Posts Tagged ‘Monongahela Incline’
Nonchalance
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shot above was gathered in downtown Pittsburgh, where modern urbanist notions of ‘building set backs,’ and corporations not blotting out the sun with skyscrapers which aren’t designed to allow sunlight to filter down to the narrow urban style streets, do not apply.
It’s always kind of dark in this section of the city, and apparently the landlords don’t think they’re making enough cash off their tenants, so they’re blaming homeless people, Covid, and ‘work from home.’ It’s not that they might be charging too much for the space, or that their corporate lessees want to base themselves in cheaper suburban horizontal style building campuses these days, which are closer to the highway and airport and in municipalities which offer tax incentives for basing there instead of here. It’s definitely not that at all, clearly it’s the fault of the roughly 1,000 homeless people in Pittsburgh that the big landlords earning estimates are off.
Also, as a note, I’ve been attempting to not mention anything related to the White House here, but yeah – you’ve got a real estate developer and landlord in charge right now. Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. I’m going to try and stay out of all of that here. As usual – I’ve got a lot of opinions on the matter, but I’m really trying to avoid even mentioning his name, as it gives him power in the manner of the Harry Potter villain ‘Voldemort.’
Saying all that, if you need a break from the headlines, come here, I’ll show you something different five days a week and will avoid naming ‘he who must not be named.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For instance: Recent occasion found me at the overlook platform provided by the Duquesne Incline, or as I refer to the facility – the ‘red one.’ Downtown Pittsburgh is in frame, a notable contrast from the first photo with its claustrophobic perspectives. I find that as I age, confined spaces are becoming anathema to me. During the early days just after my ankle surgery, I awoke in the middle of the night twisted up in the blanket, and positively freaked out in a panic as I felt trapped. It’s odd, the way the brain works, as I’ve always been somewhat neurotic, but have always been dangerously lacking in phobic behavior and fear.
As a middle aged/on the brink of ‘old’ guy, I’ve developed a series of things which make me uncomfortable which never used to bother me, except on a level of simple self preservation. I’ve started to not like heights terribly much, and as mentioned above – confined spaces.
The latter is something that’s always been there, since the 1980’s in Brooklyn when I was still a kid, and a race riot broke out on a city bus that I was riding. Full grown men were going at each other with abandon (the ‘Cugenes’ were pissed that a black kid from Crown Heights, part of a group of kids who were bussed from their neighborhood to the Cugene zone to go to school, had talked to one of the Italian kids’ sisters, or something – I don’t know, it was a riot and everybody was shouting) and there I was, still a kid and not even five feet tall yet, swept up in a battle between grown men as a non combatant. Brrr.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While I was up on the overlook adjoining the incline, on the first fully sunny day we’d seen in about two weeks, a Towboat negotiated its line of mineral barges up the Monongahela River and in the direction of the confluence point of the three rivers, here in Pittsburgh. It was likely going to continue onto the Ohio River, formed by the admixture of the Allegheny and Monongahela.
I’ve caught a little crap here in Pittsburgh for my insistence on using the term ‘mineral barges.’ “Cant yinz see dat its coal, yinz freakin liberal” is the sort of many derogatory comments I’ve received after posting photos on various social media groups. Sigh…
My answer remains the same as it always has, and it’s the same answer I’d give back in NYC on harbor and Newtown Creek tours: if I can’t say – for certain – what something is, I jump a category heading or two up the list. Yeah, that looks like coal. It could also be coke. It could also be piles of coffee grounds for all I know. Until I know – for sure – what something in a photo is, I’m guessing or assuming. I can say ‘minerals barges’ with certainty, but I’m guessing or assuming as far as what their contents are.
Remember Felix Unger’s, of the TV Odd Couple, breakdown for the word ‘assume?’ When you ‘assume,’ you make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me.’
Back tomorrow.
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Inclined towards the Mon
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My friend was in town, so how could she not take a ride on an incline when visiting Pittsburgh for the first time? Sheesh. I’m all goofy for funiculars, after all.
That’s the Monongahela River in the background, with the Station Square development in the middle, and the counterpart of the Incline car on the left was the one we were riding in to get down to the waterfront from the prominence of Mount Washington.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We had purchased tickets for a Gateway Clipper boat tour, which offers the Pittsburgh equivalent of what you’d expect on NYC’s Circle Line. While waiting for the boat to leave the dock, I spotted this Tug towing a multitude of mineral barges down the Monongahela to its junction with the Allegheny where they combine and become the Ohio River.
Coal, it looked like.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Off in the distance, right at the junction point of the Ohio, another and far larger tow boat was at anchor. Given the presence of Lock and Dam facilities on both the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers, I’d imagine they were waiting on some chronological window at the USACE locks upstream to proceed to wherever their destination was.
Back tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
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calculations would
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s about a mile’s walk, all uphill, along Pittsburgh’s Grandview Avenue, from the Monongahela Incline to the Duquesne Incline. Along the way, I was shooting, and the shutter was a-clicking.
