Remembering Pittsburgh

by Len Barcousky

  “Looking straight down into the sawdust in front of his platform, as if talking with the devil himself, the Rev. William A. Sunday laughed,” the newspaper reported. “He poked fun at an imaginary devil, ‘hah-hahed’ him to scorn, and led his audience to believe he was giving Old Nick an occasional poke in his ribs with his fist.”

  While Billy Sunday was ordained as a Presbyterian minister, his revivals were nondenominational Protestant events that drew listeners from many churches.

  Not to be left out, the same day that Sunday began his Pittsburgh crusade, leaders of the region’s large Roman Catholic population offered a one-day event to be part of the region’s “Religious Tidal Wave.”

  “FOES OF PROFANITY FORM MIGHTY HOST,” the newspaper reported elsewhere on its January 12 front page. “A demonstration such as is seldom witnessed in Pittsburgh took place yesterday when almost 10,000 men, members of the Diocesan Union Holy Name Society, gathered at the Exposition to take a solemn stand against the use of profanity and blasphemy,” the Gazette-Times said. “As many as could filled the seats and the outer aisles of the music hall and almost an equal number thronged machinery hall.” The Exposition was a complex of buildings at Pittsburgh’s Point used for fairs, conventions, trade shows and, later, ice hockey.

  Speakers at this event included the Reverend Charles H. McKenna, head of the Dominican Order and the father of the Holy Name Movement. “Father McKenna was clad in the robes of the Dominican order, and as he looked over the vast audience a smile crept over his countenance,” a reporter observed. “When he seated himself, he trembled slightly from the cold and did not remove his overcoat until he was called upon to speak.”

  While thousands had to be turned away from Billy Sunday’s opening events, organizers did find room for two late arrivals. Police lieutenant Hugh Duffy was approached by “a short, stocky, kindly faced man, accompanied by an elderly woman,” according to a Gazette-Times sidebar story on the revival. ‘“I’m Mr. Bryan, the secretary of state,’ the man said, ‘and this is Mrs. Bryan. We would like to slip in.’” They were guided into the service and seated four rows from the back. “Only a few persons recognized the secretary of state,” the newspaper said.

  William Jennings Bryan, three times the Democratic candidate for president, was known as the Great Commoner, and during his brief visit to Pittsburgh he lived up to his nickname. “Mr. and Mrs. Bryan went to the tabernacle on a street car and back by the same route,” according to the Gazette-Times.

  1920: ELECTION MARKS FIRSTS FOR WOMEN, RADIO

  Driving rain did not deter women in Allegheny County from casting their first-ever ballots for president.

  “A storming of the polling places by men and women in the early hours was the response to the appeals for early voting,” the Pittsburgh Press reported on Election Day, November 2, 1920. “The belief in political circles is that probably a larger per cent of the registered women than of registered men will cast ballots today, due to the enthusiasm among women over their first opportunity to vote.”

  The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which gave adult females the right to vote, had been passed by both houses of Congress in 1919, but it hadn’t been approved by the necessary two-thirds of state legislatures until August 1920, less than three months before the general election. The presidential contest that year was between Republican Warren G. Harding and Democrat James M. Cox.

  “In the Shadyside district, the voters were coming to the polls in families,” the Press reported. “In one instance a man, his wife and five daughters went to the polls in a body and after they had deposited their ballots[,] proudly announced that they were all Harding votes.”

  The 1920 race proved to be groundbreaking for a second reason.

  For the first time, election results were being collected and broadcast via radio, or “wireless” as it was sometimes known in its early days. KDKA announcer Leo Rosenberg reported returns that evening from a makeshift studio in East Pittsburgh to a few thousand homes that had receivers. At the same time, eight amateur radio operators in Pittsburgh’s Public Safety Building were receiving and relaying voting returns from all forty-eight states. Those numbers, updated every five minutes, “were thrown on a screen high up on the side of the Pittsburgh Life Building,” according to the Pittsburgh Gazette-Times on November 3.

  The intersection of Market Street and Liberty Avenue was jammed for several blocks, the newspaper reported. “The crowd extended so far that it backed into Oliver Avenue for half a block, [with] hundreds being forced to crane their necks for a glimpse at the lighted bulletin board.”

