July 26, 1874:  “Butcher’s Run Flood devastates O’Hara Street”

A few days ago we visited the short section of Spring Garden Avenue that runs just west of Chestnut Street on the North Side. It’s a narrow residential street lined with those two- and three-story red brick houses you often see in older sections of the city. On this morning the neighborhood was quiet, except for the rumble of cars traveling along nearby Chestnut Street, which remains cobblestone.

It’s difficult to imagine that this street was once the scene of such horror that it became the center of national attention. Reporters from newspapers in the east stood here to learn about a tragedy. Artists sketched the scene for illustrated magazines, and at least one photographer was at work.

The year was 1874. This portion of Spring Garden Avenue was known as O’Hara Street, and it was at the center of a densely packed portion of Allegheny City. The event that lured newsmen to the street began around 8 o’clock on Sunday evening, July 26. Heavy raindrops splattered on wood plank roads as families settled down in their homes for the evening. Then the rain grew heavy, alarmingly so. Soon it was a torrent unlike any in recent memory. A thick darkness fell over the city. Newspapers called it “impenetrable,” except by frequent blasts of lightning.

Streams that flowed down from the hills above O’Hara Street began to fill with water. On a hillside near one of those streams lived a man named G.W. Day.  As he peered out a window, a lightning flash revealed in an instant something terrifying: A wall of water was bearing down on his house. Day had no time to react. Fortunately, the flood had yet to gather deadly force.

Fed by water rushing down hillsides, the flood grew in strength and volume. Outbuildings and fences were swept away, trees uprooted and road planks tossed into the air by the fast-moving water.

Those in the flood’s path had little warning. Homes were inundated, pushed from foundations, overturned or, in some cases, completely torn part. Survivors groped for safety in the darkness.

John Shearing and his wife carried their sleeping 4-year-old sons out of the family’s house and onto a bank above the rushing waters. The storm aroused one of the boys. He awoke and rolled over the bank and into the raging flood. His body was recovered the next day.

The Leopold family’s three-story frame house was destroyed. Mrs. Leopold and her four children drowned. In addition, the flood killed five children from another family living on the third floor. The home of a cooper named Simon Dreyer was lifted up and set on its side. The family inside escaped serious injury.

John Fisher, a butcher, ran to a stable to save his horse. As the water rose, he sought safety in a hay-loft. Reaching down, he grabbed his horse’s bridle and held the animal’s head above the water, thus saving its life. Elsewhere, a woman named Mrs. Upperman looked out her window and, in a flash of lightning, glimpsed two boys floating by her house. She called for help, but the boys were carried away in the darkness.

O’Hara, Concord and Chestnut streets were described by newspapers as the “bosom of destruction.” Houses here were rudely pushed against one another. Some collapsed. In these streets, children were torn from the grasps of their parents and then disappeared in waters roiling with the corpses of cows and pigs and sheep and pieces of furniture, broken carriages, light poles and other debris.

“Some of the most substantial brick dwellings were undermined in full,” reported the Pittsburgh Post. “Frame houses were moved off their foundations, upset and in some instances, where they refused to move, twisted into the most fantastical shapes.”

The receding water left a coating of mud, filth and rubbish in streets. Bruised and torn corpses littered the area. Many were damaged beyond recognition. A dead girl was ensnared in the branches of a peach tree. Henry Mattern died with his arms clasping one of his two children. A few yards away, his dead wife clutched the other child. On Perry Street, searchers found the body of policeman Henry Hess, one hand clinging to a fire plug, the other grasping a stick. Corpses were carted away to nearby funeral homes, where they were cleaned and placed in rows.

A boy approximately 5 years old wandered alone near Chestnut and Ohio streets. He spoke only German. His name was Schubert, he said, and he was washed from a second story window during the flood. He had not seen any members of his family since then. “A number of ladies in the vicinity took him in charge,” the Post reported.

On Tuesday, church bells tolled and funeral processions passed though the streets. The cleanup and healing had begun.

