Posts Tagged ‘Boulevard of the Allies’
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.
Whatever you do, don’t stop moving
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Dat’s what dey call’s da ‘Boulevard of the Allies,’ round these parts. Turns out that the pedestrian pathway leading to the Liberty Bridge which I’d been looking for is part of ‘it.’
There’s a regular ground level street with the same name found just west of this structure, but this approach span and the bridge itself represents nearly a half mile of steel and concrete that rises multiple stories up from the ground. This elevated section in particular is ‘mega massive.’ It cloverleafs with other high speed roads like ‘Crosstown Boulevard’ and they all feed southbound traffic first to the Liberty Bridge and then into the Liberty Tunnel, and or the P.J. McArdle roadway, on the south side of the Monongahela River.
Down under, that’s Pittsburgh’s Second Avenue.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is what that view looks like from Second Avenue. There’s an odd collection of buildings down here, including a homeless shelter and the City jail. There’s also a lot of Law Enforcement related stuff down here, lots of cops milling about, and signage suggests bail bondsman activity. The street is somewhat forbidding, and is populated by people who are obviously down on their luck. I guess that includes me, so there you go.
As it turned out the place where you could access that pedestrian walkway over the Liberty Bridge pictured above was found where the Boulevard of the Allies first becomes airborne, which is also more or less the titular end of Second Avenue.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator continued on his way, towards the other side of the river, but I was all excited by the points of view on offer.
As mentioned, this is one of the routes which I drive all the time getting to and from. HQ is about 5 or 6 miles away to the south, on the other side of Mount Washington in the Dormont section of the South Hills.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the Liberty Bridge. With the approaches, this 1928 steel cantilever bridge is 2,663 feet long and is said to carry some 63,000 vehicle trips a day. Like most of the bridges you encounter in this region, there’s a protected by concrete barrier pedestrian and bike path. What happens when you get off the bridge on the other side is a bit less thought out than you’d like, but there you are.
Scuttling on, ever forward, that’s me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s Pittsburgh’s Light Rail – the T – which has just left its First Avenue Station. The elevated track goes underground into an old freight train tunnel which has been converted for the T’s usage, nearby. Ultimately, its terminal stop is on the North Shore of the Allegheny River, which is where this particularly narrative choked walk began last week.
In real time, this was an afternoon. The photo opportunities were a bonus, as what I was engaged in was actually exercise related. The old program which used to be religiously obeyed in Queens is back. One day out for a couple of miles there and back, one day not, with some grandiose multi mile physical effort playing out on the weekend or whenever it’s possible. The particular walk being described in these posts isn’t one of the grandiose ones, rather it’s a short one.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the things which made Pittsburgh attractive was the quality of its healthcare space. The post industrial recovery plan which they’ve been following here for a few decades is referred to as ‘eds and meds.’ ‘Eds’ refers to the universities and research spheres, and ‘meds’ to a saturation of hospitals and healthcare outfits found here. Doctor appointments in Pittsburgh are a completely different banana than they are in NYC. The docs don’t have to book seven patients an hour in order to cover the rent.
Since moving here, and particularly after describing Newtown Creek to the doc, lots of tests got ordered. I’ve been poked, prodded, sampled, and scanned in the name of creating a baseline to judge my future degradation and dissolution against. Last Friday, while drinking my morning coffee, an alert came in that results from one of the recent irradiations had revealed that I haven’t got Lung Cancer. Yay.
Tomorrow – the shots I was after on this walk.
“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.
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