  It was a multimedia presentation. “On the second story of the downtown office, a phonograph horn protruded through the window and music familiar through a decade regaled the crowds between bulletins.”

  As more and more results came in favoring Harding, GOP headquarters at Fifth Avenue and Grant Street was packed with his happy supporters, the newspaper said. Nearby at the Republican Women’s headquarters, in the 500 block of Smithfield Street, “Every available inch of space was taken.”

  Harding-Cox presidential election returns were the first-ever broadcast on a commercial radio station—KDKA—in 1920. That election also marked the first time women could vote. Courtesy KDKA.

  “A woman telegraph operator handled returns over a special wire,” the reporter for the Gazette-Times noted. “Scores of women pushed their way into the headquarters to shake hands with the chairman, Mrs. Leonard G. Woods, and other workers.” Seated next to Mrs. Woods was Mrs. J.W. Lawrence, the former Mary Flinn. Her father, William Flinn, had been a longtime Republican boss and construction magnate in Pittsburgh. Her mansion is now part of Hartwood Acres, an Allegheny County park.

  The crowd at the women’s headquarters was entertained several times during the evening by a thirty-five-member girls’ chorus. “From a platform in front of a building, they sang campaign songs; then they wheeled down Smithfield street, making the thoroughfare resound with the strains of ‘John Brown’s Body.’”

  “When the Republican men swarmed about their headquarters, their red torchlights flaring and their band blaring its loudest marches, the women [again] hurried outside, [and] joined in cheers for Harding and Coolidge.” Calvin Coolidge was the GOP vice presidential candidate.

  Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, had been president for the previous eight years, winning both times without the support of Pennsylvania voters. The Gazette-Times greeted Harding’s victory with satisfaction in its front-page story on the city’s reaction to the GOP win.

  “From all quarters came the joyous assertion that the country had been restored to a Republican basis again and once more could march forward unchecked,” the newspaper reported.

  1927: SYMPHONY OUT OF TUNE WITH BLUE LAWS

  While musicians of the Pittsburgh Symphony tuned their instruments on the stage of the Syria Mosque, uniformed motorcycle policemen guarded the entrances of the Oakland landmark.

  The Syria Mosque, seen in a 1955 photo, was home to the Pittsburgh Symphony for many years. The building was demolished in 1991. Courtesy the Pittsburgh Press.

  Police were there in force on April 24, 1927, to head off protests as the newly re-formed orchestra began its first Sunday concert. By performing on Sunday, the musicians were about to run afoul of Pennsylvania’s blue laws and of the Sabbath Association of Allegheny County, which sought to enforce them.

  The blue laws had been passed more than a century earlier in Pennsylvania and several other states. Designed to keep Sunday as a day for worship and rest, they had banned most commercial activities, professional sports and noncharity concerts.

  Thirty-five hundred people showed up for the symphony’s inaugural Sunday concert and “with thunderous applause for every number on the program, declared that if this be Sabbath desecration, make the most of it,” the Pittsburgh Gazette-Times reported the next day. “Uniformed motorcycle police held sway outside the Mosque in deference to the ruling of the City Law Department tha
t the Symphony Society’s membership plan of admission…was legal in every way,” the newspaper said. “There were no interruptions and no attempts at interruptions.”

  “There was a spirit of amiable defiance in that crowd at Syria Mosque last night,” music critic J. Fred Lissfelt wrote in his review. “They all seemed a little worried.”

  The program included Weber’s Euryanthe overture, Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and two works by Tchaikovsky—Capriccio Italien and his Piano Concerto no. 1 in B-flat minor. Eugene Goossens was the conductor, and Josef Lhevinne the soloist.

  The concert opened with a prayer from an Episcopal priest, the Reverend Dr. H. Boyd Edwards. His invocation was “a plea for tolerance and forbearance, among the creeds. It called to mind the inspirational value of good music and it asked the blessing of God upon [the Sunday concert] movement.”

  Critic Lissfelt was complimentary about the performance, although he described his shock after the soloist “defied a good concert rule when he played an encore.”