In decades to come, a man named Heinz would build a company and a fortune just a few blocks away. Allegheny City would become part of Pittsburgh. Modern roadways would cut into the neighborhood. O’Hara Street would become Spring Garden Avenue. The flood of 1874 remains only as a memory, one of many reminders that we are a city shaped, molded and sometimes scarred by water.

— Steve Mellon

June 9, 1966: “Lonesome George and Ginger — a Pittsburgh love story”

George was a happy little gorilla. He was acquired by the Pittsburgh Zoo in 1965, and was given a mate. What more could a 4-year-old gorilla want? But soon the mate died of a heart ailment. George became sad. His picture was in the newspaper. Readers saw a small, melancholic gorilla peering through the bars of a cage.

People started calling him “Lonesome George.”

It was simply too much for a woman named Mrs. John W. Soars (that’s how the newspapers identified her, with no first name). Lonesome George, she decided, must have a mate. Mrs. Soars proposed a trading stamp campaign to provide a wife for the forlorn gorilla. The idea was picked up by The Pittsburgh Press, and before long Pittsburghers had donated $6,500 worth of trading stamps to the cause.

If there’s one thing folks in this city won’t abide, it’s a sad, lonely gorilla.

This is where Ginger enters our story. She’d been snatched from her home in Gabon, West Africa, and stuck in a zoo in Copenhagen, Denmark. While there, Ginger was selected to be George’s mate. So she was stuffed into a crate, flown to Pittsburgh and introduced to Lonesome George. 

“It was love at first sight,” blared The Pittsburgh Press. Ginger was a “dark-eyed beauty” with “cosmopolitan sophistication.” In addition, the newspaper reminded readers, she’d lived in Europe.

Lonesome George was a bit overwhelmed. He wasn’t sure whether he should embrace his new bride or stomp around in a jealous rage. He decided to try both tactics. Ginger played it cool. She continued to entice George to her side with “loving glances and snorts.”

No male can resist a snorting female. In a fit of excitement, George swung around in his cage and pounded his chest.

Then Ginger got down to business. Her first task? Checking the cleanliness of her new digs. “She wiped her finger across the floor of the cage and studied it carefully, causing a zoo official to get a mop and clean up,” The Press reported.

The two gorillas soon became a major draw — the most popular gorillas in the United States, declared local newspapers. Record crowds came to the zoo to see the pair.

Of course, love stories such as this always end in tragedy. The bad news came after less than a month of bliss. Lonesome George was found dead in his cage on June 26. An autopsy revealed the cause of death — intestinal problems. But that wasn’t the big news. The autopsy unearthed something shocking: Lonesome George was a female.

“Oops!” read the headline in the next day’s Pittsburgh Press.

Officials at the zoo explained that it was difficult to determine the sex of young gorillas. Remember, this was in the mid 1960s.

Ginger took the news in stride. She didn’t need a mate.

“Most gorillas are affectionate and want to be cuddled and loved,” said zoo superintendent Howard Hays. “But Ginger is content to be alone.”

Some time later, Pittsburghers were given more shocking news: Ginger, it turned out, was a male.

Oops, again. Ginger was renamed George.

George settled into life at the zoo. He often held his caretaker’s hand or stuck his feet out of the the cage to be tickled. He played tug-of-war with visitors using a rubber hose and splashed around in water when his cage was hosed out. For 12 years, George was a star attraction. Then, in 1979, George died of complications from an infected tooth.

He’s with us to this day, at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. We’ve seen him there, stuffed and incredibly life-like. He’s got this mischievous look in his eye, as if he’d played some kind of grand joke on us all and we still don’t get it.

— Steve Mellon

Sept. 3, 1974: “Bridge Jumpers Downtown”

The story behind these photographs of bridge jumpers could have had a happy ending. It was tragic instead.

On Sept. 2, 1974, a rock concert sponsored by radio station WKTQ brought 100,000 people to the Point State Park, Downtown. 

Thousands of rock fans stood on the Allegheny shore waiting for the start of the free barge performance. Pirates fans joined the crowd later, after a Labor Day double-header defeat of the Phillies. 

