PART I

_The Down Town District_

[Sidenote:

The Main Arteries]

The down town district is substantially that part of the city known as the Point District. It is bounded by the two rivers and by the steep hills to the eastward, and within this section of the city, as elsewhere, the basic problem is that of the means of transportation--specifically the problem of the street plan. There is a daily circulation of inward and outward travel to be borne by a limited number of main arteries, of which those leading to most of the tributary districts are bridges. It is clear that the bridges can be enlarged or increased in number at any time when the volume of travel justifies the expense of reconstruction.

Considering the fact that Pittsburgh is a world capital in the steel bridge industry, that its busiest quarters are sundered by three of the world's big rivers, and that it is traversed in every direction by ravines which demand the construction of mighty viaducts, it is a striking and rather shameful thing that it does not possess a single bridge over its rivers that is notable among the bridges of the world either for its beauty, for its perfect engineering adaptation to its purpose, for its size, strength or amplitude. In fact the bridges of Pittsburgh, compared with those of other great cities, are rather unusually limited in capacity and lacking in the qualities of impressiveness and beauty.

It is a case of the cobbler's children going barefoot: when a man sells shoes at wholesale in every quarter of the globe, it is time for his own family to be well shod. Pittsburgh can afford to have, and owes it to herself to have, the very best of bridges. No time or pains or reasonable expense should be spared in planning future bridges, whether they be on new locations or to replace existing structures, to get the best designs that the highest engineering skill combined with the highest artistic ability can produce. Bridge-builders everywhere should be enabled to think of Pittsburgh not merely as a source of cheap raw material for bridges, but as an all-round leader in the bridge-building art.

To the eastward, where the most active growth of the city has been taking place, the arteries consist not of bridges over open rivers, but of streets, very limited in number by reason of the form of the land, and so situated that the cost of securing greater capacity will increase by leaps and bounds with the rise of land values and the erection of new structures. The first step in planning improvements for the heart of the city must therefore be to consider the possibilities for improvement in the eastward arteries.

[Sidenote:

Eastward Arteries and Their Improvement]

There are only three places where such arteries could ever have been laid out, even if the wisest foresight had been exercised in the early planning of the city when all was free and open. These three places are around the north edge of the hills along the Allegheny, around the south edge of the hills along the Monongahela, and through the gap in the hills followed by Fifth Avenue and Forbes Street.

The northerly route is followed by Penn and Liberty Avenues, by the Pennsylvania Railroad, and by Grant Boulevard clinging to the hillside above the railroad. The space between Penn Avenue and the river is largely occupied by railroads and by business dependent upon the railroads, and there seems to be no possibility of opening any new line for relief, except in so far as a subway might reduce the number of people inconvenienced by delays on the surface. On account of its gradients and of the districts toward which it leads at both ends, the usefulness of Grant Boulevard seems likely to remain confined to light passenger traffic, chiefly automobiles. In any case all the teaming and surface traffic of a very large region must be carried through the throat on the lower level. It is important also to note that the only street which passes through the down town district with more than village dimensions--eighty-foot Liberty Avenue--leads directly to this throat and then chokes down to a fifty-foot street.

It may safely be said that increased capacity for east and west general traffic north of the hills can be secured only by a radical widening of Liberty Avenue or Penn Avenue. Upon the whole the latter seems the more advantageous route. On the score of cost there seems to be but little choice; on the score of value in the result Penn Avenue is the better. To have one side of such an important avenue flanked by a railroad to the exclusion of general business frontage would make it less agreeable as a thoroughfare and less productive as a real estate proposition. On the other hand if Penn Avenue is widened the narrow portion of Liberty, above Eleventh Street and next the railroad, will be important almost solely for local purposes; warehouses or factories could be erected extending through from the principal, or Penn Avenue, frontage to Liberty Avenue, and could be provided with sidings from the railroad passing over Liberty.

