Archive for January 27th, 2025
Lower St. Clair doesn’t exist, except I live in it
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is the view I have enjoy driving towards the twice a week ‘PT’ or Physical Therapy appointments, as my broken ankle continues to heal.
It’s more or less at the border between a Pittsburgh community called ‘Mount Lebanon’ and another municipality called ‘Upper St. Clair.’ Both are fairly wealthy suburbs, and this photo was gathered at a point that’s about eight miles out from Downtown Pittsburgh. The ‘upper’ part of the town’s name made me curious, and I asked a few of the locals who are far more familiar with this area than I am. Their answer was always the same – there is no ‘Lower St. Clair,’ nor is there just an ordinary ‘St. Clair.’
Turns out that there actually used to be a Lower St. Clair, and that I actually live in it. Let me explain…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Other than using the Whiskey Rebellion breaking out in St. Clair back in 1794 as a historical benchmark, the earliest European footprints here (that were recorded into the historic record, at least) involve a fellow named John Fife. Mr. Fife established a homestead not too far from where today’s first shot was taken, back in 1762.
St. Clair, named for one of Washington’s Generals, divided itself over time and established an Upper (to the south) and a Lower Saint Clair, to the north. So… Lower St. Clair existed.
The latter or northern section of Lower St. Clair began to subdivide into local governance during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and independent municipalities (including the City of Pittsburgh itself) began to absorb, annex, or otherwise appropriate the land. I’m led to understand that Banksville, Carnegie, Bloomfield, Beechview, and Dormont (where HQ is found) – amongst other towns and boroughs – were all created out of what was once Lower St. Clair, which itself no longer exists as a governmental entity.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This series of facts cut the legs off of a fiction story which I was fleshing out in my head while driving, one which would have made the case for a subterranean network of tunnels under Upper St. Clair, which would be colloquially referred to (in hushed whispers, of course) as Lower St. Clair. Fantasies of Morlocks danced in my head, and hatches hidden away in the suburban basements of tony Upper St. Clair. C’est la’vie, huh?
Back tomorrow with something different at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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The Newtown Pentacle 