Archive for February 2025
Trundle Manor
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Dateline: Swissvale – and Our Lady of the Pentacle’s weekend ideation of visiting Trundle Manor. A private home full of odd treasures, Trundle Manor offers tours of its collection for lookie loo’s like us. Their Wikipedia page describes the operation as ‘a macabre art museum and oddity tourist trap.’
We arrived early, as is my habit, and I started worrying about climbing up the stairs due to the still recovering ankle situation. We made it to the top, though, and rang the bell at the appointed time.
(as a note, my ankle was fairly sore after visiting and walking around the Heinz History Center, which was about an hour or so prior to the visit to Trundle Manor)
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Stepping into Trundle Manor, you are greeted by an absolute explosion of detail. Everywhere you turn your head, their collections will offer something of interest. Taxidermy, medical oddities, etc. and they actually had a Jenny Haniver on display. There were also a bunch of hand made electrical gadgets which were kind of scary.
The space was small, and we were part of a group moving through the rooms. Our host was the lady of the house, who introduced herself using the stage name of ‘Velda Von Minx.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Mrs. Von Minx pointed out various points of interest in the sections of the house that were open for public inspection. The shot above is from their parlor. Everywhere you looked, there was something attention grabbing.
Her husband – ‘Mr. Arm’ – wasn’t present, but his presence was felt as Mrs. Von Minx described his art – a combination of practical engineering and artistic showmanship. Here’s a report on Trundle Manor and a visit from local CBS affiliate KDKA.
I’m told that they appeared on MTV’s ‘extreme cribs,’ back in the day.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Yes, that’s a human brain in a jar, which was sharing shelf space with a ‘singing tumor’ and a jar of psoriasis flakes. People donate oddities to the Trundle Manor couple all the time. It’s part of the admission process, apparently, but obviously cash can also be the coin of the realm for entry.
I should state that there’s a seriously weird side to Pittsburgh. The relatively low cost of real estate here allows people to really spread their wings, let their hair down, and embrace their passions. It’s what NYC used to be like before the REBNY people drove the cost of a living into the stratosphere and drained all the financial vitality out of the creative class.
The only folks who can afford modern day NYC are bankers and brokers, who are the world’s most boring and uncreative people.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Mr. Arm apparently constructed the mask above to wear at his wedding, and it enjoys a prominent position in the displays. We moved through the manor, which offers secret doors and rooms, hidden behind bookcases and panels that pivot open at the flip of a switch.
Our Lady and the two friends we came with seemed both amused and electrified by the visit, and I got busy with the camera while they were chatting with Mrs. Von Minx.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Me? I had to negotiate getting back down those steep steps outside while vouchsafing the ankle. This was a bit more difficult than it should have been and on step, I had to catch myself a bit at one point on the way down when the ankle began to flex in an uncomfortable manner. Brr.
I think that if you died here at Trundle Manor you might end up getting incorporated into an artwork. Worth your time if you find yourself in Pittsburgh, and Swissvale is also right next door to Carrie Furnace.
Back next week with something different, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Corduroy City
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The streets and layout of Pittsburgh reject all notion of a grid, due to the unique nature of the terrain here. Recent endeavor found your humble narrator gassing up the car, while out and about, whereupon the point of view above was noticed. I grabbed the camera and waved it around a bit.
The church in the shot above is the 1905 vintage Immaculate Heart of Mary RC church, and if you want a closer look at the exterior of the thing – check out this January of 2023 post. That’s Downtown Pittsburgh rearing up behind Polish Hill. I believe that I was in the Bloomfield section when capturing these shots, which I’m told used to be the ‘EyeTalian’ section ‘back in the day.’
The valley between is spanned by a local high speed road called ‘Bigelow Boulevard,’ which climbs the hills away from the shallows of downtown.
