Archive for the ‘Pittsburgh’ Category
As one scuttles above, so too below
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Jesus Christ! Mary, Mother of God!
I was walking around the periphery of the campus enjoyed by Duquesne University, and this statuary is part of the Catholic University’s outdoor collection. It’s the centerpiece of a memorial for lost WW2 soldiers who were former Duquesne Students, that’s dubbed as ‘The Victory Garden.’
Here’s a shot of the signage, and here’s a page from American Legion about it. Couldn’t find the name of the sculptor, and I did look.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I negotiated my way from the statuary, and started heading back to the non-campus streets. They were fairly steep.
This section of my day was ‘phase one’ of a longer scuttle – which would play out all day and frankly – exhaust me. By the time I got back home, it was a quick dinner and then early to bed. I’ve mentioned that it’s gotten a bit warm around these parts, even so back in early May when these shots were gathered. It pretty much went directly from Spring to Summer in Pittsburgh, seemingly overnight.
Yes, the Newtown Pentacle time warp is indeed still in effect. Shots are from May 11, words are being typed on June 8. If my scheduling is correct, this post publishes on July 10, a Friday. From my current point of view, you’re ‘wizard’ as you know how the future comes out.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One found himself at the edge of another high speed road that was busted through an urban landscape, in the name of progress and traffic flow. This is an older example of this sort of urban renewal, called the Crosstown Boulevard (and it’s one which Robert Moses had a hand in creating!).
Crosstown Boulevard is a road in a trench, which is connected to multiple enormous concrete and steel ramps. It leads into the center of the City, through an area where urban renewal went horribly wrong to the north, then goes through a different area destroyed by urban renewal in the center of the city (pictured today), then branches off in multiple directions towards more examples of the sort of blight which urban renewal projects often bring found to the east, south, and north.
Pennsylvania is actually still up to this sort of nonsense, and is building a brand new tolled highway not too far away from here, which is blighting its way through neighborhoods and businesses all in the name of the common good, and it is dubbed the ‘Mon Fayette Expressway.’
Wow. Learn from history. Please.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s a section of the Crosstown Boulevard complex pictured above.
It forms the western border of the Bluff/Uptown/Duquesne Campus.
According to Google’s AI, dubbed Gemini, there are approximately 45,000 to 52,000 vehicles trips through this corridor every day. Admittedly, I’m often driving one of those vehicles, as this is how I get ‘there’ from ‘here’ a bunch. Don’t want to stand on a soapbox about this subject without admitting that I’m a sinner too.
Thing is, this used to be a productive part of Pittsburgh with office buildings and homes. Instead of organic privately based capital growth, you’ve instead got a thoroughfare designed to have people drive their money quickly away from Downtown Pittsburgh towards a distant suburb, and they’re going to spend it there instead of where they earned it.
That economic dog don’t hunt.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It legitimately sucks to be a pedestrian hereabouts, walking blocks and blocks just to get around all the highway ramps.
Funny thing is that Pittsburgh City Hall is only a few blocks away from this spot. All the politicians will tell you how ‘walkable’ Pittsburgh is. The surrounding architecture in this part of Pittsburgh is what I describe as ‘inhuman.’
Monolithic, building campuses are set back great distances from both the curb and sidewalk, with humanity incidental to and not welcomed into the designs. I’ve offered observations about the inhumanity of Philip Johnson’s PPG plaza before.
‘Opinions are just like ‘iceholes,’ everyone’s got one.’ My dad used to say that in a more colorful fashion, usually when I scolded him for driving too slow back in Brooklyn.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the bottom of the Bluff, pretty much directly beneath that crazy set of metal ‘City Steps’ I was standing on in yesterday’s post, some 10-12 stories above, is the Armstrong Tunnel.
This bit of infrastructure had been under construction for the first couple of the years I’ve spent here in Pittsburgh, but Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself actually had scuttled through it before, during an ‘Open Streets’ day in May of 2024.
This tunnel was going to be how this particular chicken got to the other side, I had decided, as it’s got a dedicated and protected bike and pedestrian lane with concrete separation from vehicle traffic. Win!
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.
Bluffin mit da Catlicks
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Jesus Christ!
Your humble narrator was scuttling along Pittsburgh’s Boulevard of the Allies, and walking the borders of Duquesne University, which is very, extremely, Catholic. It’s a nice and neatly kept property, Duquesne, and they host a crazy landscape and pedestrian feature up there, in addition to many sculptural representations of the tenets of their faith.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A steel foot bridge overflies the Boulevard of the Allies – a high speed road – and then offers a truly intimidating set of City Steps to descend down to the Monongahela Flood plain below. Known as the ‘Bluff Steps,’ this structure is between 10 and 12 stories in height (depending on how you define building stories) and their course travels downwards along 179 sets of rises and runs.
I did not walk them on this day, as I’ve done so in the past, and there was another ‘experience’ which I was desirous of having instead.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saying all that, no reason not to get a few shots while I was there.
This shot looks downwards, towards Second Avenue and the South 10th street bridge spanning the Monongahela River below.
