Syracuse Street
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Grandview Avenue is a street which rides along the ridge line of Mount Washington here in Pittsburgh, offering visitors paramount points of view over the City. At either end of the landform, tertiary local streets drip down and away from Grandview, providing access to the surrounding hills, flood plains, bridges, tunnels, and the rivers.
This time around, my walk got started about a block back from Grandview Avenue, at one of the local roads ‘up there,’ which is called Shiloh Street. Shiloh, where a BID promotes several tourism focused businesses, leads down to Sycamore Street – which is a very interesting sort of pathway to one such as myself. Gotta stop saying that, as there really isn’t anyone else who is like myself. It’s a curse.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sycamore Street is pretty steep in this section, and as soon as you leave Shiloh Street it transmogrifies from commercial to residential zoning.
Space is tight up here on Mount Washington, and the multi story buildings are practically built on top of each other, with only narrow alleys or driveways between them.
Behind me is a long residential section of Sycamore Street, but the section I was walking on this particular day is the fun part. To me, at least.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At Sycamore’s intersection with Wyoming Street, there’s a large undeveloped lot. I’ve driven by this lot several times and have always wondered what was going on there. As it turns out, not too much.
I’m unclear as to what’s going on here. I’ve seen online speculation that some big real estate development deal fell through, or something like that. It doesn’t seem abandoned, this property. Somebody mows the grass here, I’d point out. There aren’t middens of garbage, or illegal dumping.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s the remains of a public street there, pictured above, dubbed Vinecliffe Street. Notice the strip of sidewalk pavement, and the metal bannisters, on the right. One kicked his feet about, looking to see if there might be an interesting point of view, but when there was one it was largely obscured by the bush and I couldn’t justify getting closer due to my whole ‘I don’t want to fall off a cliff’ thing. That would be embarrassing.
Something used to be here, as there were large blocks of concrete and the remains of a few retaining walls spotted here and there. Additionally, there are the demapped streets like Vinecliffe.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That was the best view I could find, above. The bridge at the bottom of the shot is the Smithfield Street Bridge, spanning the Monongahela River between the ‘South Side Flats’ and ‘Downtown Pittsburgh.’
Not that anyone would really care other than me, but I was likely trespassing, so a heel spin was executed and I headed back over to the particular pathway which was my day’s early focus.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Steep, it’s steep I tell you… steep.
Back tomorrow with more.
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