Because of the Pirates game, which drew 45,181 people to Three Rivers Stadium, and the rock concert traffic, Downtown descended into madness. It was “snarled for hours as many motorists, unable to find parking places, parked where they stopped. Cars were parked on the Fort Duquesne Bridge, and on sidewalks, in alleys and bridge ramps.”

Before the concert was scheduled to start, dozens of fans put on a show of their own. They started jumping from the bridges into the river, some from the Fort Duquesne Bridge. 

Dave Buzarelli, 21, was one of them. He jumped into the Allegheny River, came to the surface once and then slipped beneath the water. He was presumed drowned. Later, his swimming companion said that Buzarelli screamed for help but no one noticed him.

“The more than 60,000 who jammed and littered the park, however, were oblivious to the apparent drowning,” The Pittsburgh Press reported.

The concert was termed “a disaster.”  A representative of the Allegheny Conference and Community said “there will be no more rock concerts in Point State Park.”

— Mila Sanina  

Aug. 9, 1935:  “Beauty queen Henrietta Leaver”

— Marylynne Pitz 

Dec. 17, 1953: “Tension, arrests during Pittsburgh’s department store strike”

We found in our files several dozen photographs made during the department store strike of 1953-55. Most offer a grim documentation of a long, ugly and costly battle between organized labor and Pittsburgh’s five large department stores. One picture, however, hints at optimism, even happiness.

It was taken outside Gimbels on Smithfield Street on Dec. 17, 1953, when the strike was less than a month old. The picture is full of smiling faces and people mugging and waving at the camera. Christmas was just days away. Downtown was bustling with life. Shoppers mixed with striking workers carrying signs. Hundreds of people showed up just to watch. 

About 250 picketers crowded the sidewalk. Sometime after the photographer clicked the shutter, police tried to clear a path for shoppers. Fifty-year-old Sylvia Miller objected to this effort. She was quickly hustled away in a patrol car, and that’s when things got dicey. Tempers flared, people shoved one another, punches flew. One picketer was knocked unconscious. The crowd jeered as police began making arrests. Whatever optimism and happiness was in the air that night quickly evaporated.

The strike began Nov. 27 when retail workers walked out to support Teamsters Local 249. The union was fighting an attempt by stores to cut delivery costs. Every driver at the time had the right to be accompanied by a helper, who assisted in lifting and carrying. Stores wanted to end the practice.

During the 64-week work stoppage — at the time the longest retail strike in American history — stores lost as much as $50 million in sales. Striking workers sacrificed an estimated $12 million in wages. Police arrested more than 100 people, including store and union officials, on charges that included arson, inciting to riot and kidnapping. Paint bombs were hurled at homes, truckloads of furniture were burned and display windows smashed. Because garbage collectors refused to cross picket lines, rubbish was piled on the roofs of the downtown stores.

Several leaders — including Mayor David L. Lawrence, the clergy and city council — stepped up to try to end the strike. All efforts failed. As the months dragged on, union solidarity began to dissolve. Some strikers snuck back to work. Wives crossed picket lines manned by their husbands.

It ended in February 1955. The union earned a small raise but gave up helpers. The department stores — Gimbels, Joseph Horne Co., Kaufmann’s, Frank & Seder and Rosenbaum’s — had won a battle but at a terrible cost. Managers wondered if they could regain lost business and lure customers back into their stores.

And the city? Many here felt Pittsburgh had been tarnished by a disagreement that could have been avoided.

“Before the strike,” The Pittsburgh Press wrote at the time, “Pittsburgh was the envy of the nation … Today, most of the glitter of the Golden Triangle has been rubbed off.”

— Steve Mellon

1987: “Fred Rogers and his puppet detente” 

Once known as “the nicest person on television,” Mr. Rogers touched millions of lives. His own life was one for service, as he himself liked to say, “Those of us in broadcasting are servants of those who watch and listen.” For 33 years he wrote and starred in PBS’s  “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

Today marks 10 years since Mr. Rogers died of cancer and here are some photographs from the Post-Gazette’s archive, which describe different stages of Mr. Rogers’ career, capture his personality and even tell stories that are not so widely known.