The link above leads to a series of posts which were largely captured from the south side of the river, illustrating just how intimidating a landform this bluff is.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s where Boulevard of the Allies intersects with I-376 right in the distance, a combination of high speed roads which does a brilliant job of restricting the citizenry from accessing the river. To be fair, there used to be enormous steel mills all along the waterway in this section, and a mammoth railroad yard on the other side.
Jones & Laughlin steel, I’m told, or just J&L as it was known locally. The Yinzer pronunciation sounds sort of like ‘Jay ‘n EL.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Overjoyed, I was, when I saw a truck carrying trucks go by on the highway below. Ideally, smaller trucks would be secured in the beds of the ones on this carrier. Trucks carrying trucks which carry trucks. Yay!
I had decided not to walk down those steps, not out of PTSD inspired fear, but for curiosity’s sake instead.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One scuttled around the edges of Duquesne University. Heading westwards, more or less. The university is piled up against another urban highway corridor on that side too. More on that subsequently.
Back tomorrow.
“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.
Just Bluffing
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sounds horrible, I’m in!
Your humble narrator often says things like this, out loud.
Pictured is a section of Pittsburgh’s ‘Boulevard of the Allies,’ which is a de facto highway which ultimately provides motorists with access to two major bridge crossings – one heading south and the other north. The Boulevard is found on a landform prominence referred to as ‘the bluff,’ with the surrounding neighborhood called ‘Uptown.’
It’s the narrow sidewalks with the concrete barriers which drew me in. Everytime I drive past this section, which is often, I have remarked to myself that ‘walking that section sounds horrible.’ Well…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was a fairly warm day, one of the first that could qualify as offering summertime weather. Your humble narrator had used a rideshare from the Uber outfit to get here from HQ in Dormont, about a six mile ride.
I had a medium busy day ahead of me, but luckily it was ‘all mishegoss’ and there wasn’t anything ‘official’ or ‘business related’ which I needed to handle, and my time was my own.
I’d be back in an Uber later on, to get to my next destination.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s ‘venerable and humble old buildings’ to be discovered and cherished by preservationists in Pittsburgh, and then there’s the remains of dirt poor laborer’s housing which doesn’t fit the modern narrative.
Uptown, which is currently enduring a spate of real estate development activity, hosts a lot of older housing. It’s also where you’ll encounter the campus of Duquesne University, at the western side of this ‘zone.’
I’ve written about Uptown before – check out the keyword link here.
As a note, you’ll notice a series of keywords attached to the bottom of each and every post here at Newtown Pentacle. If a subject is interesting to you and you’d like to read more about it, click the keyword link and you’ll see all the prior posts tagged with that same keyword.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One enjoyed a couple of hours marching around on the bluff, corner to corner and street to street, checking out wicked cool old apartment buildings with their Victorian era architectural flourishes. These homes are remnants of a version of Pittsburgh which was jam packed with steel mills, and they have survived three huge rounds of urban renewal and interstate highway projects which played out over the last seventy years.
As mentioned, I had a feature packed day in mind – and a plan.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This couple of hours would terminate with a trip to the tony Squirrel Hill neighborhood, and a lecture offered by a historian from the Heinz museum discussing the various historic ‘Jewish neighborhoods’ in Pittsburgh. More on that in a later post.
One of the things I wanted to do while up here was walk around the periphery of Duquesne University’s campus.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Duquesne’s campus bumps up against a large hospital complex found on the bluff, and its southern side is defined by that de facto highway, which is called the Boulevard of the Allies. I needed to challenge my PTSD related anxiety around steep sets of stairs again, Y’see.
Back tomorrow with that.
“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.
What could possibly go wrong? Pfft…
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Bridgeville, PA., well, that’s a community which can be found within the South Hills region of the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area.
Historically, Bridgeville’s economy was centered around coal mining, during the late 19th and first few decades of the 20th centuries.
Basically; Boom and bust, entrepreneur and robber baron, monopoly and trust, abandonment and dissolution. Usual story.
The coal people left behind a huge environmental mess, and it’s pretty routine to observe the waterways in this part of Pennsylvania running with bright orange water, suggesting that it’s runoff from abandoned mines that’s causing the pollution. The orange coloration is caused by dissolved metals, notably pyrites and iron, in the ground water. In prior mentions of Bridegville, I’ve mentioned the vast taxpayer funded environmental remediation efforts at work in the area.
Our Lady of the Pentacle has been taking a class in Bridgeville – and apparently – so have I. While she’s bene inside ‘a-learning,’ I’ve been wandering the streets, which are my classroom.
I recently spotted this charming feature, pictured above, which seems to be an open to the atmosphere coal mine portal. Lovely.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Now that I sort of know what to look for, it’s everywhere.
Conversation with the locals reveal that it’s only been a generation or two since mine work was a common experience, for men in particular. My dad used to tell me that you could pick up non-union day work along the waterfront in South Brooklyn, unloading ships and loading trucks, back in the 40’s and 50’s. Wonder if it was the same sort of situation here, but with coal instead of maritime trade goods?
I’ve read that child labor was pretty common in the mines, as a note.
One was standing along the fence lines of a large industrial site, which in modernity hosts several businesses, and that’s where I spotted that chunk of rusting machinery pictured above.
