Posts Tagged ‘south side slopes’
I scuttle the line
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
‘You can’t see anything from a highway,’ I always say, and thereby I’ve set my Google maps navigation app to avoid them – whenever I’m not in a hurry – and to instead route my driving path through local streets instead of the highways and interstates. This practice often piques interest in an area, and a mental note is made to return to certain of these spots on foot in order to do some exploring. I’m still learning what’s what and where’s where here in Pittsburgh, so this practice has been somewhat revelatory.
Accordingly, I recently left the car back at HQ and took a cab over to the nearby South Side Slopes section of the city, where I got busy on what ended up being a pretty productive photowalk.
Pictured above is the ‘All Wars Memorial Garden.’ Can’t tell you much about it other than it was refurbished by the South Side Slopes neighborhood association in 2007.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is Pius Street, a typically (for this area) narrow local street which I often use to travel back to HQ rather than going through the heavily trafficked Liberty Tunnel. Everytime I’ve driven through this area, with its intriguing inventory of quite heterogenous housing stock set along a steep hill, and multitudes of ‘City Steps,’ I’ve said ‘gotta walk around here sometime.’
Welcome to sometime, lords and ladies.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As I would pronounce it in real life – “dem Catlicks used to have quite da operation here’s.”
You can take the boy out of Brooklyn…
Pictured above is the ruination of what I’m told is ‘St. Michael’s Mädchen Schule, and then South Side Catholic High School: West Building,’ which seems to be remembered for hosting an annual “Passion Play’ called ‘Veronica’s Veil.’ There’s an article on the building at abandonedonline.net which offers a brief history and interior shots.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s a pretty massive structure to have been just abandoned like this. Surprising that it hasn’t been rehabilitated and turned into housing, but the whole abandoned building thing in Pittsburgh generally surprises me. The Roman Catholic Church in this part of the country has massively contracted back onto itself, combining parishes and selling off properties.
Not a horizontal mile away, down on the south side flats, there’s an entire church for sale. Don’t think I haven’t fantasized about being able to afford the purchase, but you’d need sacks of money for that. Can you imagine?
How Goth… (get it? goths – sacks – sack of Rome – `Bwah hah hah).
My pathway led away from these former holdings of Rome, however, towards a set of those City Steps mentioned previously.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pictured above is a section of the former Saint Michael’s Roman Catholic Church & Rectory, which is now known as ‘the Angels Arms Luxury Condominiums.’ See what I mean about the RC church selling off its abundance of land holdings hereabouts?
This is where my predecided path demanded a right hand turn, which then carried me in a downward direction as well.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These are the ‘Church Route Trestle’ steps, which connect the slopes with the flats starting at the intersection of South 15th and Clinton Streets. They also just happen to offer a crossing over a very busy set of Norfolk Southern RR tracks called the Mon Line.
This had absolutely nothing to do with my chosen path, I assure you.
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Slopes to flats
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, a humble narrator was recently observed walking down a set of municipal steps here in Pittsburgh which are called – apparently – ‘German Square.’
I found a shot of them from 1933, on display at historicpittsburgh.org. Zillow indicates that this area is a named neighborhood which goes by German Square, and that several quite lovely homes are available here which could be all yours for about 200k. I guess that’s more or less confirmation of the naming convention.
It’s really quirky around here, nice houses but with somewhat forested and steeply graded properties surrounding them. Lovely view too, as you can see both the jail, and Duquesne University, from up here.
This was a pretty cool path to walk, I’d mention, although it ended up being fairly ‘physical,’ if you know what I mean.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One was stretching the ligaments, toning the tendons, and macerating many muscles I didn’t even know I had. I mean, how often do you actually walk down 1,000 feet (about ten stories, that) of steps? It was great exercise, will do it again, but boy oh boy did I feel it the next day. Wow.
At the top of the shot is the Monongahela River, and that yellow bridge in the distance is the South Tenth Street bridge. On both sides of the stairs, heavy brush was observed growing amongst fairly developed deciduous trees. I’m sure that at night, this area is crawling with critters.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On both sides of the stairs, there were wood framed homes, and I was careful to not violate anyone’s privacy while waving the camera about. In a few spots, the plank of concrete which served as a step sat loose in its metal framing and that was a fairly disconcerting experience. Law of averages, I guess.
After a few hundred feet worth of occasionally shifting stairs, a landing was coming up in front of me – in the form of an actual street – where I’d have to walk about a hundred feet eastwards in order to reacquire the steps.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Fritz Street, I’m told, is where this spot is. Or, at least that’s what it’s called to the east of the German Square Steps, to the left (or west) it’s called Windom Street. Honestly, this city is invasion proof. An entire Battalion of enemy soldiers would just get lost into these hills and never be seen again.
The brick colored buildings at the right are the aforementioned city jail, the Liberty Bridge crosses the Monongahela River, and that’s Downtown Pittsburgh rising up to claim its place against the sky.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just before reaching the ground, the German Square steps feed onto a small bridge which overflies railroad tracks. These tracks are Norfolk Southern’s domain. I’ve been working my way along these tracks for a bit.