Further details as to this suggested widening of Penn Avenue and its connections eastward are given, along with other highway improvements, in Part II of this report. But considering here only its relation to the down town district, this widening will undoubtedly throw increased emphasis upon Penn and Liberty Avenues as traffic lines within this district; and it is obvious that a good cross-connection should be provided so that eastbound traffic coming from Liberty Avenue and from Grant Street, as well as from Penn Avenue, can freely reach the widened portion of the latter. A traffic square at the angle in front of the Union Station, where the broad part of Liberty Avenue ends and the narrow part begins, would furnish the desired connection. Fortunately such a square can now be formed with the destruction of but few buildings and those of relatively little cost.[2]

The street along the Monongahela--Second Avenue--although it might have been made of great importance and value by proper planning at the start, cannot at the present time be greatly widened without the most serious difficulties. For much of its length it is pinched between railroads and industrial plants. It does not lead eastward into any district comparable in population or importance with those tapped by Penn and Liberty Avenues, and its connection westward through the Point District is narrow, difficult to widen, and relatively unimportant. For these reasons Second Avenue, although it must be recognized as a main thoroughfare and should be improved as much as practicable, especially as far east as the Tenth Street bridge, is not of such first-class importance as to demand radical enlargement in spite of all obstacles.

The only remaining natural outlet to the east is that occupied by Fifth Avenue and Forbes Street and the block between them. Neither street is wide enough for the traffic it will be called upon to bear, but the widening of Fifth Avenue would be so costly as to be almost out of the question. For many reasons, discussed in detail in Part II, the widening of Forbes Street into an ample main thoroughfare seems to be the best solution of the problem here presented.

The importance of this route and of its future traffic burden will be better realized when it is understood that at Soho a direct extension can be made, on easy gradients, from the widened Forbes Street to Fifth Avenue, the street which can more easily be widened beyond that point; and further, that, a little to the east, a new and greatly needed street might branch off to the right from Forbes Street where the latter turns inland. This new street would continue along the side hill above the river, and would provide the only possible convenient outlet from the down town district to all the upland regions south and southwest of Squirrel Hill. Thus the western portion of Forbes Street, when widened, would carry the great bulk of all future street traffic between the down town district and the whole district from East Liberty to the Monongahela River as well as all the country east and southeast of that triangle.

[Sidenote:

A New Traffic Center]

The intersection of Forbes Street, widened, with Sixth Avenue, extended, is likely to become a traffic center of the utmost consequence to Pittsburgh. The importance of the Forbes Street route to the eastward has been indicated above; Sixth Avenue, crossing Fifth Avenue and Grant Street, leads toward the Union Station and toward all the northeast part of the business district, and to the North Side bridges; a new bridge and tunnel are quite likely to lead from this very intersection to the South Side and the South Hills; from this center a good connection is readily obtainable with Fourth, Third, and Second Avenues and with the southern water front; and Diamond Street can be widened at moderate expense so as to continue Forbes Street right through the heart of the business district.

[Sidenote:

Sixth Avenue]

The importance of Sixth Avenue between Forbes and Grant Streets has been pointed out. It is the natural route from the Union Station and the adjacent freight yards and from all the Allegheny bridges to the districts fed by Fifth Avenue, Forbes Street, the proposed South Hills bridge, and Second Avenue. It ought to be widened to the dimensions of a main thoroughfare, and its grade ought to be lessened. Its stream of travel splits at Grant Street, a portion turning to the left into the other part of Sixth Avenue, and a portion turning to the right along Grant Street to Liberty Avenue and the freight yards. The latter obviously is a very important line, and the off-set which makes at Seventh Avenue is so serious that the corner ought to be cut.

