Archive for the ‘Pennsylvania’ Category
Sunday Street Steps
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This post visits the ‘Sunday Street’ City Steps in Pittsburgh’s California Kirkbride section, which were installed here in 1946.
The section of ‘sidewalk steps’ on the intersecting Maravista Street (which was described yesterday) offers pedestrians some 54 ‘sidewalk’ or ramp style steps, whereas the Sunday Street section offers a longer course of 90 steps whose proportions are more in tune with common stairs.
When I’m planning out a scuttle, I like to have a ‘goal’ location somewhere along the course. This one was met early in my day.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s an amazingly well preserved and kept Victorian era home on the corner of Sunday and Maravista. I was torn by my personal prohibition against taking pictures focused in on people’s houses – as that’s creepy – and my absolute need to get this building in frame for the next few shots as it’s gorgeous.
Fantastic, that. I’m jealous.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One set of steps continues down from Maravista Street to the flatlands of the neighborhood below, and both it and the Sunday Street steps branch off from the common intersection.
I spun around to the right, and got on with things.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Again, not in great shape, these steps but neither am I, so fair.
Same concrete issues as elsewhere, also same bannister problems, but other than a few spots where you wanted to be fairly careful as far as where you stepped down… they’re in passable shape. Won’t win any good government awards, but also not ‘hazardous to human life.’
One proceeded along, with the stair based PTSD singing in my head. Luckily, that Big Special music I was listening to drowned out most of my invasive thoughts.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
From the bottom of the stairs, which were fairly steep – in retrospect.
‘Steep’ has an entirely different meaning in Pittsburgh than anywhere else except – possibly – all of Scotland. Coincidentally, back in the ancient time before the bacteria which rots vegetatation had evolved, Appalachia and Scotland were part of the same forested and moist land mass.
Plate tectonics, yo, it affects us all. The bacteria? Well, there’s a reason that Coal and Oil are found deep underground. Rotting bogs and forests and dead oceans lie down there, and that’s where we draw our petrochemical happiness from.
My recent fascination with coal has led me to read some geological ‘stuff’ which clued me in about the ‘Pittsburgh Coal Seam.’
They didn’t teach this in high school history class back in Brooklyn. At Newtown Creek I learned all about the maritime, sewage, rendering, acid manufacturing, waste handling, swill milk, oil, and gas businesses there. I’m learning about all this coal stuff now.
The history of the Appalachia’s is the history of life, and death, itself.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Ok, goal hit, I got this particular shot which I wanted. It’s sort of a ‘known composition’ as in a lot of people take a photo from somewhere nearby. It’s on the cover of a book, but that’s a far better shot than mine. That photographer either got super lucky, or they had observed the scene in different seasons during different times of day.
Now it was time to wander again, somewhat aimlessly.
My plan for the remains of the day was to eventually get back to a T light rail station, and I intended to get there inefficiently. Wander about, follow my nose, hope for serendipity to strike.
Back tomorrow with more.
“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.
Stepping out, seeing the town
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last week, I brought y’all along on a scuttle in the California Kirkbride section of Pittsburgh, and my toes were pointed squarely in the direction of the ‘Sunday Street’ City Steps. Nowhere near as grandiose as the Rising Main, or as enigmatic and picturesque as the City Steps in the South Side Slopes section, this public byway was nevertheless something which I wanted to experience.
As it turns out, that section of California Kirkbride, along Brighton Road, is on a bit of a plateau. The approach to Sunday Street has a set of steps – which are more of a stepped sidewalk ramp than they are proper stairs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A lesser section of the Union Dale cemetery was on the other side of that fence. Some sort of industrial outfit was across the street, and somebody who worked there was moving panel trucks around from one bay to the other. A couple of old timers were walking their dogs.
I jabbered along like some obscene mockery of a man, encased within a swirling maelstrom of black sack cloth, gesticulating towards odd things with a camera. Loathsomeness incarnate, horrible to behold, avoidance demanding… that’s me. Everybody hates this guy, so just ask around and they’ll tell you why. Fruit spoils when I near, dogs bark, children cry.