The up hill walk gave me time to reflect on everything I was experiencing. It also reminded me that I grew up nearby “Flatlands Avenue” and not too far from a place called “Flatbush.” “Flat” is a recurring theme in NYC, after all. We all live on a flood plain, whereas Greater Pittsburgh is definitively “not flat.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned in earlier posts, Mt. Washington used to be called “Coal Hill” and by early 19th century standards the mineral deposits found here were considered to be one of the most valuable resources in Western Pennsylvania. Coal Hill was rechristened as Mt. Washington in 1876. From my limited observations, it seemed like a pretty nice choice as far as places to live.
Once again, the topology of Pittsburgh boggles the mind, especially for someone who grew up in a place defined by terms like “sea level” and the omnipresent usage of the descriptor “flat.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Vehicular roads leading to and from Mt. Washington use sharp turned switchbacks to allow cars and trucks egress to the area. The ridge directly overlooking the downtown area had several multi unit homes arranged along it, but there were also plenty of places for visiting lookie-loo’s like me to check the scene out from.
For a sense of the elevation, the UPMC building at the left of the shot is the tallest building in the city.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Here’s a look at one of the neighborhoods up on Mt. Washington, where that weird topology is manifestly visible. I have a friend who’s got a brother that lives in the Pittsburgh area, and said brother is a photographer. The Brother – who is dubbed Tim Fabian – provided photos for a book by author Bob Regan on “The Steps of Pittsburgh.” It seems that all of these neighborhoods – up and down the hills – are vertically connected by 712 public stairways. Again – fascinating.
The housing stock of Pittsburgh, if I might comment, is disturbingly heterogenous. You see all sorts of floor plans and massing shapes here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned the other day, day two in the Steel City bore the threat of possible rain, but I didn’t find myself inconvenienced by precipitation. The volatile weather of Pittsburgh was on display, however, as just a couple of miles away it was raining – as you can discern in the shot above. Weird, huh?
It really was quite a walk between the two inclines. If you find yourself here and on foot, I’d suggest reversing the order I chose – Duquesne Incline first and Monongahela Incline second. If you hit the higher one first, it’s all downhill from there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My “good photo luck” game was strong on Day 2 in Pittsburgh, and I spotted a push boat towing an equipment barge under the Fort Pitt Bridge. Wasn’t the last lucky capture of the day for me, not by a long shot.
Tomorrow – the Duquesne Incline!
“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.
without dissolution
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the middle 19th century, enormous numbers of German speaking people began to migrate to Pittsburgh to take advantage of the limitless employment opportunities in the burgeoning iron and steel industries. One of them was a Prussian engineer named John Endres, who actually lived in Cincinnati. Endres designed and oversaw the construction of the 1870 vintage Monongahela Incline. This funicular railway is the oldest continuously operating funicular in the United States.
There used to be 17 incline or funicular railways in Pittsburgh, several of which were used exclusively for freight rather than passenger service. The inclines allowed workers to move into the steep hills and valleys surrounding the so called “Golden Triangle” river delta.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Operated in modernity by the Port Authority of Allegheny County (whose Monongahela Incline staff were incredibly nice, helpful, and friendly, btw), this attractive structure is the station house at the top of Mt. Washington on Grandview Avenue. The overlook which I shot yesterday’s post from is just alongside it on the uphill side. You walk in the building (masked up since it’s considered mass transit), and are free to observe several framed historic photos and newspaper clippings. There’s a gift shop, and a ticketing machine. A round trip ticket cost me $3.50.
Before boarding, I changed lenses, and attached the foam collar I’ve mentioned a few times to the thing. The foam collar allows me to place the lens against windows without annoying reflections manifesting in the photos, as well as forming a flexible prophylactic that keeps the lens from interacting mechanically with the window glass – in terms of transmitted vibration.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking out of the window of the Monongahela Incline at the lower station house, which I’m told was rebuilt in 1904. The way that these haul rope cable railways work is that as one car is descending, the other one ascends. How amazingly simple, and how super complicated, this system is, huh?
I had a single fellow passenger in the car with me and we briefly chatted about her City on our journey down to the lower station. She was retired, and extolled the virtues of Pittsburgh to me from that point of view. It seems that the City is currently tied with Miami for the number of retirees living in the area, due to its fairly low cost of living. The City encourages mass transit use by this population by making transit free to people over 65.
Entirely different from back home in NYC where “go fuck yourself asshole, ride a bike” or “you’re a racist” is the answer to most things transit related, and where our familiar MTA public transit agency is a dumpster fire of a political patronage mill whose managerial payroll is populated by the not too smart nephews and nieces of god awful upstate politicians, ones who haven’t yet been sent to jail for financial corruption or sex crimes. Heh, look at that, I actually suggested that the political class in New York can be convicted for the crimes they commit in office. Hah.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The incline car carried us to the lower station house, where my new acquaintance expected to meet a bus – which would travel in its own dedicated lane – that would in turn take her to a supermarket. She planned on making the return trip, with bags of groceries, using the bus and incline. Imagine being able to use a predictable form of mass transit, with buses that run on schedules that are more or less accurate.