In November 1984, amidst the Cold War, Mr. Rogers was part of what was dubbed “puppet detente.” Tatiana Vedeneeva, host of the Soviet children’s show “Good Night, Little Ones” arrived at the door of Mr. Rogers’ make-believe home in Oakland with an interpreter, gifts of Matryoshka dolls — shiny, painted figures which nest inside each other — and a videotape of how the dolls are made. Tatiana Vedeneeva wore a white blouse and a cream-colored sweater, at which Mr. Rogers later marveled, “Isn’t it nice that she wore a sweater?”

Vedeneeva’s “Good Night, Little Ones” ushered millions of the Soviet children to bed each evening, including yours sincerely, and was as popular among the children of the Soviet Union as “Mr.Rogers’ Neighborhood” was among the American kids.

On the day Vedeneeva visited the WQED studio, she and Mr. Rogers taped a segment together. The program was scheduled to air on Dec. 7, when President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev was due in America to meet with President Reagan. 

Vedeneeva’s appearance marked the first time a non-English-speaking person and an interpreter appeared on the show. “That in itself is interesting for children — and that people can understand one another even in different tongues,” Mr. Rogers concluded during a break in taping.

While the Soviet TV host was at Mr. Rogers’ studio, a message board outside read, in English and Russian, “On the bridge of trust and the rainbow of love, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood welcomes Tatiana Vedeneeva.”

Echoing themes Rogers covered daily on his show, the Soviet TV star said, “Small children will be looking at this show, and they’re going to understand that children around the world are really similar…We all want to get along with one another, we all want friendships, we all want to be cared for.”

Earlier that year, Mr. Rogers visited a studio of “Good Night, Little Ones” in Moscow. He didn’t go there alone. On that trip, he brought a puppet of his own, Daniel Striped Tiger. American viewers saw that clip on March 8, 1985.

The moral of the story, to put it in Mr. Rogers’ words: “Peace means far more than just the opposite of war.” Mr. Rogers’ caring and wisdom transcended every barrier.  As cellist and virtuoso Yo-Yo Ma said in his tribute to Mr. Rogers, “His advocacy for children was truly an advocacy for the human race.”

— Mila Sanina  

Oct. 6, 1910: “George Westinghouse: entrepreneur and innovator”

Niagara Falls was the scene of triumph for George Westinghouse in 1896. That year, he and Nikola Tesla harnessed the hydroelectric power of the falls and used it to electrify Buffalo, N.Y. This achievement ushered in the age of the alternating current that people use today. 

Westinghouse disliked being photographed so it’s quite likely that his wife, Marguerite, persuaded him to appear in this picture.

His employees also knew of his distaste for cameras but instead of using persuasion, they arranged to secretly photograph their boss while he conferred with an employee about a patent drawing at Westinghouse Electric’s East Pittsburgh plant. Westinghouse is the man on the left. 

Like many successful entrepreneurs whose inventions improved civilization,  Westinghouse started out in humble surroundings and never lost his love for tinkering or solving problems. 

As a youth growing up in New York, he often built gadgets and devices in his father’s factory, a Schenectady-based company called G. Westinghouse & Co. that made agricultural machinery and steam engines.

Westinghouse came to Pittsburgh in the 1860s. He wanted the city’s high-quality cast steel and he also needed financing and a manufacturer for two of his inventions — the car replacer and the railway frog. Both benefited the railroad industry.

A gifted engineer, Westinghouse took out 361 patents and founded 60 companies that employed more than 50,000 people. His successes included Westinghouse Electric, Westinghouse Air Brake, Union Switch & Signal plus the forerunners of Duquesne Light, Equitable Gas and Rockwell International. All this from a man who spent three months at Union College before returning home to continue tinkering in his father’s factory.

Westinghouse also was an enlightened employer. He regularly visited the floors of his factories and gave his employees half-day holidays on Saturdays and disability pay.  