That fearful monstrosity which I see in the mirror, I have discovered, is myself.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The City Steps here were in a condition which I’ve discovered as being concordant with the mores of Pittsburgh’s maintenance schedules. Spalling concrete, loose or detached bannisters, cracked pavement and lots of vegetative intrusion into the masonry. Looks like these steps haven’t been meaningfully touched by laborers in decades. Feh!
Right about here is when the realization that Brighton Road behind me sits on some sort of plateau occurred, incidentally.
In the distance, and for some context as to where these shots were gathered in relation to places I’ve talked about frequently in the past, you can see the gold arch of the West End Bridge over the Ohio River, poking up at the top right of the shot above and the ridge that it’s in front of is Mount Washington.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking over my shoulder and back at where I’d just walked, an old habit held over from Brooklyn’s past.
Normally, this activity revolves around seeing if anyone is following me. Given that by this point of the morning – other than seeing people driving by in their cars – I had seen not more than ten humans blundering around the neighborhood, and half of those were following their leashed up dogs around.
Right around here was when I decided to use my headphones again, as the bird song had dropped off when I moved away from the main fields of the cemetery. I was listening to a newish British band called Big Special.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s the intersection with the set of City Steps I wanted to see, which I’ll be showing all of y’all tomorrow. This is an interesting spot, as three sets of Steps merge into one path here.
There were a couple of youngish guys walking on the steps too, but other than that the place seemed deserted.
I thought to myself that the area ‘looked like Salem’s Lot, but during the day when all the vampires are asleep.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I should also mention that I’ve been keeping busy for the last few weeks, and am way ahead of schedule again. These shots were captured on the 15th of March, and the posts written during the first week of April. If I’ve got my scheduling right, you’re seeing this during the last week of April.
Given how chaotic the world is at the moment, if it seems like I’m ‘out of touch’ with whatever the latest calamity is, that’s why.
Back tomorrow with more.
“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.
California dreaming, kirkbride scuttling
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As opined yesterday, your humble narrator was feeling pretty good on this particular outing. The weather was on my side… if anything it was too ‘nice’ out… clear and bright.
I was scuttling along, in a loathsome manner, alongside the colossal masonry retaining walls of the Union Dale Cemetery in Pittsburgh’s California Kirkbride section. All caught up.
The structure and ‘halo’ of the high speed roads leading to and from Downtown Pittsburgh are such that entire neighborhoods have been overlooked or forgotten. This is one of the several ‘north side’ neighborhoods which you drive past, at speed, on your way to somewhere else. Expressways, highways, interstates – all have limited exits and lead to extant locales. Money once spent in the city will instead be spent in a distant suburb. The area surrounding the roads loses value, due to pollution and noise.
As seen across the world, when an urban area touches the start of a high speed road, it tends to wither away over time. This observation will be a lot more apparent by the end of this walk, than it is at the start. NYC examples: Astoria Blvd. between 31 and 48th streets especially, but really the entirety of the Grand Central Parkway. Borden Avenue from the Queens Midtown Tunnel to Maspeth comes to mind, and there’s always the BQE, and Cross Bronx, and the Interboro and… and… and…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
‘That’s one heck of a school building,’ thought your humble narrator.
It turns out that it’s the Pittsburgh Oliver High School campus pictured above, and a quick web search suggests that this building is used as office space for the local school bureaucracy in modernity.
Shrinking population, less students, I guess.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The interim goal for my morning was to check out a nearby set of City Steps. Nothing quite as gargantuan as that last North Side set of stairs which I walked at Rising Main, mind you, but I’m working my way through a sort of list right now. It’s not actually written down, this list of mine, but there’s things I want to see and experience this year.
This was fairly easy walking by Pittsburgh standards. Hills, yes, but not crazy steep ones. No abysses, either.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I find the esthetics of the building stock here quite satisfying.
My path was a bit complicated – walk a block make a right, another and you make a left – that sort of thing. I’ve started a text document which I’m encoding all these directions into, so if anyone reading this is planning a trip to Pittsburgh or if you’re already here – if you want to check any of these places out for yourself, leave a comment below and I’ll send you the directions so you can go check things out.
