Remembering Pittsburgh

by Len Barcousky

  The British built Fort Pitt, one of their most elaborate fortifications in North America. It proved its worth during Pontiac’s rebellion in 1763, when it held out against a Native American siege. During the Revolutionary War, Fort Pitt served as headquarters for American forces, who sought, with limited success, to protect frontier settlers from attacks by natives allied with the British. The Fort Pitt Blockhouse, built in 1764, is all that is left standing of Fort Pitt. The brick and stone redoubt is the oldest building in the region.

  After the Revolution, the area around Fort Pitt had another brief period of martial importance. In the summer and fall of 1792, Major General Anthony Wayne began to train the Legion of the United States—the first United States Army—at Fort Fayette, built along the Allegheny River side of the Point.

  As the Point lost military importance, the adjoining community of Pittsburgh gained in importance as a trading center and home to small “manufactories.” The Pittsburgh Gazette, the direct ancestor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, began publication in 1786. Seeking to serve its audience of farmers and entrepreneurs, its pages included real estate offerings, business news, political stories and classified advertising.

  Few events were more important to the development of Pittsburgh than the decision by President Thomas Jefferson to acquire the Louisiana territory, including New Orleans, from France in 1803. While the rugged Allegheny Mountains had limited Pittsburgh’s commercial ties to the East Coast, the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers provided an inexpensive way to transport Pittsburgh goods and agricultural products as far as the Gulf of Mexico.

  The early sophistication of local manufacturing is indicated by the decision of Nicholas Roosevelt, a partner of steamboat pioneer Robert Fulton, to build the nineteenth-century equivalent of a Boeing 747 here.

  Workers and rioters focused their anger on Union Depot on Liberty Avenue during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Courtesy Senator John Heinz History Center.

  “With pleasure we announced that the Steam Boat lately built at this place by Mr. Roosevelt…fully answers the most sanguine expectations that were formed of her sailing,” the Gazette told its readers on October 18, 1811. The vessel was built at a shipyard on the banks of the Monongahela River, below the bluff now occupied by Duquesne University.

  Abundant natural resources, especially coal and lumber, helped Pittsburgh develop its early industries, including glass making, iron production and shipbuilding. The growth of manufacturing attracted new residents, who wanted to make their fortunes and were willing to overlook some of the early environmental problems: smoke-filled skies and polluted water. “The chief distinction of Pittsburgh is not smoke, and it never was,” Franklin Toker, professor of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, wrote in his 1986 history of the community, Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait. “Instead, the chief distinction of Pittsburgh is work.”

  Add to that an ability to overcome adversity, like periodic flooding, which continued into the 1930s, and other disasters. Like nineteenth-century Chicago, Pittsburgh suffered from a devastating fire that, amazingly, appeared to have set the community back only a matter of months. As much as a third of the city was destroyed on a single day, April 10, 1845. Four days after the fire, the newspaper—then known as the Daily Gazette and Advertiser—reported that rebuilding had begun. Within a month, several stores and warehouses had reopened and hundreds of others were under construction in the “Burnt District.”

  The construction of the Allegheny Portage Railroad, which carried canalboats between the eastern and western portions of the Pennsylvania Canal, and, more importantly, the completion in 1854 of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s line through the Alleghenies linked Pittsburgh to eastern markets. During the Civil War, the Pittsburgh area supplied both troops and critical supplies for the Union army, including artillery and ammunition.

  The Allegheny Arsenal, located in what was then the separate community of Lawrenceville, had been producing munitions since 1814. In September 1862, it was the site of a horrible explosion that killed seventy-nine workers, mostly young women.