— Marylynne Pitz 

1987: “Dr. Bruce Dixon: a physical healer, medical teacher and public health protector”

“People will remember Bruce [Dixon] as a dedicated public servant who provided very important medical expertise and never sought any… personal recognition and had no agenda of his own. His dedication combined with his medical knowledge and expertise were used to improve the quality of life and provide increased health safety for all of Allegheny County,” Cyril H. Wecht, the former county coroner and renowned forensic pathologist who knew Dr. Dixon for 40 years, said on the day of Dr. Dixon’s death this week.

Bruce W. Dixon died on Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2013. He was 74.

Dr. Dixon made it to the top of two professions: medicine and public health. He was a stellar diagnostician and a gifted professor as well as a dedicated leader and an exemplary manager of the Allegheny County Health Department.

After graduating from Wilkinsburg High School in 1956, Bruce W. Dixon entered Pitt and graduated from medical school in 1965.  He spent two years in the Air Force. And then for almost 10 years he worked and taught at the Duke University School of Medicine. In 1975, he returned home to Pittsburgh. 

In 1979, Dr. Dixon began his career in  public health when Pitt agreed that he could work one day a week at the Health Department’s Sexually Transmitted Disease clinic. His expertise and track record  earned him a title — Pittsburgh’s AIDS doctor; he was one of the few doctors who helped local AIDS-related organizations reach other members of the medical community. He was also a great source of information for the AIDS victims themselves.

Dr. Bruce Dixon’s life was stuffed into his left rear pocket, a Post-Gazette reporter wrote in 1987. “On any given day there will be 30 to 50 yellow phone message slips jammed into it, each one urging his response. In between lectures and patients, he would get in a phone call or two.”

He was quite a character. Notorious for his gray Hush Puppies, sophisticated sense of humor and his monogrammed ties, Dr. Dixon lived in a 22-room former Schwab mansion in North Braddock, which he bought in 1982. The restoration of the more-than-a-hundred-years-old house was somewhat of a hobby for Dr. Dixon. He did nearly all of the stripping, sanding, painting and wallpapering himself.

Dr. Dixon was a man of many talents. Yet most of them were hidden. According to the Post-Gazette, “few of his colleagues knew that he was an accomplished pipe organ player, and fewer still knew he was an avid butterfly collector.”

But hobbies aside, Dr. Dixon’s work was his life. He once said, “My vocation is simply my a-vocation,” and then added, “If you enjoy what you’re doing, I don’t think you have the need to get away.”

— Mila Sanina  

April 30, 1949: “Oakland district as viewed from the Post-Gazette helicopter”

Our first reaction upon seeing this image was one of awe. It’s certainly a stunning picture. Then we chuckled as we read the caption: “This unusual view of the Oakland district landmarks was taken from the Post-Gazette helicopter.”

The Post-Gazette helicopter? Hmmm. Earlier generations of photographers had all the fun.

It’s our good fortune the PG took flight on occasion, if only to provide us with this document of life in Oakland in the late 1940s. Automobiles are parked sardine-like in what is now Schenley Plaza,  streetcars mix with automobiles along Forbes Avenue, baseball fans pack Forbes Field and the J&L steel mill roils in the distance. We can’t see the mill because of the smoke, which of course betrays the mill’s presence.

Our files contain several aerial pictures of Oakland. We’re posting three. What struck us about these images is the dramatic change brought about by construction of the 42-story Cathedral of Learning.

In the earliest image, which we suspect was made shortly before Cathedral construction began in 1926, Oakland appears as a collection of stately university buildings encroaching on an area that had only a short time before been mostly rural. The Cathedral would be built on the irregular tract of land in the foreground. In the top left portion of the image, we detect evidence of the construction of Pitt Stadium. 

The third image dates from the late 1920s or early ’30s. The Cathedral is incomplete, but we can begin to see how it will soon come to dominate and define the area. In the distance puff the furnaces of the J&L mill, which straddles the Monongahela River. By 1949, the Cathedral towered in all its gothic glory. Today we view this bold structure as an essential part of our city, but its original design met with great resistance within the community. Many felt it was simply too tall.

Oakland has experienced quite a bit of change since ‘49. Gone are Forbes Field and the mill. The parking lot is a park. Our hope is to some day show you these changes. We’ve requested that the editors of the PG establish a helicopter acquisition fund. We’re awaiting a response.