I’m just so sick of all the dystopian shithole crap in NYC these days, you have to forgive me. I just cannot reconcile the amount of tax money that our politicians allocate to transit with the level of services delivered. There are no consequences for bad behavior either. Get caught with your hand in the cookie jar, or stroking the cookie jar suggestively, you just get railed by the headline writers and then disappear for a few months and run for another office. Single party rule sucks, it breeds corruption, and it’s result is… well, just look around your neighborhood.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the lower station of the Monongahela Incline, nearby a fairly tragic series of land use decisions called “Station Square.” This area too will be explored in some detail in later posts from my 72 hours in Pittsburgh. As a note, several of the locals complained about heavy traffic to me as being a detriment to life in this city. Maybe I’m jaded by NYC’s omnipresent traffic jams, clustered around the river crossings, but “by me” everywhere I looked – even at rush hour – it was smooth sailing.
After getting a few shots down here at the foot of Mt. Washington, I used my round trip ticket and headed back up to the top.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Gosh, do I love me a good funicular.
There’s one funicular in Chile’s City of Valparaiso that I aspire to ride on someday, but that’s going to take a lot more than an Amtrak ticket and 72 hours to accomplish. I’m also going to have to develop a functional ability to speak Spanish to chat with the locals for that one.
More tomorrow – at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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needed formula
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Before another word gets mentioned, a humble narrator must confess that he is an absolutely goof for funicular railways. A cable car arrangement, which uses haul ropes and a system of sheaves to exchange the positions of the two cable cars from top to bottom, this is a pretty early example of “people movers.” I got to ride on one or two of these in Europe a few years back, and so was one of my nerd obsessions born. Pittsburgh has two working funiculars, but they call them “inclines” there. Both are found on Mt. Washington and are operated and maintained by the Port Authority of Allegheny County. The Monongahela Incline, pictured above, is the oldest operating funicular in the United States, having operated continuously since 1870, and later in the week you’ll come for a ride on it (and the other one too) with me.
Amazingly, one of the features of these “inclines” is the presence of a large terrace or “overlook” platform open to the public, to take in and appreciate the views from high up on the prominence of Mt. Washington. Before I got busy with “nerding out,” the camera and tripod were deployed and I got busy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pittsburgh is famously sited at the conjunction of three rivers – Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela. The latter is on the south side of the city and pictured above. This was day two of the Pittsburgh leg of my September travels on Amtrak, and all in all I was in the city for about 72 hours. A late afternoon boat tour ticket was in my pocket, but for now I was in the cat seat high above the Golden Triangle of Downtown.
I kept on thinking to myself that about a hundred years ago you wouldn’t be able to even see the city for all of the smoke stacks belching coal smoke into the air. Steel mills, power plants, railroads – that’s what Pittsburgh used to be before the deindustrialization of the 1960’s and corporate reorganizations of the 1970’s and 80’s which reduced Pittsburgh’s population by half and annihilated its tax base.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The bridge at the center bottom of the shot above is small but spectacular, and as I learned later in the day, kind of special and noteworthy from a Civil Engineering point of view. Especially so if you happen to live in NYC’s Queens. More on that in a later post.
It was about 65 degrees, overcast, and the forecast called for passing showers. I never got rained on, but from up here on Mt Washington, you could see that it was raining just a few miles away in different sections. Again, the weird topology of Pittsburgh and its riverine continental climate just fascinated me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pictured is a pretty major bridge for the City, the Fort Pitt bridge, which connects to the Fort Pitt Tunnel which carries southbound traffic out of Downtown and towards their airport and suburbs. Behind it is Point Park, with its fountain, and the convergent intersection of the three rivers. Again – more on all that in future posts.
This city has 446 bridges, and I could spend months talking about the “who, why, where, and significance of” each one.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the south side of the Monongahela River, the bridges cross over still quite active freight tracks. The bridge closest to the camera is a rail bridge, whereas the other three are vehicular crossings.
We’ll talk about – again – the granular details about them when the posts from the boat tour reach you in the near future. At this stage of the morning, a humble narrator was deep in photo mode.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What a spectacular place this is. I’ve been to Pittsburgh before, but that was back in the early 1990’s when I was in town hawking a comic I had drawn which was just published. One used to spend his weekend’s traveling from place to place, usually by car, doing “shows.” Shows were Comic Conventions. You’ve got your “big shows” like San Diego Comicon, or the New York and Atlanta ones, but there’s a comic convention happening in a hotel ballroom in some analogue of Wayne, New Jersey each and every weekend in the United States. For the Pittsburgh one I attended – during the Presidential administration of George Bush Senior – I was actually the featured guest and the promoter flew me out and paid for my hotel room. A friend from college is from Pittsburgh and she gave me the nickel tour when I was here, but even at that time I had made a mental note to return here someday and explore.
More 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.
The Newtown Pentacle 