The Newtown Pentacle

Wednesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Serendipity, I tell’s ya, is what makes all the suffering worth it.

As detailed in two prior posts, your humble narrator recently engaged in a long scuttle which carried his cadaverous form down the titanic ‘Rising Main’ city steps, which are found on Pittsburgh’s North Side. Rising Main comes to ground on what looks like an entirely condemned street called Toboggan.

This walk ended up opening up a story for me I was ignorant of, that of Pittsburgh’s ‘East Street Valley.’

– photo by Mitch Waxman

A highway project was rammed through this section, which ended up seeing massive numbers of residents displaced between 1962 and 1985.

Entire neighborhoods were emptied, the street grid broken, and communities erased. All that really survives from that prior incarnation is a Catholic Church, one which refused to give up its plot of land. You can see the church from the eight lane highway, while you’re driving north at sixty miles per hour.

Conversation with a friend who’s local to Pittsburgh revealed the name of this section as being ‘the East Street Valley,’ and he also mentioned knowing somebody who was displaced by the highway project.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Looking back up Rising Main from the bottom of the steps, and standing in front of some of the condemned homes.

Some work seemed to be going on in one or two of the buildings here, but the ‘condemned’ blue signage Pittsburgh uses as a legal notice was displayed in the surviving windows. Shame.

There was no life here. Didn’t hear birds or critters ‘effing around in the woods, nothing. All you could hear was the buzzing of car tires on asphalt and the sound of engine inhibitors on semi trucks throttling down, all of which was coming from the direction of I-579.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

That car had moss growing on it. Looks like it hasn’t been moved in decades.

Feeding into my Cotard delusion, there were absolutely zero other human beings encountered along this path. Perhaps… I am a phantom floating along in a filthy black raincoat.

Hey… it’s warmed up a bit here, so maybe I’ll finally wash the thing. It’s got mud all over the butt and back section after I… well…

…that’s a story for another post…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Along the wooded slopes, foundation stones and retaining walls can be observed. The atavist masonry I saw everywhere is what made me so curious about what happened here.

I’ve actually had to buy a book, to learn more!

One scuttled past a municipal facility that pumps drinking water, from a resovoir on high at the top of the hill, out to the neighborhoods.

The end of Toboggan Street leads out to a fairly long and largely featureless road called Howard Street. Here’s the intersection on Google Maps if you want to click around and look for yourself (the lone structure is the aforementioned pump house).

I had to follow it out, in a relatively southernly direction. To the east, or left as I was oriented, is a noise abatement wall for the high speed road, and to the west or right – a former neighborhood that was scratched off the earth around 40-50 years ago.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

That’s the noise abatement wall, which marks the border with I-579.

There was no sidewalk on the other side of the street for this section of Howard Street, so I opted for a walk in the grass, on the safe side of that guard rail pictured above. The ground was squishy, as it had rained in the last 24 hours, but that was a nice change after walking up Television Hill and then down the Rising Main.

All you can hear is the traffic. I put my headphones in, thereby, and got back to my relisten of the ‘History of Rome’ podcast (which I just discovered is on Spotify, if you roll that way). I’m listening to the episodes discussing Constantine the Great now, so what a wild thousand years it’s been. I’m a big Diocletian fan, so the last few episodes have been a Tetrarchical Joy.

If you’ve got a great history podcast I should be listening to, please drop a link to it in the comments section. I want to know more about everything, all the time.

Back tomorrow with more.

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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.