[Sidenote:

Try Street Grade Crossing]

The elimination of the grade crossing of Second Avenue with the Panhandle Road at Try Street is a pressing improvement. The avenue now descends toward the railroad from both directions, and the best plan appears to be to carry it over the tracks. In this way Second Avenue would connect directly (through the west side of the Civic Center) with Forbes Street; with Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Avenues, and so with the Union Station and the Allegheny Valley; with the main or upper deck of the South Hills bridge rising across the river to the proposed tunnel; and with the suggested lower deck of that bridge leading to the South Side. In order to secure a good gradient, the westerly approach of Second Avenue should start from Grant Street, rising on an incline or viaduct through the so-called park and the street on one side of it, in order to pass over Ross Street. In this way there would be no interference with the teaming through Ross Street to the Baltimore and Ohio freight yards.

[Sidenote:

Second Avenue Freight Yards]

Mention should here be made of a plan, which it is understood is already being considered, to develop the area between Second Avenue and the river, from Try Street to the Tenth Street bridge, for freight purposes. Even now the connections from this region to the Tenth Street and Smithfield Street bridges, and, via First and Second Avenues, to the whole Point District, are good. But the street changes proposed in connection with the traffic center at Sixth Avenue and Forbes Street will provide greatly improved connections directly to the Point District, the East End and the South Hills. First Avenue and Water Street would enter the freight yard underneath the Panhandle and the proposed Baltimore and Ohio local tracks; and if Second Avenue is raised to go over the Panhandle tracks, as recommended above, direct entrances can be secured to the second or third floor of a freight house with car elevators such as those at St. Louis. On the whole this seems like a good place for a large distributing freight station.

[Sidenote:

The "Hump Cut"]

The Sixth Avenue improvement, and others in the vicinity, are bound up with the question of the "Hump Cut." Pushing to one side all differences of opinion as to the _local_ effect of the proposed cut,--its influence on land values, and the share of the cost which ought to be borne by abutters,--the fact stands out that the City as a whole needs the improvement in order to clear an obstruction from some of its most important general highways. Another fact, seen clearly from this larger point of view, is that the essential matter is to secure a radical reduction of the maximum gradients on the three great thoroughfare lines, Sixth Avenue, Fifth Avenue, and Diamond Street, even though the minor streets on the margins of the Hump be skimped. Detailed recommendations, as to gradients, etc., are discussed in Part V and are embodied in the accompanying plans and profiles.

[Sidenote:

Grant Boulevard Extension]

Only one other thoroughfare problem is involved with the "Hump Cut," that of Grant Boulevard extension. Since the grade of Webster Avenue will be considerably lowered in connection with the "Hump Cut," and the buildings along its lower end greatly damaged in any case, by far the best plan for Grant Boulevard is to carry it straight through to Webster Avenue and to widen the lower end of the latter to 60 feet, as far as Grant Street. The widening of Oliver Avenue to 50 feet between Grant and Smithfield Streets, and the possible widening of Strawberry Way, would, together with existing streets, provide adequate means of distribution for the large number of automobiles using the boulevard, and would at the same time create a decided local improvement.

[Sidenote:

A Civic Center]

The location of a Civic Center, where the city offices can be grouped in a convenient and dignified manner, ought to connect with the main transportation lines. It ought, if possible, to embrace the county buildings. It ought, if possible, to occupy land which is not of such high cost as to preclude the setting apart of the open space which is requisite to the highest dignity and beauty of public buildings. All these advantages are embraced to a high degree in a locality now so unpromising and unattractive that it is hard not to feel an unfair prejudice against it.

The locality in question lies to the east and southeast of the present county buildings. It embraces a bit of low ground occupied by the little Panhandle station and local freight yard, surrounded, except for the county buildings, by vacant lands and cheap buildings at various higher levels, mounting on the east to the commanding ridge that dominates all this part of the city. Through this locality the Forbes and Diamond Street thoroughfare and the South Hills and Sixth Avenue thoroughfare will pass. Fifth Avenue borders it on the north, and Second Avenue on the south. It is flanked on the northwest by the noble and distinguished architecture of the court house and the jail--masterpieces of Richardson, priceless examples of the work of one of the few great artists America has yet produced. To the west a new county building is about to be erected. It is proposed that the central area of low ground, occupied by the railroad, be decked over at about the level of Fifth Avenue, and that a great public square with gardens be laid out thereon somewhat after the manner of the celebrated public gardens built over the railroad at Princes Street, Edinburgh, or, in a much smaller way, at Park Avenue, New York. Below the structure would simply be a first class station and freight sheds of permanent construction, with skylights and ventilators, at suitable locations, piercing a flat roof of adequate strength. The cost of construction would be less than the cost of an equal area of land independently acquired for an open space in connection with a Civic Center in any other locality that could reasonably be considered.