— Steve Mellon

April 26, 1941: “Shame at East Liberty’s infamous Bachelors’ Club”

Long before Las Vegas appeared in the Nevada desert or the Rivers Casino opened on the city’s North Side, Pittsburghers flocked to private clubs. That was back in the day when state law required regular bars to close at midnight.

At that hour, the night remained young for politicians, lawyers, doctors and businessmen who gathered at  The Bachelors’ Club, an East Liberty spot in the 6300 block of Penn Avenue. Starting in the 1930s and for roughly 20 years, this smoky, swanky retreat offered choice eats, premium liquor, dancing to the the music of live bands and roulette wheels that ticked faster than department store registers. Dice and poker games continued into the wee hours. Some club rooms were furnished with paneling and decorative objects from the razed East End mansion once occupied by Richard Beatty Mellon. In the 1930s, the club’s annual income was as high as $71,390.

In April of 1941, as a raucous Friday night slid into Saturday morning, the seven-piece orchestra stopped playing. At 1:20 a.m., state police swung sledges and crowbars to batter down the club’s six steel doors at the building’s front and back entrances. 

Inside the club’s second floor rooms, police arrested patrons, including a city police magistrate named Frank T. Halloran, who insisted that he had just dropped in for a cup of coffee and a cheese sandwich. The crowd, newspapers reported, consisted of 40 smartly dressed women and more than 85 well-known men. 

Police took the women’s names, then released them. The men were fingerprinted on site, a process that lasted six hours.

The club had lacked a liquor license since 1939 but that hadn’t stopped the party because booze was given away for free, a violation of state law.  During the 1941 gambling raid, police seized $1,500 worth of choice liquor, bingo equipment, poker chips and two slot machines. 

In February of 1942, the club applied for a new corporate charter, calling itself the EEEE club. That stood for Entertainment, Eating, Ease and Enjoyment. Early in 1943, the German American Musical Club moved from its Jane Street headquarters on the South Side into the Bachelors’ Club spacious club rooms. 

Perhaps there was singing at the bar but gambling, dancing, drinking and smooching continued until some time in the 1950s, when the last call finally came for those wild and crazy bachelors and the club closed.

— Marylynne Pitz 

1904: “Heinz house is brought by boat to Pittsburgh”

What’s the quintessential image of Pittsburgh’s past? Well, for most of the world it’s a picture of massive machinery, angry flames, billowing smoke and, dwarfed by it all, a man — the steelworker.

The news yesterday that Heinz is being sold reminds us, however, that the image could easily be that of a bright and spotless factory, an assembly line of stainless steel and white-capped women — food workers at the H.J. Heinz Co.

Heinz and his company revolutionized the way food was produced and marketed. Heinz gave us “57 varieties” and taught us that food produced in a factory could be not only edible and safe, but tasty. 

The Heinz story begins in the 1850s in Sharpsburg, where H.J. Heinz famously started his career as a boy selling horseradish. After a few decades of success and then a painful bankruptcy, he launched the F. and J. Heinz Co., which was later renamed H.J. Heinz Co.

We found in our files a picture of the house where H.J. Heinz founded his company being floated down the Allegheny River in 1904. The structure was moved from its original location in Sharpsburg to the site of the Heinz factories here in Pittsburgh. Don’t go looking for the house — it’s now at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Mich.

By all accounts, Heinz was a man of great flair and salesmanship. He gave away pickle pins and wore a marvelous set of mutton chops. Folks knew him as the Pickle King, and he was cut from different cloth than other industrial kings of the time, men like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, who often seemed ruthless.

Heinz lobbied for laws to regulate the food industry, and his North Side factory was designed to be a healthy, pleasing place to work. It offered a restaurant, a rooftop garden, a gymnasium, an emergency hospital and self-improvement classes. When it opened in 1898, he offered tours. Thousands visited the facility each year.

