Pittsburgh

“ Travelers who come to Pittsburgh, forgetting the smoke which often dims the blue splendor of its skies, are struck with the picturesque situation of the town, for they find rolling plateaus, wide rivers, and narrow valleys dropping down from high hills or precipitous bluffs throughout the whole district over which the city extends. Yet the surpassing beauty of nature is not more impressive to the thinking stranger than the work of man who has created and dominates a vast industrial system. ”

“ The Spirit of Pittsburgh I LIKE A GIGANTIC hive the twin cities jut out on the banks of the Ohio, heavily breathing the spirit of feverish activity, and permeating the atmosphere with the rage of life. Ceaselessly flow the streams of human ants, meeting and diverging, their paths crossing and recrossing, leaving in their trail a thousand winding passages, mounds of structure, peaked and domed. ”

“ If the business portion of Pittsburgh is a city, half enchanted, of fire and smoke, inhabited by demons playing with fire, the surrounding portion is also under enchantment, of a different kind, and smiles a land of beauty, brightness, and quiet. ”

“ Pittsburgh, a great industrial community, is depicted as a knight in steel armor, emblematic of strength and power. Labor having reached its highest expression in the prosperous industrial community, the city is being crowned with a laurel wreath and heralded by the winged figures which have arisen out of the smoke and steam. The whole picture is symbolic of the immense energy which is guided by labor into productive channels. ”

“ That is, Pittsburgh of the mighty mills, Pittsburgh of the heaped-up millions, Pittsburgh of the rampant industrialism which has spread its influence to the far corners of the world, stands by helpless while six hundred lives are going out needlessly, not because they might not be saved, but because there is no place in which to save them. ”

“ Has Pittsburgh a literature? Those rolling clouds of smoke, those mighty industries, those men of brawn, those men of energy, that ceaseless calculation of wages and dividends—can these produce an atmosphere for letters? It seems unthinkable. Yet hold! Only the other day on the train a man who has been a resident of New York for thirty-five years remarked in this author's presence that "Pittsburgh is the most intellectual city in America." He had never visited Pittsburgh and the author did not and does not know his name. ”

“ And Pittsburgh is but one of the renewed cities which encompass the eastern half of the valley where once stretched the chain of French forts futile in defense but powerful in prophecy.
When we see the American city, even through the eyes of Walt Whitman, that poet of democracy, it seems a desperate hope that is left her: "Are there, indeed, men here in the city," he asks, "worthy the name? Are there athletes? Are there perfect women to match the generous material luxuriance? Is there a pervading atmosphere of beautiful manners? Are there crops of fine youths and majestic old persons? ”

“ As nature has given to Pittsburgh one of the most picturesque city sites in the world, so she has done what she could to circle the city with lovely suburbs. With sane and artistic planning, popular co-operation, and a degree of patience, the beautiful suburb with winding roads, entrancing views, individual privacy and communal neighborliness, might have been secured much oftener than it has been and it might have been brought within the financial reach of much greater numbers. ”

“ Pittsburgh stands on the edge of the valley of the new democracy. It has put its plates along every path. There is hardly a village of any size from the Alleghanies to the Rockies that it has not laid some claim to by its strips of steel. There is hardly a stream of any size that it has not claimed by a bridge. It has, indeed, the spirit of Céloron, in other body, still planting monuments of France's renewal of possession, wherever the steel rails and girders and plates from the Pittsburgh mills have been carried. ”

“ As we begin our survey of the local field, the wonder grows that the literary production is so large, and that the character of much of it is so very high. Let Pegasus champ his golden bit as he may, and beat his hoof upon the empty air, Pittsburgh men and Pittsburgh women have ridden the classic steed with grace and skill through all the flowered deviations of his bridal paths. ”

“ What more fruitful themes can there be than the rise of the iron, the glass, the oil industry, the steamboat commerce of our interior, the subjection of the Monongahela, the combination of a city which reminds the traveler of Hades, with suburbs which suggest metaphors about Paradise? And can he not find food for inquiry and thought in the great riots of 1877?
Yet the only historian of Pittsburgh is Neville B Craig, whose short and not over-attractive history ends with the middle of this century, if we remember rightly. ”

“ Pittsburgh's leading citizens are spending freely upon artistic things. This center of manufacturing has had its permanent orchestra for some years—Boston and Chicago being the only other cities in America that can boast of one. A naturalist club and a school of painting have sprung up. The success of Library, Art Gallery, Museum, and Music Hall—a noble quartet in an immense building—is one of the chief satisfactions of my life. This is my monument, because here I lived my early life and made my start, and I am to-day in heart a devoted son of dear old smoky Pittsburgh. ”

“ Pittsburgh has always been preeminently a hospitable city, and it is possible that in no other town of its size is there as much entertaining. At weddings, too, the display of presents is an object of surprise to the out-of-town guests, unused to such lavishness. Tracing our Provincial characteristics back to their remote origins, we discover that Pittsburgh at the end of the nineteenth century, in the grip of hereditary, imitates the traders and early settlers in this region, who were in the habit of entertaining whole tribes of Indians, and of making them [Pg 59] frequent gifts. ”

“ When the truth of history is known, you will be honored as the real father of the Greater Pittsburgh, for if it had not been for your own great wisdom, backed by your personal courage, there would have been no extra session of the legislature, and if it had not been for your state pride in desiring to see a greater city at the western end of the state, the legislation under which the Greater Pittsburgh has now come into existence would not have been included in the program. ”

“ Pittsburgh is the antithesis of such a town. It is all motion. The modern industrial city is a flow, not a tank. The important thing is not the capacity of a town, but the volume and currents of its life and, by gauging these, we can gauge the community. ”

