Posts Tagged ‘I-579’
Swindell Bridge views, Pittsburgh
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Swindell Bridge to North Shore, part two.
Your humble narrator journeyed over to Pittsburgh’s North Side and the neighborhood of Perry Hilltop, in order to access the pedestrian walkways of the 1930 vintage Swindell Bridge.
The span is in pretty bad shape, with both state and city’s inspectors describing its condition as ‘poor.’ Rust, concrete issues, you name it. When you get up close, you can actually see the various flaws, and they’re fairly terrifying if you know what you’re looking at. I kind of do, and it is.
That hill which the interstate (I-579/279) bends around to the right, and right on the other face of the landform, is where the amazing Rising Main city steps, mentioned a few weeks ago are found.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Blighting of urban areas isn’t accomplished simply due to a high speed road’s actual course just on its own. You’ve also got to factor in the service roads, ramps, and uselessly wooded areas which act as sound dampeners… so there’s also lots and lots of additional concrete, tons of vehicle and pedestrian barriers, and few or zero accommodations for humans who are not within motor vehicles.
Given other recent experiences, which will be discussed in forthcoming posts, I guess the walking public should just be grateful for that single sidewalk which is visible on the access road at the far right.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Personally, I drive the route pictured above maybe once or twice a week. I may bitch and moan about these high speed roads, but I do use them as well, so the hypocrisy is fully on display here. As I always said, the only NYC I knew during my time there was the one that Robert Moses left behind…
It’s a very, very easy thing to exceed the speed limit here, follow the flow of traffic and before you know it – you’re going 20mph over. There is little, if any, Police enforcement of speed limitations on Pittsburgh’s highways, unless it’s a holiday weekend and the cops are doing a ticket blitz – of course.
Sated by this early part of my morning, your humble narrator pointed his toes back towards the path he got in here using.
My plan was to shlep about for the rest of the day, following a colonial era pathway which has been turned into a ‘main drag’ street in modernity. Shouldn’t be too ‘physical,’ I said to myself.
It’s all downhill from here, essentially.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So, I mentioned that this nearly century old bridge is in pretty lousy condition, right? The bus people aren’t allowed to use it anymore due to weight restrictions, and there’s weight limits for cars and trucks as well. In a couple of spots, concrete jersey barriers are placed, reducing the bridge down to one shared lane.
When I got a bit closer to one of the closed sections where the jersey barriers are, I decided to take a closer look. Holy shmigoley!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The expansion joints! A plate of metal was welded against this expansion joint to keep it from further separating. Holy Monroley!
I’ve seen drawbridges over Superfund Sites in Queens with better joins. Sheiste.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I walked back out to Perrysville Avenue, but this time I went under the Maple Street Bridge, where that high tension power cable had sagged down to about shoulder/head level.
What could go wrong there?
Back tomorrow with more.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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Perry Hilltop and the Swindell Bridge
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This missive is the start of another multi-day series of posts.
Welcome to Perry Hilltop, a plateau neighborhood found in the larger Perry South section on the North Side of Pittsburgh.
This walk, and the series of posts which fell out of it, began right about here. Efforts have been underway to explore Pittsburgh’s ‘North Side,’ which is the former ‘Allegheny City,’ a separate municipality that Pittsburgh annexed at the start of the 20th century.
These photos were gathered on the 9th of April.
As is my habit with such matters, I’ve been following ‘street corridors’ which overlay the past. Modern roads are chosen, obviously, whose path more or less mirrors the historic ones which were cut through the woods and cliff faces.
In the case of this walk, it’s Perrysville Avenue and the Federal Street Extension areas (which you’ll be see in over several incoming posts) which were originally set up as a plank road, between the Allegheny/Ohio River shoreline and less settled areas found up in the hills, with the path ultimately leading to some colonial era Military Fort up north.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The start of this series of postings, however, starts with a tiny bridge which leads to a larger one.
I’m told it’s called the ‘Maple Avenue Bridge,’ a 1929 ‘riveted cantilever truss,’ and I didn’t need to look anything up to tell you that it’s in a deleterious state of repair. There’s even an electrical supply cable sagging down over the thing, hovering right about shoulder height, as measured from when I scuttling along on the roadway’s sidewalk below.
This trip started with one of my one way cab rides from Dormont, which dropped me off right across the street from Maple Avenue Bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
First thing that happened after getting out of the car, some kid walked up to me and asked me if I had any ‘smoke.’
I said ‘nope,’ don’t have anything on me to smoke, and asked him if he was hoping for a cigarette or something. He clarified ‘smoke’ as ‘weed’ and then made clear that he was seeking to sell me some. This misunderstanding and interaction amused both myself and that local entrepreneur. The kid wandered off, whereas I got busy with the camera.
Capitalism, huh?
The 1930 vintage E.H. Swindell (aka East Street) Bridge awaited.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Swindell Bridge is pretty huge, a little over a thousand feet long and five hundred and forty five feet high. It connects two hilltops, spanning the ‘East Street Valley,’ which the I-579 and I-279 high speed roads run through down below.
