The Newtown Pentacle

Thursday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

As described in yesterday’s transmission, your humble narrator was on a mission. After an intriguing walk – more than month prior – along a path that threads though a valley/ravine which is found in the more or less dead center of Pittsburgh, I wanted to return and explore this ‘zone.’

Problem in the interim was ice and snow, and the sure knowledge that this out of the way industrial focused strip was likely the very last place to have gained the attentions of the plow and salt brigades.

Had to wait for the melt, so I tried to do a little bit of reading on the subject, and this place seems to be another one of Pittsburgh’s historical black holes.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Obviously, I’ve got a lot more experience with the ‘black hole’ thing back home, so let’s use that as an example for what I mean.

The history of NYC is almost entirely written from the perspective of and about Manhattan. There’s also a lot of Brooklyn ‘stuff,’ but it’s a very specific part of the Borough which is well documented. Slavery in NYC during the Dutch vs. British periods, and the financing of the slave trade by insurance underwriters on Wall Street? Crickets. Anti immigrant riots? Mentioned, but mostly crickets, except in the case of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral. NYC’s ethnic neighborhoods being consciously created by Tammany to build ethnic voting blocs? Crickets. Newtown Creek…

The historic record of Pittsburgh is one punctuated by groups of oligarchs deciding to spend some of their moolah on churches, libraries, or schools and the historic record thereby speaks glowingly about the Mellons or Fricks as being great and generous human beings, and public benefactors. Ignore their strike breaking and rapacious income levels.

The ‘record’ generally skips past spots like Skunk Hollow, whose scant mentions (which I’ve been able to find) include that ‘it’s a place where the low people gather to listen to jazz and drink.’ The low people were specifically described as ‘Negroes, Jews, and the Irish.’

My kind of spot, then.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The funny thing about all that, is what’s down here was and is super important, and especially so to the history of 20th century Pittsburgh. Another abandoned home is seen on the hill, behind that massive retaining wall.

For this section of the day, the street I was walking on was called ‘Juniper Street,’ which invisibly transmogrifies into ‘Lorrigan Street,’ then ‘Neville Street,’ and it eventually becoming ‘Sassafras Street’ as it rejoins the local grid at an angle between Lawrenceville and Bloomfield.

For any new readers, I refer to an area which isn’t in one neighborhood or another as existing in the ‘angle’ between them.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Looking back over my shoulder, and as usual – where is everyone?

I’m currently nurturing a fun delusion that I’m dead, and exist only as a phantom blowing along the empty streets while dissipating into the atmosphere, but that idea’s just Cotarded.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The path began shedding altitude as the Bloomfield Avenue Bridge came into view. The businesses along this route were light and medium industrial.

As you’ve probably discerned, at the top of this hill is an auto mechanic who has a small junkyard worth of spare parts and ‘beaters’ arrayed about their property. Further down the road, there were material handlers, dump trucks, back hoes and other heavy gear parked here and there, so likely some sort of construction and earth moving outfit. Neat.

The ravine started to plunge in altitude, as the plateau which Bloomfield squats upon really came into focus. This is fairly obviously a hydrological valley, but the only water flowing through – which I could observe – was a drainage channel set in along the bottom of that giant hill.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Yet another abandoned home.

Pittsburgh experienced a full on demographic collapse after the steel industry began pulling up stakes here. Many of these abandoned structures are in deleterious condition, as a note.

The theory which I’ve been offered – by local knowledge – is that the house belonged to a parent or grandparent, and the modern day inheritor of the property had long ago left Pittsburgh and hasn’t looked back. The abandoned property likely owes back taxes, or the cost of upkeep for the building is too much, or the modern day owner has just disappeared and there’s no one else to contact about upkeep. I’m told that Pittsburgh has a condemnation procedure which is incredibly bureaucratic, time consuming, and expensive to navigate, so…

Lots of abandoned homes with no line of clear property ownership to pursue for a condemnation.

Back tomorrow.

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