“ In studying the civic improvement possibilities of Pittsburgh, one is impressed by a curious mingling of antagonistic conditions. A wonderful natural picturesqueness is contrasted with the utmost industrial defilement, smoke and grime and refuse pervading one of the finest city sites in the world. Similarly great wealth and great squalor are side by side. Nation-wide business is done on very narrow streets. ”

“ Pittsburgh, at that time the frontier of civilization, was a shabby little river port with a population not exceeding three hundred souls, in less than forty log houses scattered along the levee where many flatboats and river craft waited to carry the immigrants and their goods into the western country. ”

“ Pittsburgh has the feudlands, the dying struggles of the old Whisky Rebellion in the Alleghanies, Lake Erie, the Ohio shantyboaters, the big woods along the New York border. No city has a greater variety of back country than Pittsburgh. ”

“ So it has come to pass that no one lives in Pittsburgh itself, unless under absolute compulsion. The suburbs present housing facilities for the better part of its folk—Sewickley and East Liberty vie for greatest favor with them and there are dozens of smaller communities that crowd close upon these two social successes. "We can never get a decent census figure," growls the Pittsburgh man, as he contemplates the size of these outlying boroughs that go to make the city strong in everything, save in that popular competitive feature of population. ”

“ Pittsburgh is a city that sits with its feet in or very near the lake of brimstone and fire, and its head in the sweet country air of the hill-tops. I think I got nearer the infernal regions there than I ever did in any other city in this country. One is fairly suffocated at times driving along the public highway on a bright, breezy August day. It might well be the devil's laboratory. Out of such blackening and blasting fumes comes our civilization. ”

“ Pittsburgh maintains by popular support one of the four symphony orchestras in America. She has given many famous men to science, literature, and art. Her astronomical observatory is known throughout the world. Her rich men are often liberal beyond their own needs, particularly so William Thaw, who spent great sums for education and benevolence; Mrs. Mary Schenley, who has given the city a great park, over four hundred acres in the very heart of its boundaries; and Henry Phipps, who erected the largest conservatory for plants and flowers in our country. ”

“ Without in the least abating the test of moral and legal standards upon the policy of industrial leadership in the great activities of western Pennsylvania, it can hardly be doubted that later generations will include the leaders in such enterprise among the master builders of modern civilization. The place of Pittsburgh in the American system of life is that of the city which in an altogether unparalleled way is made up of producers, of those whose purposes are focused in bringing to pass the creation of durable and indispensable utilities. ”

“ Another point of contrast between Pittsburgh, the industrial center, and Pittsburgh, the community, lies in the progressiveness and invention which have gone into the details of one and the other; for instance, aldermen's courts which dispense justice to the working population of Pittsburgh and deal with the minor civil business of a city of half a million. They serve very well in an agricultural district. ”

“ In the English manufacturing towns, a fine is imposed upon those who do not consume their smoke. Incalculable would be the advantage to this place, could such a regulation be adopted." Cramer's Navigator, 1817.
"Upon the whole, I consider Pittsburgh, in every point of view, to be a very important town; and have no doubt, although its prosperity is now at a stand, and property if not declining, is not increasing in value, that it will gradually advance; and that the time must come when it will be an extensive and very populous city. ”

“ On the one hand, irresponsible individuals have gone forth with boundless power to represent the city to the world at her worst. On the other, Pittsburgh is gradually and quietly taking to herself the world's lessons in the making of the modern city and in the building up of citizenship. ”

“ The civilization of Pittsburgh was crude and vigorous, withal prescient of future culture and refinement.
The place sprang into prominence after the conclusion of the French and Indian War, and upon the improvement of the military roads laid out over the Alleghany Mountains during that struggle. Pittsburgh was located on the main highway leading to the Mississippi Valley, and was the principal stopping place in the journey from the East to the Louisiana country. The story of its early social existence, interwoven as it is with contemporaneous national events, is of more than local interest. ”

“ Pittsburgh is laid out to front both rivers; but as these do not approach at right angles, the streets intersect each other obliquely.
It is not a well built city. The south-west part is the most compact, but many years must elapse before it will resemble Philadelphia. Wooden buildings, interspersed with those of brick, mar the beauty of its best streets; and as few of these are paved, mud, in showery weather, becomes abundant. A short period, however, will probably terminate this inconvenience." Thomas's Travels through the western country in 1816. ”

“ The three newspapers of the day—the Gazette, the Mercury, and the Commonwealth—have furnished, though somewhat sparingly, the items of local news. They have also furnished advertisements—these in greater abundance and variety.
The men who were the tourists of the day in America, traveling by stage, wagon, boat, or on horseback, often made Pittsburgh a stopping place in their journey. ”

“ Next to the establishment of the Pittsburgh Gazette, the publication and sale of books, and the opening of the post route to the eastern country, the most important event in the early social advancement of Pittsburgh was the passage of an Act by the General Assembly, on April 22, 1794, incorporating the place into a borough. The township laws under which Pittsburgh had been administered were crude and intended only for agricultural and wild lands, and were inapplicable to the development of a town. ”

“ A fine of fifteen dollars is exacted of those who ride on horseback or carriage faster than a walk; there are also foot-walks. Pittsburgh contains fifteen thousand inhabitants—it has not a pleasing appearance, containing a great number of wooden buildings, all of a smoky colour from the smoke continually ascending from the numerous manufactories. Pittsburgh reminds you of an English city, and therefore is called the American Birmingham. It was nine o’clock, A. M. when we arrived, and took lodgings at the Mansion-house, kept by Colonel Ramsay, a good hotel, and a very polite landlord. ”