Several posts have been offered from the P.J. McArdle roadway in recent weeks, which is just down the tracks west of here. This right of way seems a lot busier than the nearby CSX one, and in recent weeks I’ve been attempting to locate shooting POV locations along it. As you’ll see tomorrow – this is fairly good spot for such endeavors.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ll end this post with the moment of explosive panic which occurred when I realized I had walked myself directly into a cage. Ahhh! Not again,
The good news about this cage, however, was that the chain link fencing which encapsulates the pedestrian path is the ‘old school’ kind with large inch and half diamonds woven into it. It’s sensible to vouchsafe the tracks and trains against somebody tossing something down on a moving train, but most of the more modern fencing you encounter in such places uses a design that incorporates tiny little diamond apertures of maybe a half to three quarters of an inch.
The latter are very difficult to get a photo through. There’s a reason that people cut ‘Bernie Holes’ into such fencing. Pfah!
Back tomorrow with more – at your Newtown Pentacle.
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“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.
Twelve hundred steps program
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Famously, the City of Pittsburgh offers hundreds of flights of municipal steps for the usage of the citizenry, which aid pedestrians in navigating the challenging terrain of the place. Recent endeavor saw a humble narrator hire a taxi in order to get to the top of one of the more extreme examples of this sort of infrastructure (not the ones pictured above) and then proceed downward along the rises and runs. In my admittedly limited experience, these stairs are generally compound structures composed of concrete and steel that are set into the steep hillsides.
As a note: rises are the vertical dimension of steps, whereas the runs are the flat parts which you step on.
The neighborhood which I started this scuttle in is called ‘Allentown,’ an area that I’ve visited in the past. Allentown is set into a larger residential ‘zone’ called the ‘South Side Slopes’ which cascade about a thousand feet down along the eastern side of Mount Washington, here in Pittsburgh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My path carried me past several abandoned homes, which must have been pretty ‘choice’ when they were originally built. The views from this area are pretty spectacular, but it must be a pretty athletic experience living on the edge of a steep slope like this. Imagine carrying your groceries in from the car – there’s a workout, I tell’s ya.
Where I was heading was a set of municipal steps that proceed down the slopes to the South Side Flats while transversing the equivalent horizontal space of no more than a half mile. A passel of municipal density huddles against the southern bank of the Monongahela River down there on flat land along the river – hence ‘Flats.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There used to be ‘T’ street car service here, specifically the Brown Line, but budget cuts associated with the first decade of the 21st century ended all that. The tracks and overhead catenary wires are maintained, however. When there’s work on the T happening further to the south, or in the transit tunnel under Mount Washington which T service normally routes through, the streetcars gets rerouted through this area. Essentially, Arlington Avenue is a back-up.
There’s signs along Arlington Avenue warning truckers to switch gears along this road, warning of a 9-10 degree road grade that these heavy vehicle operators will have to contend with. There’s also the ubiquitous ‘Watch Children’ signs, which generally fill me with an existential dread.
What are these Yinzer kids getting up to, that warrants the installation of signage admonishing passerby to watch them?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is what you see from up top, looking down on the aforementioned density of the South Side Flats. The bridge is the Birmingham Bridge, which had been mentioned here several times.
The ‘Flats’ area is where I’ve spent more than few hours walking around at this point. There’s trails on both sides of the river, which I’ve also pointed the camera at. Way off in the distance, the Cathedral of Learning can be seen jutting up out of the Oakland area, where the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University rule the roost.
One had examined the desired path using Google maps before committing to the walk, and I was looking out for a certain intersection leading to my desired municipal stairway.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There it was, and thusly there I went. The path led down, and northwards, which I intuitively find contraindicative. Another one of my NYC born presumptions is that south is both ‘down’ and flat in geologic character, whereas north is up where the terrain gradiates quickly from hilly to mountainous forests, and then to ones which no one has ever visited to the north and left of Albany.
I know… I know.
I’m also of the opinion that rivers flow south rather than north. It’s odd the way that the brain works. Mine, at least, received early training that indicated certain realities – upstate NY started in Mount Vernon or Yonkers, and it was ‘up there.’
Long Island, as in both Nassau and Suffolk, are ‘the country.’ Also; the Atlantic ocean is always on your right hand side whereas the Pacific is on the left, and somehow NYC sets the standard for ‘correct’ weather in the United States (after Los Angeles) – despite the fact that NYC’s atmospheric temperatures annually fluctuate more than a hundred degrees one way or the other and it’s vulnerable to every sort of atmospheric disturbance there is.
Additionally, Chicago is too cold and Florida too hot. Mustard ONLY goes on a hot dog, and whereas I do make an allowance for Sour Kraut, I think that’s a mistake as it ruins the bun with sogginess.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Walking down steps is pretty low impact and shouldn’t be much of a chore… to continue mentioning things which I believe, without any actual evidence or personal knowledge thereof.
At the end of this scuttle, my legs were absolutely blasted out. The soles of my feet hurt. So did the fronts of my calfs. Globes of inflammation were forming around the knees, and I think I developed a hip problem.
All told, this set of stairs (which are apparently dubbed ‘German Square’) travelled downwards about 1,000 vertical feet before reaching the South Sides Flats area. Holy Moley.
Back tomorrow with more.
“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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