The Newtown Pentacle

Wednesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

‘You can’t see anything from a highway,’ I always say, and thereby I’ve set my Google maps navigation app to avoid them – whenever I’m not in a hurry – and to instead route my driving path through local streets instead of the highways and interstates. This practice often piques interest in an area, and a mental note is made to return to certain of these spots on foot in order to do some exploring. I’m still learning what’s what and where’s where here in Pittsburgh, so this practice has been somewhat revelatory.

Accordingly, I recently left the car back at HQ and took a cab over to the nearby South Side Slopes section of the city, where I got busy on what ended up being a pretty productive photowalk.

Pictured above is the ‘All Wars Memorial Garden.’ Can’t tell you much about it other than it was refurbished by the South Side Slopes neighborhood association in 2007.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This is Pius Street, a typically (for this area) narrow local street which I often use to travel back to HQ rather than going through the heavily trafficked Liberty Tunnel. Everytime I’ve driven through this area, with its intriguing inventory of quite heterogenous housing stock set along a steep hill, and multitudes of ‘City Steps,’ I’ve said ‘gotta walk around here sometime.’

Welcome to sometime, lords and ladies.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

As I would pronounce it in real life – “dem Catlicks used to have quite da operation here’s.”

You can take the boy out of Brooklyn…

Pictured above is the ruination of what I’m told is ‘St. Michael’s Mädchen Schule, and then South Side Catholic High School: West Building,’ which seems to be remembered for hosting an annual “Passion Play’ called ‘Veronica’s Veil.’ There’s an article on the building at abandonedonline.net which offers a brief history and interior shots.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

That’s a pretty massive structure to have been just abandoned like this. Surprising that it hasn’t been rehabilitated and turned into housing, but the whole abandoned building thing in Pittsburgh generally surprises me. The Roman Catholic Church in this part of the country has massively contracted back onto itself, combining parishes and selling off properties.

Not a horizontal mile away, down on the south side flats, there’s an entire church for sale. Don’t think I haven’t fantasized about being able to afford the purchase, but you’d need sacks of money for that. Can you imagine?

How Goth… (get it? goths – sacks – sack of Rome – `Bwah hah hah).

My pathway led away from these former holdings of Rome, however, towards a set of those City Steps mentioned previously.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Pictured above is a section of the former Saint Michael’s Roman Catholic Church & Rectory, which is now known as ‘the Angels Arms Luxury Condominiums.’ See what I mean about the RC church selling off its abundance of land holdings hereabouts?

This is where my predecided path demanded a right hand turn, which then carried me in a downward direction as well.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

These are the ‘Church Route Trestle’ steps, which connect the slopes with the flats starting at the intersection of South 15th and Clinton Streets. They also just happen to offer a crossing over a very busy set of Norfolk Southern RR tracks called the Mon Line.

This had absolutely nothing to do with my chosen path, I assure you.

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