffic congestion in the adjacent streets. Sometimes such a water-front thoroughfare becomes a busy avenue of retail trade and general travel; but more usually its peculiar value lies in diverting some of the main streams of heavy teaming from the older interior streets where the retail trade and office business tend to concentrate, and where the [Pg 21] passenger travel is most dense. ”

“ The condemnation process, preceded by obtaining options where possible, takes all the land at one and the same instant, and the cost is that of land in a park-less district.
Delay is apt to add but little to the cost of acquiring parks in built-up regions where land and building values are reasonably stable, whereas it adds enormously to the cost in regions at the growing margin of the city. Here, where the greater city of the future is being made, is surely the opportunity to save the large cost of supplying a built-up district with neighborhood parks. ”

“ Here each isolated community, no matter how small, needs its local park; every portion of the long, narrow valley settlement should be near a park; and hillside settlements at distinct levels should have separate opportunities for recreation. Considering the size and shape of the area to be served in many of these cases it is evident that the advantages of concentration must give way to the need for frequent centers, and that economy will here indicate the adoption of a normal size considerably less than that most desirable for cities of flatter topography. ”

“ At the same time all the householders are protected against the premature action of any individual lot owner who might see a possible advantage in being among the first to bid for a commercial business by building a flat-house with stores under it out upon the sidewalk line 40 feet in advance of the other houses. This is the sort of thing that is happening every now and then in Pittsburgh on streets where the great majority of the owners would prefer to have the set-back continued for some years longer. ”

“ Especially with an isolated and limited business district like that of Pittsburgh, made up almost wholly of narrow streets and connected with the rest of the city by a series of bridges and of bridge-like gaps in the hills which wall it in, it becomes of the utmost importance to secure the formation of a wide circuit street connecting these outlets together, so that not all the travel is forced to filter slowly through the midst of the business district. ”

“ At present the only access for surface traffic—except electric cars—is via the Brownsville Road, or South Eighteenth Street, or the inclines. The two roads are steep, from 7 to 8 per cent, and the inclines are expensive and of very limited capacity. The South Hills country is sparsely developed as yet, but, being comparatively free from smoke and very near to the business district, it offers unusually desirable opportunities for homes, and it must soon be thickly settled. The need for a good thoroughfare to this region will then be of far greater importance even than now. ”

“ It is bounded by the two rivers and by the steep hills to the eastward, and within this section of the city, as elsewhere, the basic problem is that of the means of transportation—specifically the problem of the street plan. There is a daily circulation of inward and outward travel to be borne by a limited number of main arteries, of which those leading to most of the tributary districts are bridges. It is clear that the bridges can be enlarged or increased in number at any time when the volume of travel justifies the expense of reconstruction. ”

“ Hillside road in a park at Nice
The problem of making use of the excessively steep hillsides in the Pittsburgh District is a troublesome one. There is a great deal of such land in the district, amounting, outside of the flat regions of East Liberty and the down town districts, to as much as 30 to 35 per cent of the total area. [24] Generally speaking, the slopes are of little value for business purposes and are not well adapted to residential use, the cost of development being excessive in proportion to the location value of the improved property. ”

“ Widths for outlying thoroughfares in a district like Pittsburgh, therefore, cannot be determined by any general rule. Each must be laid out as a problem by itself, the principal objects in each problem being to select a tolerably direct line on reasonable gradient, and so to fix the side lines of the location that it shall be possible to meet the immediate needs by constructing an economical suburban road, where it does not already exist, and ulti [Pg 37] mately to convert it into an ample urban thoroughfare with the minimum of cost and inconvenience. ”

“ Further, for automobiles, electric cars and light horse-drawn carriages the proposed gradients, while objectionable, are not, in view of the topography of Pittsburgh, very excessive. Such gradients, however, are prohibitive to economical teaming. They will be avoided by teamsters at the expense of a long detour if they can find a route of low gradient, and if there is no such route they mean the hauling of smaller loads, the making of more trips to do the same work, and a very appreciable tax upon the public, paid in the cost of coal, building material, household supplies, etc. ”

“ Washington Road.—Washington Road through Greentree borough is an important hilltop thoroughfare feeding into West Carson Street through the West End. From the hilltop down to Woodville Avenue it is undesirably steep. A new road should be built from the top of the hill running northward down the west bank of the valley, rounding the nose of the hill and running west about a thousand feet, then crossing the ravine on a viaduct and joining the Noblestown Road just west of West End Park. The gradient on such a road would not be over five per cent. ”

“ Second, the outer sidewalk of this street should become at most points a tree-shaded promenade, of such width and with such equipment of benches and other features for public recreation as the circumstances permit, so arranged that the people using it will neither be in the way of the transportation activities nor be annoyed or endangered by them, and so designed that the people can enjoy to the full the natural beauty of the river valley and the always interesting activities of which it is the stage. ”

“ Allegheny River Boulevard.—From the Sharpsburg bridge up the river to Hoboken and possibly to Montrose, a first-rate opportunity is presented for a riverside thoroughfare or boulevard. Such a line will have rare scenic value and will also take much traffic from Main Street and the Freeport Road. It is understood that the Pennsylvania Railroad owns all the land from the Sharpsburg bridge to Aspinwall between the river and Main Street, but as no railroad development has yet taken place it seems not unlikely that sufficient land can be obtained next the river for the boulevard. ”

“ Pittsburgh's Need for Surveys No city of equal size in America, or perhaps in the world, is compelled to adapt its growth to such a difficult complication of high ridges, deep valleys, and precipitous slopes, as Pittsburgh. By consequence no other city has such imperative need of accurate and comprehensive surveys, as a basis for the layout of streets, sewers, and all public works, for the purpose of avoiding the extravagant mistakes, misfits, and reconstructions that are bound to result from groping, piecemeal work done amidst such obstacles. ”