It’s easy… you put one foot in front of the other, and soon you’re walking out the door…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Promises are offered that I won’t regularly be running shots of street signs here, but I’d also like to re-mention yesterday’s statement that I have finally found a practical usage for AI. If you want to know where you were on a walk, as in which neighborhood or whatever, providing the machine with the intersection info on signage solves the problem.
I’ll be talking about using AI to help plan an out of state day trip in a few weeks, and let me tell you – it was both disastrous and time wasting.
It’s like asking a blind man to describe what a parrot looks like, when an AI is considering answers to ‘meatspace’ questions. The technology is great at parsing numerical and spreadsheet information… but the real world is… not… it’s generally not as it’s described on paper.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Going to break off this week before getting to the first destination on this scutttle, which will continue next week when you get to see the Sunday Street Steps in Pittsburgh’s California Kirkbride.
Back next week with more – 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.
Pittsburgh Phil, and the road to California
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For this scuttle, one used a rideshare cab to drop my pre-corpse off across the street from Pittsburgh’s Union Dale Cemetery, a polyandrion which is itself ‘on my list,’ but tapophilia wasn’t on the menu for this particular day. This area is in the ‘north side’ of the city.
The section which I’d be scuttling through during this effort is dubbed ‘California Kirkbride.’ While moving along the cemetery’s fenceline, a mausoleum demanded my attentions from the other side of a fence.
‘That’s something,’ said a humble narrator. Serendipity, indeed.
George Elsworth Smith died fairly young, but boy oh boy did he live.
Smith was a professional gambler, horses were his thing, and he made his living betting on them. He died young at 42, after having amassed a fortune of more than three million dollars – in 1905 – a sum which would be worth more than one hundred million dollars, in today’s money.
Another professional gambler assigned Smith the nickname ‘Pittsburgh Phil,’ in order to distinguish him from a crowd of other people in their orbit named George Smith.
Apparently, Smith designed his own mausolea, which cost him $30K, and it was ready for him some seven years before he died of tuberculosis. The portrait statue of him on the roof was commissioned by his grieving mother, and added posthumously. The piece of paper clutched in the statue’s hand is a betting slip from a racetrack.
Pittsburgh Phil.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An effort is underway to visit sections of Pittsburgh which haven’t been considered quite yet, or at least that I haven’t experienced while out on foot. I’ve done a lot of auto based scouting, yes, but as I always say – you can’t see anything from a car because you’re moving too fast. I’ve resumed an old habit, by the way, which is to start recording the street intersection signage while moving around. I often need these ‘bookmarks’ afterwards, to make sense of all the shots and remember exactly where it was that I shot them. Good news is that a non contrived usage for AI has actually appeared, wherein I ask Google’s machine what neighborhood a particular intersection is found within. This is handy, for one such as myself.
California-Kirkbride, which is where the intersection of Brighton Rd. and Ingham Street is found, is another one of those ‘North Side’ Pittsburgh neighborhoods which has a ferocious reputation. ‘Don’t go there, ‘they’ll’ shoot you dead.’ My answer to that last one has become ‘who are ‘they’?,’ ‘what are their names?,’ ‘can we call them?’
Funny thing – wasn’t scary at all – just another residential neighborhood and kind of a lovely one at that.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
See any ‘beater’ cars covered in tarps in the driveway or front yard? Garbage and furniture on the lawn? Old tires? Wooden panels filling the street facing windows? Nope? You’re in an ok section of town then. Relax.
Brighton Road is kind of the ‘main drag’ through here, and it snakes along the masonry retaining walls of that cemetery. Across the street is housing stock that’s quite typical of the sort that Pittsburgh’s post WW2 automobile enabled suburbanization process installed.
‘Dis ain’t no suburb, Mitch, you dumb.’ Actually, if you read up on the history of Astoria, Queens you’ll find out that Astoria was considered a suburb ‘back in the day.’ You’ve got Levittown on your mind when you hear that ‘suburb’ word…
If you’re interested in the history of this sort of residential architecture, and the stories behind its development, check out this 1994 vintage Rick Sebak documentary, from the local PBS outfit (pbs login required).
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m really going to have to take a hard look at this cemetery sometime…
Pittsburgh Phil was just a lucky find, but I didn’t come all the way over here to just stand around and admire the statuary. One leaned into it, and scuttle scuttle scuttle did I do.
