The Newtown Pentacle

Friday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Swindell Bridge to North Shore, part three.

Perrysville Avenue, in the ‘Perry Hilltop’ section of the larger Perry South neighborhood in Pittsburgh, is pictured above.

The ‘Perry’ in that ‘naming convention’ is Matthew Calbraith Perry, aka Commodore Perry. He secured the Commodore rank when he was the commanding officer of what we would call the Brooklyn Navy Yard in modernity, back on the East River in NYC.

Famously, Perry fought in the war of 1812, the Mexican-American war in 1845, and ‘opened’ the Ports of Japan to American Mariners, via the usage of ‘gunboat diplomacy.’

Perry’s career would likely be described by members of the Millennial generation as being ‘deeply problematic.’ To others, he’s the epitome of national service and was considered a hero during his lifetime. Perry is also considered to be the ‘father of the steam Navy.’

Anyway, Perry South…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Another one of the Pittsburgh neighborhoods that causes no end of apprehension for the locals, this area hosts a fantastic amount of residential architecture predating the 20th century, and is set against a steep hill that leads down to the ‘flat’ flood plain areas surrounding the river which were once the center of an early 20th century annexed municipality called Allegheny City.

In a tale that reminds me a great deal of the one I used to tell about Queens, and Manhattan, and NYC Consolidation, after the annexation things went great for Pittsburgh, but not so great for Allegheny City.

Pittsburgh got historic preservation, and the North Side got urban renewal, and then the highways into Pittsburgh were rammed right through its neighborhoods and cultural centers. Churches, cemeteries, they gotta go, we need highway ramps.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The original path through here is described as having originally been a plank (or Corduroy) road. That’s when you jam cut lumber into the mud, or you create raised timber bridges overflying boggy soils or flowing water. This plank road was barely sufficient for horse drawn wagons, let alone early motor vehicles. After the annexation by Pittsburgh, the plank road was taken out of those private hands which built it – and who also charged a toll – and Pittsburgh ‘normalized’ the route into mapped and ‘macadamized’ streets.

As the road heads up the hill, away from the ‘center’ near Allegheny Commons Park, it is first called ‘Federal Street,’ then ‘Federal Street Extension,’ and it finally transmogrifies into Perrysville Avenue, which then continues on its course to the north and west for a spell.

These shots in today’s post are from the area where ‘Perrysville Avenue’ becomes the ‘Federal Street Extension.’

To continue with my Queens analogy, Jackson Avenue starts in LIC, then becomes Northern Blvd. at Queens Plaza, it continues as such through all of Queens, and then enters Nassau County as Route 25a. It terminates some 73 miles east of the Queens Midtown Tunnel, in Suffolk County. Federal Street/Perrysville Avenue, thereby, is basically a low core Northern Blvd.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

There are some absolutely spectacular properties up here. Wow.

There’s also public housing projects and a few apartment buildings with modern stylings. This ‘zone’ has a fierce reputation, as intoned above.

As usual, though, I was the only pedestrian – although a few automobiles and work trucks were observed scooting about, here and there.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Lots and lots of cool old homes up here, including a couple that seemed to have been churches which have been converted over to residences.

Neat.

Have to be haunted, those church ones.

Scuttle, scuttle, scuttle.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The hills get fairly steep as you head south along the Federal Street Extension. Lots of abandoned houses inconvertibly line the street, even here so close to the titular center of the city of Pittsburgh..

The occupied ones seemed to be meticulously cared for, as a note.

My usual measure of a ‘bad’ versus ‘good’ neighborhood involves observation of how people maintain their properties. Overgrown? Boards in a broken window? Junk cars in the yard? ‘Sheiste’ covered in tarps on the porch? All ‘tells’ for a ‘bad’ neighborhood where you should be VERY aware of your surroundings. I saw none of that, at all, on this walk.

Back next week with more.

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