  In the years after the war, heavy industry—led by steelmaking—went through cycles of boom and bust. The rise of big business, like Andrew Carnegie’s giant steel company, eventually was accompanied by the rise of large labor organizations. “Production and struggle were two major themes in Pittsburgh history,” said Charles McCollester, retired professor of industrial and labor relations at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

  During much of the seventy-year period between the end of the Civil War and the Great Depression, industrial violence was common. While the best-known fight is probably the pitched battle in 1892 between Carnegie workers and Pinkerton detectives at the steel company’s Homestead Works, a much bloodier confrontation took place in the city’s Strip District in July 1877. Engineers, conductors and brakemen employed by the Pennsylvania Railroad had walked off their jobs to protest new work rules and pay cuts. After the strikers stopped replacement workers from operating trains, the governor called out Philadelphia militia units to secure train yards. Faced by a stone-throwing crowd numbering in the thousands, the out-of-town soldiers opened fire. About twenty civilians and five soldiers were killed before the troops withdrew. For several days, mobs controlled city neighborhoods and destroyed millions of dollars in property, most of it belonging to the railroad.

  Pittsburgh also played a role in peaceful union organizing. In November 1881, Samuel Gompers was among delegates from twelve states who gathered here to form the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, the direct predecessor of the American Federation of Labor. At its historic meeting in Pittsburgh, the union alliance passed resolutions that eventually became cornerstones of modern labor policy. The federation sought a standard eight-hour day and bans on the use of convict and child labor. Delegates also pushed for laws requiring employers to care for workers hurt on the job—the idea behind workers’ compensation.

  The twentieth century saw Pittsburgh reach its peak as an industrial center and magnet for immigrants. Tens of thousands of European workers came to the region in the period before World War I. They were followed by large numbers of African Americans, fleeing poverty in the South and seeking new opportunities in southwestern Pennsylvania’s factories and mines. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal aided the cause of union organizing, while World War II and the prosperity that followed stoked the demand for the range of products made in Pittsburgh.

  During the last decades of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, however, many large manufacturing companies and big labor unions declined. Finance, education and healthcare all began to play more prominent roles in the region’s economy. Brownfield sites once occupied by industrial giants—including the site of Carnegie’s Homestead Works—became home to shopping and entertainment complexes, office buildings and laboratories.

  One visual indicator of the changing face of the region can be seen downtown on the city’s tallest skyscraper, the sixty-four-story U.S. Steel Tower. The building had long stood as a symbol of the city’s industrial economy and heritage. In 2008, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center—which had long passed manufacturing to become the region’s largest employer—attached its UPMC logo on all three sides of the triangular landmark.

  CHAPTER 1

  THE GREAT AND THE GOOD

  1753: WASHINGTON GETS TO THE POINT

  Heavy rains and a “vast Quantity of Snow” made travel difficult for George Washington in the late fall of 1753.

  Major Washington, age twenty-one, was leading a small expedition through what would become western Pennsylvania on orders from Robert Dinwiddie. Dinwiddie, the lieutenant governor of Washington’s home state of Virginia, had given the young man a delicate and dangerous diplomatic task on October 31. Washington was to take messages to the commander of newly built French outposts in the Ohio country, telling him to withdraw from lands claimed by Great Britain. He was also to foster alliances with local Indian tribes a
nd to bring back intelligence on French economic and military intentions.

  Dull words describe an eleven-week journey that took him and Christopher Gist through a thousand miles of mostly wilderness. As he traveled by horse, canoe and on foot, Washington kept a journal. When that journal was published in 1754, just weeks after his return to Williamsburg, then Virginia’s capital, it gave Washington his first taste of fame. Shot at and almost drowned, he came close to death twice during his trip. Trained as a surveyor, he paid close attention to topography, keeping his eye out for both fertile farmlands and places of military importance.

  A statue of young George Washington stands on guard in Braddock, Pennsylvania. Washington made his first visit to what became Pittsburgh in 1753. Courtesy Carol Morton of the Pittsburgh Press.