The Heinz factory buildings remain, but the company no longer makes products in Pittsburgh. Still, we have the Heinz corporate headquarters, Heinz Field with its ketchup bottle scoreboard, Heinz Hall, Heinz Chapel, the Heinz Endowments and that wonderful old lighted Heinz sign atop the Heinz History Center.

We’re a steel town, certainly, but, man, the pickle is king.

— Steve Mellon

“Mary Leonard retires from the Post-Gazette”

These photographs capture Mary Leonard at three stages of a remarkable career in journalism, from her cub reporter days to her triumphal turn as deputy managing editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Mary retires today, but as these pictures show, she has a timeless air to her and the contributions she has made to those she’s covered, edited and mentored have no expiration date. 

Those of a tender age will surely not recognize the implement to Mary’s right in the third photograph. It is an instrument known as a typewriter, and for a century, marvelous stories were produced on it. (Mary will remember that occasionally it was used as a weapon, flung at offending colleagues and occasionally out a newsroom window. There is no evidence Mary did either.)

The main photograph in the center captures Mary in her Boston Globe glory, as deputy bureau chief to a tyrant whose name has thankfully been forgotten by history. He hired Mary to help run the bureau, probably the only achievement to his record. In any case, she won the loyalty and respect of a group of journalists who thought they didn’t need any editing and then came to realize that they couldn’t survive without her light but magical touch.

Finally, she fulfilled her lifetime ambition, gave voice to her inner yinzer and moved to Pittsburgh. The woman who once held the conviction that the computer was the greatest time-waster ever contrived by the human mind became a master and then a missionary for all things digital. Along the way she won the allegiance, friendship and loyalty of scores of colleagues. She will continue serve as a PG consultant. You can still reach her at mleonard@post-gazette.com, but she will not consider it a favor if you call to complain about Cofax.

Mary was one of the early and key advocates for “The Digs,” without her support we wouldn’t be sharing these photographs with our readers.

—Mary’s Fan Club

1907: “Women working in a Pittsburgh cigar factory, by Lewis Hine.”

We like to think of our city as one of America’s most livable places. It’s clean, it’s safe, and it offers stunning views of itself. The pictures we’re posting today show Pittsburgh and the region when they were something else entirely.  They depict a place that, for many, embodied everything that was wrong with modern industrial society.

The pictures were made by Lewis Hine, who came here in 1907 as part of the Pittsburgh Survey, a massive sociological study of life in a prototypical industrial city. We found these four large Hine prints in a file labeled “Photography.” Years ago the prints were folded so they would fit into an envelope. They bear the scars of this treatment.

Still, the prints speak eloquently of a time when life in industrial towns and cities was difficult and dangerous. Steel workers labored 12 hours a day, seven days a week, with one day off every two weeks. At work, they could be killed or maimed in countless ways. In the Homestead mill, there were no old workers.

Wives of these men raised families in squalid dwellings described in the survey as “unsightly and unsanitary.” The overcrowded wards nearest the mills stunk of industry and outdoor privies. Nearly 40 percent of deaths in Homestead resulted from diseases like pneumonia, tuberculosis, cholera and “convulsions.”

McClure’s Magazine in 1894 described Homestead this way: “Everywhere the yellow mud of the street lay kneaded into a sticky mass, through which groups of pale, lean men slouched in faded garments, grimy with the soot and grease of the mills.”

Hine created photographs that at once documented dehumanizing conditions and preserved his subject’s dignity. Of the four prints we found in our files, two were produced as part of the Pittsburgh Survey. One shows Russian steel workers in Homestead; another depicts women employed in a Pittsburgh cigar factory. An artfully executed photograph of a powerhouse mechanic was made in 1920. The exact site of this picture is unknown, though Hine was working in Pennsylvania at the time, and it’s a scene that could have been found in any large Pittsburgh industrial facility.

Perhaps most moving is the photograph of boys employed at a South Pittston coal mine in 1911. Of the approximately 50 boys in the frame, only three can be described as smiling.

— Steve Mellon

1970s, 1980s —  ”Steelers Fans high on their football team”

Steelers fans always have been a colorful bunch. 