  “If a debutante had been called to break a bottle of champagne over the conductor’s stand, the [event] would have been complete,” the scandalized reviewer wrote.

  Facing operating deficits, the orchestra had disbanded in 1910 for what supporters hoped would be a year. The year stretched into sixteen seasons. When the Symphony Society re-formed in 1926, its board announced plans for Sunday concerts. “The musicians had to work at other jobs during the week,” Frederick Dorian and Judith Meibach wrote in their 1986 history of the orchestra. “And, as a large segment of the audience came from the suburbs, Sunday afternoon was the most convenient time for them to attend concerts.”

  While Pittsburgh officials had allowed the concert to take place, the legal hammer fell the next day. The Sabbath Association filed complaints before an alderman—the equivalent of a magisterial district judge—against orchestra manager Edward Specter, concertmaster Elias Breeskin and eight others. “The society directors accepted full responsibility for the concert and showed irritation that 10 of 27 officers and directors should be ‘singled out’ for prosecution,” the Gazette-Times reported on April 26.

  The Symphony Ten appealed their twenty-five-dollar fines, and both the court case and Sunday concerts continued for the next year. In July 1928, state superior court “quashed” the case on what the newspaper called technical grounds, and the twenty-five-dollar fines were overturned.

  The Sabbath Association, however, pledged to keep up its battle against both secular music and sporting events. “We will not tolerate Sunday concerts and the very next breach of the law of 1794 will results in arrests and another case similar to this one,” the association’s lawyer, William H. Pratt, told a reporter for what had become the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. That story appeared July 13, 1928. His reference to 1794 cited the state’s original Sabbath laws.

  The blue law battle continued in the courts and in Harrisburg for the next several years. In 1933, supporters of professional sports were able to persuade the state legislature to adopt a local option measure, allowing communities to vote on what leisure activities to allow on Sunday. After city voters passed the measure, both the Pittsburgh Pirates football team—an earlier name for the Steelers—and the symphony could perform without fear of arrest.

  CHAPTER 7

  NOW, THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

  1823: FRONTIER PITTSBURGH PURSUES CULTURE

  William Staunton Jr., the organist of Trinity Episcopal Church, took out a front-page ad in the May 9, 1823 edition of the Pittsburgh Gazette.

  In it, he “respectfully informed the lovers of music, in Pittsburgh and its vicinity, that he has commenced a course of instruction in the science of Thorough Bass, or the Principles of musical composition.” He planned to select his pedagogical examples from “the works of the most eminent European masters.” Staunton’s list illustrates how musical fashions and reputations rise and fall. His composer choices included “Corfe, Calcott, Shield, Liston, Kirnberger, Marpurg, Burney, Kollman.” While all were once well known, J.W. Calcott, the composer of “Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes,” may be the only one whose music is regularly played today.

  Pittsburgh had a population of about seventy-three hundred at the start of the 1820s—fewer people than those living in Bellevue or Carnegie today. While the city had been a center of trade and manufacturing for more than a half century, early nineteenth-century newspaper advertising indicates its residents also were interested in a wide variety of cultural pursuits.

  Potential teachers touted their Continental training. Staunton, for example, told prospective pupils his musical studies had included time spent in Europe. One of his competitors for Pittsburgh’s self-improvement dollars was Willis Midford. In the May 30 edition of the Gazette, he touted “sword exercise.” Midford, “who served 16 years in one of the best Cavalry Corps of Europe, would offer instruction in the use of the broad sword.”

  “Military and other Gentlemen who wish to avail themselves of this opportunity to become masters of this most essential part of the science of attack and defense will please make early application,” he wrote. “The terms will be moderate.”

  A May 2 ad in the Gazette provides evidence that the Midford family—or perhaps just Willis Midford himself under a slightly different name—was multitalented.

  “Geo. Willis Midford, professor of music,” offered to teach violin and cello in his residence, on what is now Third Avenue, between Market and Wood Streets. That location was only a few buildings away from where Willis Midford would provide his instruction in sword handling. His biweekly lessons would be given at Colonel Ramsay’s Hotel on Wood Street.