  While Washington was not the first European to visit what became Pittsburgh’s Point—where the Monongahela and the Allegheny join to form the Ohio River—he was the first to describe it. He arrived on November 22, 1753. “I spent some Time in viewing the Rivers, and the Land in the Fork, which I think extremely well situated for a Fort, as it has the absolute Command of both Rivers,” he wrote. “The Land at the Point is 20 or 25 Feet above the common Surface of the Water, and a considerable bottom of flat, well-timbered Land all around it, very convenient for Building. The Rivers are each a Quarter of a Mile, or more, across, and run here very near at right Angles: Alligany bearing N.E. and Monogahela [sic] S.E…. the former of these two is very rapid and swift running Water, the other deep and still without any perceptible Fall.”

  Washington’s diplomatic party of seven white men and a varying number of Indian companions included Gist, an experienced woodsman, and a Dutchman named Jacob VanBraam, who spoke some French, to serve as interpreter. The best-known Native American to accompany Washington was Tanacharison. Known as the Half-King, he represented the powerful Iroquois Confederacy in the area around what became Pittsburgh.

  The French commander at Fort LeBoeuf, Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, was not impressed. In a reply Washington carried back to Dinwiddie, Saint-Pierre wrote to Dinwiddie that while he received Washington “with a distinction suitable to your Dignity, and his Quality and great Merit,” the French had no plans to leave.

  Deep snow made Washington’s trip back even more difficult and slower. Washington and Gist set out alone and on foot on December 26, leaving their horses and the rest of their party behind. The next few days presented danger from humans and nature. On December 27, Washington and Gist had reached what is now Butler County. Washington wrote that he and Gist “fell in with a Party of French Indians, who had lain in Wait for us; one of them fired at Mr. Gist or me not 15 Steps [away], but fortunately missed.” Worried about another attack, Washington and Gist “walked all the remaining Part of the Night without making any Stop.”

  George Washington made many visits to southwestern Pennsylvania, and he is remembered with several monuments. This equestrian statue is in West Park, on Pittsburgh’s North Side. Courtesy Robin Rombach of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

  The next morning they reached the ice-filled Allegheny River and, still without sleep, spent most of the day building a crude raft “with one poor Hatchet.” They were using long poles to push themselves across when Washington was thrown into the freezing water. He grabbed onto the raft as Gist maneuvered it to an island in the middle of the river. By the next morning it had frozen over, and they walked across to the south shore. Washington hurried back to Williamsburg to report to Dinwiddie after a quick diplomatic meeting, near present-day McKeesport, with the Indian queen Aliquippa.

  His journal was published in both Virginia and Great Britain, pretty much as he wrote it. “I think I can do no less than apologize, in some measure, for the numberless Imperfections of it,” he wrote.

  1825: PITTSBURGH HONORS LAFAYETTE, “THE NATION’S GUEST”

  Readers of southwestern Pennsylvania newspapers received regular reports on the progress of the Marquis de Lafayette as he traveled up the Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys toward Pittsburgh in the spring of 1825. The hero of both the American and French Revolutions, accompanied by his son, George Washington Lafayette, undertook a thirteen-month visit to the United States between August 1824 and September 1825. His journey covered more than three thousand miles and included stops in all twenty-four states that were then part of the union. He was no longer a young man, celebrating both his sixty-seventh and sixty-eighth birthdays during his national tour.

  “The Nation’s Guest arrived at Wheeling on Tuesday last (May 24, 1825) and at Washington (Pa.) on Wednesday,” according to the May 27, 1825 edition of what was called the Pittsburgh Gazette and Manufacturing & Mercantile Advertiser. “At each of these places he was received with the usual demonstrations of respect and gratitude.” The “demonstrations” included parades, dinners, public receptions and balls.

  Traveling by stagecoach, horseback, canal barge and steamboat, Lafayette’s party faced delays and dangers. In the same edition of the Pittsburgh Gazette that reported on Lafayette’s approach to the city was reprinted a story from the Washington Reporter. It described a May 8 accident involving the general and his traveling companions. “The steam boat Mechanic…bound to Louisville, accidentally ran upon a large snag, which pierced her forecastle, wounding a man materially [and] shocking the vessel and the passengers in an alarming manner.