Down below in the valley there’s a Busway (I think) and a series of rail tracks mainly used by Norfolk Southern and Amtrak. Haven’t explored the zone down there yet, so I can’t speak intelligently about it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Same location, looking in a mostly easterly direction away from downtown. Our Lady of the Pentacle was with me, and we were heading for a destination that was a bit of a drive. Not far in terms of distance, but it would all be local streets we needed to cross so traffic lights and all that would slow our progress. A couple of miles were occluded by the preferences of the bicycle people, with speed humps and the bumped out corners and painted lines that form a slalom course. Not a single bicycle person was observed using this infrastructure, although it was fun watching buses and trucks navigate the obstacle course.
We hopped back into the car after the gas station and headed towards our destination in the neighborhood of Swissvale. Found along the Monongahela River, Swissvale is neighbored by Rankin, Braddock, and is just across the river – Homestead and Duquesne. This is a fairly depressed area, in terms of quality of life and economic opportunity – I’m told – but truth be told it reminds me a lot of late 1970’s and early 1980’s Brooklyn.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Swissvale greeted us with easy street parking, and a massive agglutination of potholes marring the road. The pothole/road condition thing is a real hazard here, due to Pittsburgh’s atmospheric conditions and an Appalachian terrain, the underlying soil is almost always moist. Get the air temperatures down and that moisture freezes, causing the street to buckle. When it warms, the asphalt breaks up and a pothole or sinkhole forms.
About six years ago, a sinkhole swallowed a bus downtown.
Back tomorrow with why we came to Swissvale.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Heinz History Center visit
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If you ever wondered what H.J. Heinz, founder of the Heinz Company and popularizer of Ketchup, Baked Beans, and 57 variants of pickle, looked like – your problem is solved, and you’re welcome.
Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself visited the Heinz History Center Museum here in Pittsburgh recently, and I waved the camera around a bit while inside the institution.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Name for and initially endowed by the living Heinz family, in addition to working with the Smithsonian, the Heinz center has been voted America’s best history museum two years running. There’s an entire floor devoted to kids, and one whose main occupation is telling the story of the Heinz company which was founded in and operated out of Pittsburgh.
The Heinz operation has been consolidated since, into larger corporate structures, and these days it’s a portfolio brand operated in partnership with Kraft and the modern conglomerate styles itself as Kraft Heinz. They don’t make ketchup in Pittsburgh anymore, as a note.
There’s displays on the various floors of the Heinz Center detailing some interesting facet of Pittsburgh or Pennsylvania history. There’s displays about the Native American civilizations, the arrival of the Europeans, all that stuff. They also have a few rotating exhibitions.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Preserved neon signs are always a treat for me. They’re quite difficult to photograph, which is just ‘extra’ for one such as myself. I don’t know anything about where this particular sign came from, but the allure of ‘fine liquors’ is undeniable.
We moved through the building, floor by floor. Unfortunately we decided on using the stairs while moving downwards from the fifth floor rather than using the elevators. This angered my busted but recovering ankle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
According to the signage, this stained glass composition originally resided inside a private home, which is amazing when you think about it. I’ve visited this facility before, but oddly enough didn’t do a post about the place. The Heinz family have other leave behinds scattered around the City – here’s the Heinz Chapel in Oakland, and the campus of the former Heinz Factory which is now styled as the “Heinz Lofts” after a residential conversion.
Another refining industry based on the high heat levels offered by coke and coal, glass works were a big deal in Pittsburgh, and still are. The PPG (Pittsburgh Plate Glass) company remains a major force here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the bottom floor/entrance area to the Heinz museum, they have a few of their larger displays – the Heinz delivery wagon pictured above, and a streetcar. There’s other vehicles scattered about the room – an old timey fire engine and a 1940’s looking sedan clad in stainless steel. This is also where a cafe/gift shop style operation can be found.
We had other locations that were on the ‘to do’ list for the day, so the bathrooms were visited and we agreed on a spot to meet up before heading outside and retrieving the car from its parking lot.