The Swindell Bridge is – observably – in a horrible state of repair, and a $27 million rehabilitation project is meant to kick in either at the end of this year (2026), or early 2027, which will seek to address its many issues.
As linked to above, they’re going to try and spruce up the Maple Street Bridge as well, and there’s an areal ‘safe streets’ project which is theoretically going to be implemented concurrently with these other projects.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This one looks down from the Swindell Bridge, at the interstate corridor below. As always, I need to state that I love the parabolas, curves, and massing shapes which are created by highway engineers.
Additionally, I hate the historic storyline that resulted in these visually interesting shapes being created. That tale included the demolition of more than 800 homes, and alienating the thousands of families who used to live down there, in the East Street Valley. Bah!
This view look north, although it kind of bends a little bit to the east too.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking south/west from the Swindell Bridge, Downtown Pittsburgh just kind of appears, peeking out from behind a hill. It should be mentioned that for the last nearly four years, I’ve been saying that ‘I’ve got to walk over that bridge sometime,’ while referring to the Swindell Bridge, while driving on the ‘Parkway North.’
That’s what the Yinzers call this road.
Check! Another one off my list.
Back tomorrow with more.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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As it turns out – the East St. Valley
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After beginning the effort in Pittsburgh’s Fineview neighborhood, and then walking down the Rising Main city steps, your humble narrator continued with his lonely scuttle down Howard Street.
A lack of paved sidewalk found me walking upon a grassy knoll, alongside an interstate’s noise abatement wall, securing one from possible vagary or horror behind a traffic guard rail. Didn’t matter, really, as there was no traffic of any kind which I needed to avoid – but it’s better to be proactively safe than postactively sorry.
Aphorism time: It’s easier to avoid starting a fire, than it is to put one out.
The wooded hill to the right, and Howard Street itself, used to be near the commercial center of a no longer extant Pittsburgh neighborhood which was referred to as ‘The East Street Valley.’ City and State nuked the place to make room for a highway, putting more than 800 families out of their homes in the name of progress.
I mean… they were compensated in some way… but… wow.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s three high speed travel lanes in each direction heading south and north on this section of the I-579/I-279 corridor, as well as a seldomly open to traffic double ‘HOV’ lane in its center. There are just a few east/west crossings for vehicles, which are accomplished on high flying bridges or tunnels set in beneath the road, and an odd pedestrian bridge.
I’ve been referring to this road as I-579 for the last few posts. As you head north out of the City, 579 interchanges with 279 (amongst other high speed courses) before joining with ‘I-79’ itself. My inexperience with Pittsburgh’s roads is on display thereby, as I cannot currently tell or show you exactly where those interchanges are. I’ll find out, sometime.
I’ve just tipped my research lance into this East Street Valley tale quite briefly, but I’m fascinated by it.
This Reddit post has a historic photo of the area from 1960, and the ‘main drag’ in the photo is meant to be East Street itself – which is sort of where that HOV lane is today, by my reckoning. In the historic photo, the secondary street, just left of East in the photo. was the very one I was walking on in modernity, which is called ‘Howard Street’ by the City of Pittsburgh.
This video at YouTube discusses the community which was displaced. This YouTube video takes a walk with a historian photographer named Betty Muschar. Interesting stuff.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A pedestrian bridge can be accessed via Howard Street, one which crosses over the highway and provides a connection to that stand of surviving homes on the other side, and the recalcitrant Catholic Church whose parish priest would not allow it to be moved or demolished.
The annoying thing to me, about this project, is when it occurred in Pittsburgh’s timeline rather than it happened at all. If this was a 1940’s or 50’s era project, I’d understand that they didn’t understand back then.
Thing is: They really got to work on this monstrosity in the late 1970’s, and thereby should have known better. The ‘official’ reason for the project was to better connect the north hills suburbs to downtown Pittsburgh (stadiums), and to alleviate commuter congestion along Route 8 (a north south secondary arterial road that feeds into the east west Route 28, which is actually pretty far away, which goes north/south and offers local street grid connections to a series of town centers).
All I can say is that Robert Moses would have loved this project and the way that that generation of highway planners ‘swung a meat axe’ at the East Street Valley.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The view from that pedestrian bridge, looking south towards Pittsburgh.
As is usually the case with roads of this size and capacity, an aura of blight travels along with it. People driving at 60-70 mph (the speed limit is actually quite a bit lower, but… Pittsburgh) don’t stop off at a mom & pop operation ‘on the way’ to buy a hot dog. They carry their money out of the City with them to somewhere else far away, at a high rate of speed. Highways like this are like knives punched into the heart of municipal economies.
Ask anyone who lives near the LIE, the BQE, or the Cross-Bronx – my NYC homies. High speed roads driven into the hearts of cities create corridors of devastation and poverty around them, so spread the word.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My eye kept on getting drawn towards all that masonry buried in the verge and mud along the cliff like hills along Howard Street. At the time I was shooting these photos, it was puzzling to me. ‘What happened here?’ is what I kept asking myself.
What a waste.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Steps, foundations, all sorts of stuff for the future’s archaeological people to dig up and discern. Fascinating.
I wonder how many family dogs are still buried up there…
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.
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