Posts Tagged ‘The Bluff’
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.
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