  “The boat began to sink and all grew into confusion, but the cool and collected conduct of Capt. Hall, and his crew, enabled them to save all the persons on board from drowning. The ‘Nation’s Guest,’ the esteemed Lafayette, was put on board [a] yawl, and taken to shore.” The boat sank, taking all of Lafayette’s baggage with it, including a carriage presented to him years earlier by George Washington. “The above [story] we collected from a gentleman who was on board the steam boat Mechanic at the time she met with the perilous accident,” the newspaper said.

  By May 29, Lafayette was just outside Pittsburgh at Braddock’s Field. His party spent the night “at the hospitable mansion of George Wallace, Esq,” according to the June 3 edition of the Pittsburgh Gazette. The next morning, he traveled the last few miles into Pittsburgh in a carriage pulled by four white horses.

  The progress of the General through the city to his lodgings was marked with abundant manifestations of the hearty welcome with which he was received. The streets, through which he passed, were filled to overflowing, as also were the doors, windows and every place where a view could be obtained. Every countenance beamed with pleasure and every eye sparkled with delight. It was the grateful homage of a free people, flowing from the heart, towards the early, distinguished and unwearied champion of freedom.

  Other events during Lafayette’s two-day visit to Pittsburgh included dinners and a ball. “But a scene not less interesting than any which had preceded it took place on Tuesday morning,” the newspaper reported. “The children of the city, headed by their respective teachers, were arranged along Wood Street in front of the general’s lodgings. The general saluted them in passing along the lane…and he appeared greatly pleased at this testimony of affection.”

  Lafayette also had a chance to meet with old military comrades.

  Perhaps the most interesting incident attending the General’s visit to our city, was the introduction to him, at Darlington’s Hotel, of the Revolutionary veterans, who, with Captain Peterson, had occupied the three carriages next to his during the procession… Old Alexander Gray and Galbreath Wilson seem to grow young again.

  The latter asked the General if he remembered the young man who assisted him over the fence, immediately after he had received the wound in his leg at the battle of Brandywine, which caused his lameness. The General instantly recognized in Wilson the gallant young soldier who had performed that service. The old soldiers dined with the General at Darlington’s on Monday and at Ramsay’s on Tuesday.

  1861: LINCOLN LOOKS SOUTH

  Abraham Lincoln’s new beard had filled in pretty well by the time he arrived
in Pittsburgh on February 14, 1861. The president-elect’s train was almost three hours late pulling into the Federal Street depot on what is now Pittsburgh’s North Side. That neighborhood was then in the separate municipality of Allegheny City. The long delay was caused by a freight train derailment that blocked the rail line between Rochester and Baden in Beaver County.

  “So anxious were the assembled thousands to get a glimpse of the most prominent man now in the American Union that they esteemed the delay of an hour or two as a matter not intolerable under the circumstances,” the Pittsburgh Gazette reported in its February 15 edition.

  While a heavy shower discouraged some spectators, thousands remained to cheer and call for a speech when his train arrived around 8:00 p.m. Accompanied by his wife, Mary, and sons, Robert, Willie and Tad, Lincoln was following a circuitous nineteen-hundred-mile journey from his home in Springfield, Illinois, to Washington, D.C. He had turned fifty-two on February 12, two days before his arrival in Pittsburgh.

  Abraham Lincoln stayed overnight in and spoke from the balcony of the Monongahela House when he visited Pittsburgh in 1861. The hotel stood on Smithfield Street, between what is now First Avenue and Boulevard of the Allies. Courtesy Senator John Heinz History Center.

  It was altogether fitting and proper that Lincoln should have made Pittsburgh one of the stops on the way to his inauguration, according to Andrew Masich, president of the Senator John Heinz History Center. The city had played a critical role in the founding of the Republican Party, he noted. For two days in February 1856, delegates met in Lafayette Hall on Wood Street to hash out resolutions opposing the spread of slavery and admission of Kansas to the union as a free state.