The Newtown Pentacle

Monday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Eighteen stories, vertically speaking, and then just two tenths of a mile horizontally – that’s the size box you’d need for the Rising Main City Steps, which are waiting for you on Pittsburgh’s North Side.

I plan on never walking these steps again, as a note.

During this, and tomorrow’s, post you’ll see why.

Let’s just say that they are structurally compromised, and that the only thing which Rising Main really has going for it in terms of not collapsing is gravity. All the parts of the steps are just piled up on each other in a currently stable fashion, but the land they are set into is shifting and subsiding.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Abandoned homes surround you here.

Curiosity about this apocalyptic condition forced me into learning something, an unwelcome moment which punctured a carefully curated ignorance.

Suffice to say that many of the things I’ve learned about this area will be discussed in forthcoming posts, but the walk opened so many questions to me that I was actually forced to buy a history book, which I will now be forced to read and learn something from.

Farkin bastiches…

Ok… I admit it… I’ve been doing historic research about Pittsburgh. Damn it all, it’s true… it’s all true.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Now that my secret shame is public, I feel freed.

I’m beginning to understand everything now.

Why things are where they are… Y’know, everybody focuses on the 20th century steel stuff, but not on coal extraction and glass manufacturing – both of which happened first, and steel was a consequence of the supply chain network established for glass manufacture and coal/mineral extraction.

Coal… you wouldn’t believe it… parts of Pittsburgh are 90-95% undermined… it’s like mole hills down there. I’m getting ahead of myself, however… that story is still coming into focus…

Steps… the City Steps… Rising Main…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The record is a bit hazy, but apparently these particular steps were installed in 1945. Don’t know if they replaced an earlier set.

The steps do look octogenarian, really.

The horizontal iron bannisters are just barely attached to the concrete sections of steps. In some places, they’ve corroded away entirely, in others, you reach out for one and it sort of pulls towards you, bending away from its posts. I’m certain that these steps haven’t just been sitting out here since the Second World War without any maintenance, but holy smokes they are in lousy condition. Cracks, spalling, subsidence.

The stairs lead down into a ravine. There’s the remnant of a street down there, dubbed Toboggan Street. Several residential buildings can be observed along the path, condemned and collapsing.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

How? That’s the question I kept asking myself, along with ‘why’?

Maybe, it’s the resovoir people? There’s a pumping station on the flat section below which needs the land, maybe? Maybe they’re planning something and need these houses out of the way?

Not so much, as it turned out.

I started looking into the matter, and hit a series of dead ends.

Your humble narrator did learn about the distribution of gangland turf on Pittsburgh’s North Side, during the 80’s and 90’s. ‘Back in the day sitch’ as several veterans of that era described a local milieu when crack was king.

In desperation for some sort of understanding of this scenario, I called my pal Tim, who has lived in Pittsburgh for decades. He worked as a real estate guy for a bit, and thereby has a pretty encyclopedic knowledge of Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods. Tim referred to this area as being the ‘East Street Valley,’ and that injection of terminology unlocked some understanding of the entire area for me.

Still had to buy the book.

Coincidentally, Tim is also an accomplished photographer – who shot the photos featured in the very first book about these City Steps from 2004.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Me? I uttered one of my little aphorisms out loud while shooting this photo – ‘It’s all downhill from here,’ and I continued picking my way down the moss and nitre cloaked concrete of these Rising Main steps.

Back tomorrow.

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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.