$6 for parking, if you’re curious, downtown on a Saturday afternoon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While waiting for Our Lady to return from powdering her nose (or whatever the hell she does when disappearing into the toilet), I took notice of this enormous artillery piece. It’s a recreation of an 1864 vintage 20” Rodman Gun. I couldn’t be bothered transcribing its signage so I took a picture of the detailed description of the thing for your inspection and elucidation.
Back tomorrow with something different at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
White whale
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Note: I screwed the pooch yesterday when talking about the Mexican War Streets here in Pittsburgh, as longtime reader ‘Liman’ pointed out. Please see comments section on yesterday’s post for suggested corrections. Appreciate the scrutiny, me. Now, on with the folderol:
While hanging around and waiting behind the driver’s wheel for something on Pittsburgh’s North Side, a humble narrator couldn’t help but record the scene. That overhang is part of a corporate campus for an aluminum company, the tall buildings are across the river in Pittsburgh’s Downtown section, and the yellow steel thing at bottom right is part of the Andy Warhol Bridge over the Allegheny River.
As a note, if you encounter somebody driving a pickup truck here in Western Pennsylvania, prepare yourself for a lot of random provocation. These people don’t know what the horizontal peddle in front of the drivers seat does, as they only recognize the accelerator and not the brake. I was sitting there with my hazard blinkers on and a pickup moved in behind me in tailgating position, which then started honking his horn for me to move, rather than just go around. They also don’t like turning the wheel. Menaces.
Just last night, for instance, I was heading home from a historic lecture at a nearby library when a pickup driver decided to play with his phone mid intersection, and was just drifting/rolling towards me. ‘My bad,’ he said.
My next stop wasn’t too far away, across the river and about a mile east in the direction of Pittsburgh’s Strip District.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After parking the Mobile Oppression Platform, a Toyota, in a paid parking lot’s spot, Our Lady and I began moving towards our destination on foot. Luckily, for me at least, the Allegheny Valley Railroad appeared as it executed a crossing of the Fort Wayne Railroad Bridge.
I refer to AVRR as the ‘white whale’ as I so seldom see them, as opposed to the more frequent Norfolk Southern and CSX rail traffic which has become familiar photo fodder here. The latter two are giants, it should be mentioned, and AVRR is a short line sort of local operation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I have got to figure out how to connive a way to convince the convention center people into allowing me access to that roof of theirs. Dag.
I’m told there’s a green roof build out up there, which I’d like to see for its own sake, but man – the views of trains coming off that bridge must be absolutely wicked from up there. Me want.
Back tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Tyranny of the now
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Welcome back to fresh content, here at your Newtown Pentacle.
The ice, as it were, has broken and Pittsburgh is now in a warming cycle for a few days. Bad news is that there’s likely going to be some flooding at some point soon as vast sheets of river ice, currently bound up in rural counties hundreds of miles away, will be flowing towards the confluence of the three rivers hereabouts. The Army Corps seems pretty concerned about the arrival of ‘ice dams.’
That’s tomorrow’s problem, although the level of the water in the Port of Pittsburgh continues to ominously rise.
These shots were gathered in a section of Pittsburgh’s North Side called the ‘Mexican War Streets.’ As the name of the place might suggest, the streets are named for American Generals who distinguished themselves during the Spanish American War (as it’s now known).
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It has been profoundly cold and snowy/wet here for what seems like an eternity. It felt great to be outside, although I was tied to the car. I love the convenience of just being able to drive up to something and get a shot, but it ain’t the same as the ‘serendipity’ of finding something unexpected and I’m also anchored to a certain geography because of where I parked.
I know, first world problems. An hour or two of time was available to me on this particular day, which I decided to throw away by hanging around a train yard at which absolutely zero locomotives appeared.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While cooling my heels and kicking the dirt, one of Pittsburgh’s ‘PRT’ buses appeared. I’d point out the bike rack on the front of the thing, and mention that this is another one of the things which NYC’s MTA says absolutely cannot be done, but then again I’m done arguing with the MTA.
Back tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
The Newtown Pentacle 