As usual, I had figured out a walking route prior to leaving HQ, as it’s pretty easy to ‘cul de sac’ yourself on Pittsburgh’s hills.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was pleasant out, weather wise, with temperatures in the middle 50’s and a steady breeze. One had zipped the insulating liner out of his filthy black raincoat, and thereby felt quite ‘bon vivant.’
I was carrying the standard ‘kit’ in my camera bag, wearing the standard ‘Mitch suit,’ and had omitted usage of the headphones as your humble narrator was enjoying all of the bird’s singing and whistling.
You gotta drink up the little stuff, yo.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Yeah, I’ll definitely and really have to take a walk inside of this cemetery sometime…
Meanwhile, I still had miles and miles of scuttle ahead of me. Come with?
Back tomorrow with more.
“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.
Mole Hills
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Historic research – which I’m definitely not doing – revealed something to me recently about the ‘zone’ that I’m dwelling within.
That zone is specifically called ‘Dormont,’ which is a small community, surrounded by much larger municipalities, in a larger region called ‘The South Hills.’ The ‘zone’ sits right at the edge of Pittsburgh’s official municipal border, and in the case of HQ, that border is literally across the street from me with differently colored street signs facing each other on the parallel corners.
OK – the ‘big neighbors’ next to Dormont are Beechview (which is part of Pittsburgh), Brookline (part of Pittsburgh), Mount Lebanon (its own thing), and Bethel Park (its own thing). Regionally, these communities are part of a larger area referred to as ‘The South Hills,’ which is geographically expansive.
Think the border of Queens and Nassau County, for the New Yorkers.
The shot above is from one of the crossroads, found along West Liberty Avenue (Route 19 Truck). The POV has me standing at the edge of Brookline, looking towards Beechview where the McDonalds is, with Dormont towards the left.
So – why was I standing here? What’s the deal? Did I go get a Big Mac?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Coal. It’s coal that brought me here. Coal is something I’m just starting to learn about, and it’s fascinating.
Check out this great page at Brooklineconnection.com, discussing the Oak Mine, which undermines this entire area. The location shown in the third shot on the linked page is where I was peregrinating about for the shots in today’s post. Other nearby mines were operating all the way up until the 1980’s, apparently, but this one is meant to have shut down in the early 20th.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One drove over to Brookline, parked the car, and then set out on foot to see if there was any observable remnant of the mine.
An enormous masonry structure, which appears to be a retaining wall, was jammed into the hillside. Closer inspection of the structure revealed that it was not a retaining wall, and that the large masonry blocks were stuck at least two deep into the hillside.
It seems that Brookline in particular was a central node for harvesting coal meant to serve the residential market, with estimates stating that 90-95% of the area is undermined.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As an aside, Brookline has a Flatbush Avenue within it, and a Queensboro Avenue, and there’s an Fordham Avenue there too. There’s only one true place on this planet, and the Brookline people kind of acknowledge that – despite replacing ‘lyn’ with ‘line.’ Ever read Roger Zelazny’s ‘The Chronicles of Amber’? It feels like that sometimes, to this Brooklyn Boy.
That building pictured above is a little chicken wing fry shack, but notice that its foundations don’t seem to match up with the brick building. Could this be where the first electronic vehicle scale, at the mine, in Pittsburgh was installed?
Ok… that’s obscure tech stuff… You’d drive your horse drawn wagon onto the scale, and the combination would be weighed. Then they’d fill your wagon with coal and weigh you again. The differential is what you owed the mine. Similar systems persist today, in the waste handling industry and for businesses that move rocks and soil around in trucks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot is from directly across the street, within the parking lot of that McDonalds from the first shot.
This coal revelation has explained so many things about Pittsburgh to me. Why do these vehicular streets – built out in the 1940’s or later – follow serpentine routes? High speed routes built for cars don’t do that.
Answer: there used to freight rail alongside of, and predating, these roads, and the roads followed the tracks.
Everything is starting to make sense now.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All this coal business does raise a few new questions for me, which is cool, and it also revives an older one.
The oldest question, actually, and the only one that really matters…
Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there?
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
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The Newtown Pentacle 