In 1980, Jerry McNeely, the executive producer of ”Fighting Back,” a made-for-TV movie about Rocky Bleier of the Steelers, admired the passion and zeal of Steelers fans saying, “These people… well, their enthusiasm is something to behold.”  

A Hollywood wardrobe department would have been hard-pressed to recreate the variety of black and gold costumes, tassel caps, scarves, jackets, T-shirts, banners, and the hand-lettered Terrible Towel, as shown in these photographs from the Post-Gazette’s archives from the ’70s and ’80s. 

They wore Franco’s Italian Army helmets, wrote ‘Steelers #1’ on their cars and organized fan clubs: Bradshaw’s Brigade, Lambert’s Lunatics, Gerela’s Gorillas and Shell’s Bombers. They were the first generation of the  Steeler Nation (the name coined in 1975 to refer to the Steelers fan base).

In January 1975, Steelers fan Pat Savage and six of his pals (second photo on the right) followed the team to New Orleans for Super Bowl IX. They didn’t have tickets. Their conveyance was a converted black and gold ‘61 Conestoga. They called themselves ‘The Savage Crew.’

“The van was a moving testament to their heroes. Insignia of helmets, hails and numbers (Bradshaw’s  No. 12 was up front) tattooed the black and gold shell. Inside were curtains, converted seats from a Corvair and Chevy pickup, bedrolls, blankets, mattresses, pretzels, chips and liquid refreshment,” The Pittsburgh Press reported. 

In the article Pat Savage confessed: “I’m a fanatic and I admit it. There is no way they’ll lose on Sunday.” And they didn’t. The Steelers won their first Super Bowl defeating the Minnesota Vikings, 16-6.

And although the Steelers didn’t make it to the Super Bowl in 2013, Steelermania lives on. 

— Mila Sanina  

Circa 1930: “Gridlock on the nation’s most expensive road”

Famous American streets include Broadway in New York City, Chicago’s fashionable Michigan Avenue, Nevada’s long strip of casinos on Las Vegas Boulevard and California’s Sunset Boulevard. 

As part of his Pittsburgh Plan of 1911, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. designed the Boulevard of the Allies. The new roadway linked Downtown with Oakland and was dedicated on Veteran’s Day in 1922. Its name honors the allies who supported the United States in defeating Germany during World War I. 

When it was built during the 1920s, the boulevard was the most expensive road in the history of the world because each mile cost $1.6 million. Pittsburgh Mayor Edward Vose Babcock dismissed warnings about the potential dangers of constructing a highway on a hillside called the Duquesne Bluff.

“It is anchored in the bedrock of the hill and it will be as immutable as the hills themselves, and as permanent,” Mayor Babcock insisted. Time, erosion, weather and progress would conspire to prove him wrong.

At first, Model Ts clogged the boulevard at rush hour. Later, cars with rounder, sleeker bodies flew across Grant Street and up the ramp that still offers a fine view of the Monongahela River and the city’s South Side. 

More than 30 years after Mayor Babcock’s remark, construction of the Parkway East and erosion weakened the road, turning its underbelly into a boulevard of broken rocks. In the mid-1950s, tens of thousands of tons of earth were excavated from the hill’s base so the state could build the Parkway East, located below the boulevard.

On April 27, 1978, an early morning landslide sent 500 cubic yards of shale and sandstone tumbling onto the Parkway East, injuring a motorist. Seven years later, in March of 1985, the state Department of Transportation announced it would spend $2 million to shore up the boulevard’s structural stability. That work was done to prevent more rocks and earth from falling onto the Parkway East. 

Despite the difficulties in maintaining the highway, it still evokes an era suffused with patriotism. Flanking the boulevard at Grant Street are two fluted granite memorial columns topped by American eagles clasping a globe. A figure of Liberty, chiseled into each pedestal, is surrounded by flags, eagle wings, the oak, the laurel and the eternal flame. Frank Vittor, a prolific local sculptor, created the columns.

To see how the boulevard has changed, go to the PG’s Pittsburgh Then and Now page. And you can examine details of the boulevard in its early days at our Zoom page.

— Marylynne Pitz