That thingie looks like the remains of, to me at least, a ‘Coal Tipple.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The older structures at this industrial park display a characteristic masonry motif that one has learned to associate with the Pittsburgh Coal Company, a historical monopolist trust that was controlled by the Mellon Family.
Hey… where do you think that the extra money to start a university, and then a bank, came from for these Captains of Industry? They had poor people dig treasure out of the ground for them on 12 hour shifts, employed child labor, and colluded with oligarchal colleagues like Henry Clay Frick – who were the end customers for the coal at the steel mills – and with whom they conspired to set wages and prices – so everyone felt great about the whole affair, while drinking french wine in their baronial mansions, before moving to Manhattan. When the coal seam sputtered out, the trust moved on, leaving behind a real mess.
Captains of industry, right? Not ‘Robber Barons,’ right? America was great, back then, right? Which side are you on, kid? Bah!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our Lady’s class was scheduled to last an hour, so I had a somewhat limited amount of time available to me to wander about with the camera.
An interesting bit of trivia about this particular area, transmitted to me by the folks who were conducting Our Lady’s class (they are located within this complex), is that this section of Bridgeville seems to have been rich in deposits of Vanadium. So much so that a nearby road is dubbed ‘Vanadium Road,’ and that tenants in these industrial buildings need to set up specialized monitors and ventilation systems within, as the subterrene deposits of Vanadium produce radioactive gas, and the depositional strata associated with the element seems to include the compounds that produce Radon, with all of this reactivity happening deep down within the Appalachian Layer Cake forming the ground hereabouts.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hey Now! That’s Wheeling & Lake Erie #6986 hurtling by.
Above and just beyond these tracks is a bus depot and maintenance garage. Below them is that open coal mine portal. Sigh…
The really annoying part of this scene is what they were hauling.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Don’t know if the tankers were full, but they were pulling a long train of LNG tankers through a densely populated area. I’ve used the term ‘bomb train’ before, but it’s alarmist and somewhat disingenuous.
Let’s just say that if conditions were just right when said conditions went perfectly wrong, and any single of those tanker cars were to derail and became punctured… that would make the news. Remember East Palestine in Ohio, where a train went boom?
There’s a lot of ‘horizontal fracturing’ or ‘fracking’ oil company activity around these parts. Major part of the local and national economies, it is. Future generations will hate us for this, and talk about this industry in the manner which I do, regarding coal.
Back tomorrow with something different.
“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.
Cresson Railroad Observation Platform
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
First off, The Newtown Pentacle Time Warp (patent pending) is still in effect. Your humble narrator has somehow managed to maintain at least a month or so of ‘lead time’ on these posts recently and is chronologically disconnected. The photos in today’s post were captured at the very start of May, and the words you’re reading were typed out at the end of that same month. Fun, huh?
So, I decided to take a road trip. Loaded the car up with camera gear, a cup of tea and a bottle of water, and then set off in an easterly direction from Pittsburgh. A bit longer than two hours worth of driving found me in Cresson, Pennsylvania, where a ‘proper’ railfanning park and observation platform can be found. Neat!
Ummm… Hey Now! That’s Norfolk Southern #4259 pictured above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Basically a huge patio deck, the observation platform allows one some elevation. There’s seating, and a couple of spots where you can escape the sun. Cresson is perilously close to Altoona and the Horseshoe Curve, meaning that that the tracks leading aways from that bit of mega-infrastructure are chokepoints that literally ‘everything’ needs to travel through.
I’d heard of this spot, and few others near it, so the resolve to ‘check it out’ grew in my brain. Cresson Railroading Park is found here on Google Maps.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hey Now! NS #7230 is pictured above, which seemed to be doing ‘switcher’ duty.
Have to say, this was a pretty pleasant morning for me, and train sets were rolling through about every fifteen minutes. There’s a LOT of other rail stuff in Cresson which I want to get photos of, including a Wye. I’ll definitely be coming back here in the future.
Likely in the fall, I think those BW locomotives of theirs will look really cool against an autumn backdrop.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This section of Pennsylvania is ‘feature rich.’
Multi day ‘explores’ in this zone include: Johnstown (of horrific flooding and mass casualties fame), Altoona and the Horseshoe Curve, and there’s also a host of other historical RR goodies in this area, left behind by the Pennsylvania Rail Road Company.
yeah… HEY NOW! NS #4673 passed through next.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hey Now… NS #7648 arrived next, heading westerly.
Both of the larger subjects – Johnstown and Altoona – will be receiving my attentions sometime this year as well. I have to develop a shot list for each zone, and when those lists grow long enough to warrant overnighting there in a motel or AirBNB, I’ll go. Saying that, Cresson and my other destinations on this particular day were ‘one and done’s’ so any return here is a day trip. It’s only a two hour drive.
Very much car country, this.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m all out of Hey Now’s.
Norfolk Southern #4212 was the last train I shot before heading back to the Mobile Oppression Platform (a Toyota), and firing up the engine to get to my next destination, which you’ll see next week. Hurray!
Enjoy the fireworks.
“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.
The Newtown Pentacle 