The Newtown Pentacle

Thursday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

After beginning the effort in Pittsburgh’s Fineview neighborhood, and then walking down the Rising Main city steps, your humble narrator continued with his lonely scuttle down Howard Street.

A lack of paved sidewalk found me walking upon a grassy knoll, alongside an interstate’s noise abatement wall, securing one from possible vagary or horror behind a traffic guard rail. Didn’t matter, really, as there was no traffic of any kind which I needed to avoid – but it’s better to be proactively safe than postactively sorry.

Aphorism time: It’s easier to avoid starting a fire, than it is to put one out.

The wooded hill to the right, and Howard Street itself, used to be near the commercial center of a no longer extant Pittsburgh neighborhood which was referred to as ‘The East Street Valley.’ City and State nuked the place to make room for a highway, putting more than 800 families out of their homes in the name of progress.

I mean… they were compensated in some way… but… wow.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

There’s three high speed travel lanes in each direction heading south and north on this section of the I-579/I-279 corridor, as well as a seldomly open to traffic double ‘HOV’ lane in its center. There are just a few east/west crossings for vehicles, which are accomplished on high flying bridges or tunnels set in beneath the road, and an odd pedestrian bridge.

I’ve been referring to this road as I-579 for the last few posts. As you head north out of the City, 579 interchanges with 279 (amongst other high speed courses) before joining with ‘I-79’ itself. My inexperience with Pittsburgh’s roads is on display thereby, as I cannot currently tell or show you exactly where those interchanges are. I’ll find out, sometime.

I’ve just tipped my research lance into this East Street Valley tale quite briefly, but I’m fascinated by it.

This Reddit post has a historic photo of the area from 1960, and the ‘main drag’ in the photo is meant to be East Street itself – which is sort of where that HOV lane is today, by my reckoning. In the historic photo, the secondary street, just left of East in the photo. was the very one I was walking on in modernity, which is called ‘Howard Street’ by the City of Pittsburgh.

This video at YouTube discusses the community which was displaced. This YouTube video takes a walk with a historian photographer named Betty Muschar. Interesting stuff.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

A pedestrian bridge can be accessed via Howard Street, one which crosses over the highway and provides a connection to that stand of surviving homes on the other side, and the recalcitrant Catholic Church whose parish priest would not allow it to be moved or demolished.

The annoying thing to me, about this project, is when it occurred in Pittsburgh’s timeline rather than it happened at all. If this was a 1940’s or 50’s era project, I’d understand that they didn’t understand back then.

Thing is: They really got to work on this monstrosity in the late 1970’s, and thereby should have known better. The ‘official’ reason for the project was to better connect the north hills suburbs to downtown Pittsburgh (stadiums), and to alleviate commuter congestion along Route 8 (a north south secondary arterial road that feeds into the east west Route 28, which is actually pretty far away, which goes north/south and offers local street grid connections to a series of town centers).

All I can say is that Robert Moses would have loved this project and the way that that generation of highway planners ‘swung a meat axe’ at the East Street Valley.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The view from that pedestrian bridge, looking south towards Pittsburgh.

As is usually the case with roads of this size and capacity, an aura of blight travels along with it. People driving at 60-70 mph (the speed limit is actually quite a bit lower, but… Pittsburgh) don’t stop off at a mom & pop operation ‘on the way’ to buy a hot dog. They carry their money out of the City with them to somewhere else far away, at a high rate of speed. Highways like this are like knives punched into the heart of municipal economies.

Ask anyone who lives near the LIE, the BQE, or the Cross-Bronx – my NYC homies. High speed roads driven into the hearts of cities create corridors of devastation and poverty around them, so spread the word.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

My eye kept on getting drawn towards all that masonry buried in the verge and mud along the cliff like hills along Howard Street. At the time I was shooting these photos, it was puzzling to me. ‘What happened here?’ is what I kept asking myself.

What a waste.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Steps, foundations, all sorts of stuff for the future’s archaeological people to dig up and discern. Fascinating.

I wonder how many family dogs are still buried up there…

Back tomorrow.

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