  Despite the pursuit of culture, the business of Pittsburgh remained business, and most public notices and advertisements in the Gazette focused on commercial matters. These items included lists of steamboat arrivals and departures and wholesalers’ offers to sell everything from rye whiskey to made-to-order glass equipment. Tradesmen, including two makers of wood planes for carpenters, advertised for new customers.

  Pittsburgh, via the Ohio River, was a gateway to the west. That translated into opportunities for ambitious indentured servants and apprentices who grew tired of the demands of their masters.

  On May 23, tailor Leonard Louy offered a six-cent reward for the return of his apprentice, Robert Hutchenson. The insultingly small offer made it clear that Louy probably didn’t want the boy back, but he wished to alert any potential employers of his former apprentice’s untrustworthy nature.

  In a postscript to his reward notice, Louy indicated that he planned to be more particular about whom he trained next time: “An apprentice wanted to the above business. None need apply but such as can come well recommended.”

  The May 30 edition of the Gazette also offered leisure-time options for those interested in literature. Eichbaum Johnston, Booksellers, had for sale a new work of historical fiction; set at the Forks of the Ohio during the French and Indian War, it was called The Wilderness; or Braddock’s Times, A Tale of the West. Napoleon had died May 5, 1821, on St. Helena. Eichbaum Johnston had “a few copies” of a memoir about his last years, “Napoleon in Exile, by Barry O’Meara, Esq., his late Surgeon.”

  Another author sought local financial support for his project: a multistanza poem about the city of Pittsburgh. Writer W. Skinner offered readers of the Gazette an excerpt from his work in progress:

  Here once the savage hunters proudly sought

  The nimble deer, or for some trophy fought;

  Here the brave Washington to glory led

  His undaunted warriors, who freely bled,

  Whose names the weeping Muse shall yet rehearse,

  Embalm’d in many a sweetly melting verse,

  For here in Pittsburgh it shall ne’er be said,

  No Muse weeps o’er the great, the honor’d dead.

  Skinner promised potential backers that they wouldn’t have to wait long to see the final version. If support was forthcoming, his poem would be “put to the
press in the course of a few weeks.”

  1851: JENNY LIND LEAVES PITTSBURGH WANTING MORE

  Judging from newspaper coverage, the April 1851 concert in Pittsburgh by Jenny Lind—the Swedish Nightingale—surpassed performances by the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and even Miley Cyrus in her Hannah Montana persona. Or it may just be that Mick, Bruce and Miley all lacked the advantage of having Lind’s promoter: P.T. Barnum.

  “The contagion of the Nightingale fever, it appears, has reached our city, and fears being entertained of her not honoring us with a visit, some of our citizens are departing for Cincinnati, in order to hear this famous enchantress,” the Morning Post reported on April 18, 1851. Those worries evaporated three days later when the Morning Post announced that the Swedish-born singer would perform April 25 in the city’s new Masonic Hall. She was supposed to return east after her Cincinnati performance, but “at the earnest solicitation of some of our citizens, Mr. [Barnum]… has agreed that Miss Lind shall sing here at least one night.” About fifteen hundred tickets would be sold, through an auction, at what the Daily Pittsburgh Gazette estimated was an average price of $7.50—about $ 194 in today’s money.

  “The excitement relative to the arrival of Jenny Lind in our city is already becoming very contagious,” the Morning Post reported April 22. “The people from the surrounding country—Washington, Greensburgh, and other towns in the vicinity—are flocking in, determined if possible to get a seat under the sound of her voice.” Other businesses advertised wares that week designed to take advantage of Lind-o-mania. New sheet music available at O. Blume’s Piano Depot, 118 Wood Street, included “Jenny Lind’s celebrated ‘Bird Song,’ arranged for the guitar.”

  “Memorial Hall, to-night, will be a scene of beauty and gaiety, such as has never before been witnessed in Pittsburgh,” the Morning Post said on the day of the concert. “The reputation of Jenny Lind is as extensive as the universe itself, and our citizens, who have heard so much about her angelic notes and heavenly charity, will now have an opportunity to see and hear for themselves this gifted daughter of Sweden.”