Along the east side of this square or garden, in the form of a gradually rising terrace, would run the approach to the new South Hills bridge ascending gently from Forbes Street; and on the east side of this again, as though terraced on the hillside, would be the principal municipal building culminating in a tower which would spring from the highest level at Bluff Street, where the playground of the Holy Ghost College could be utilized as a park. The group enclosing the square would be completed by another building at the north with frontage on Forbes Street, Fifth Avenue, and Sixth Avenue, and by a low building on the south serving to screen the factories and freight yards south of Second Avenue but leaving open the view of the opposite hills. The plan and the sketch perspectives indicate in a general way the sort of architectural development for which the situation appears to call. The pronounced and unsymmetrical differences in elevation, the slanting grade of the approach to the great South Hills bridge, the irregular and picturesque form of the site and of the existing county buildings, all seem to demand a certain informality and picturesqueness of design. These peculiarities of the site ought to be welcomed because they are eminently characteristic of the city and of the mountainous region in which it is set. Throughout the city and its surroundings the one preëminent quality of an agreeable sort is the bold picturesqueness of the landscape--the deep ravines, the lofty hills, the precipitous declivities, the plunging prospects from hilltops into the river valleys--and a similar quality of forcefulness, activity, and bold, irregular adaptation of means to ends, is to be felt in all the more dominant and impressive works of man in the city--the steel works, the bridges and viaducts, the jagged sky-line of office buildings. To build a City Hall and Civic Center of scholastic formality, appropriate in the placid surroundings of Paris, would be to lose a great esthetic opportunity.

[Sidenote:

Diamond Street Widening]

It would be difficult to overestimate the value, to the future convenience prosperity and business efficiency of the city, of carrying the Forbes Street improvement straight through to a junction with Liberty Avenue on the line of Diamond Street; and it is deemed a peculiarly fortunate thing that this is the only east and west line in the midst of the business district where a wide street can still be put through without destroying any considerable number of costly modern buildings.

When Diamond Alley was widened, in part, from 20 feet to 50 feet, not long ago, the improvement was of much importance because it added one more street large enough for general business in a locality where there was a great demand for business frontage, and where the original lots were of very excessive depth. But the improvement was a distinctly local one and contributed little or nothing to the solution of the general traffic problem. But the peculiar relation of Diamond Street to the general system of main traffic lines demands a much more courageous action for the benefit of the whole city. In connection with the widening of Forbes Street, it should be converted into a thoroughfare at least equal in width to Liberty Avenue. A glance at the map shows the convenient and equitable location of Diamond Street, and its importance as a thoroughfare to supplement Liberty Avenue in handling the traffic of the Point District.

[Sidenote:

Market Street Widening]

Coming, as it does, directly opposite the Sixth Street bridge, Market Street ought to be a very important cross-town connection; and because the buildings are generally small and old, and most of the lots are so deep as not to be seriously injured by curtailment, a widening is suggested throughout its length.

The widening of Diamond and Market Streets makes clear that the Diamond Square Market site should not be occupied in any way that would perpetuate the obstruction offered by the present use of the square to through travel. The need is not for a mere mitigation or slight improvement of the present conditions by opening little archways through a new building on the Market site, but for a radical and effective clearance. The space was originally set apart as an open public square, and the complete occupation of it by revenue-producing buildings was a diversion of the square from its original purpose--an act in general accordance with the unfortunately short-sighted policy which has done much to bring about the notably congested conditions prevailing in the city today.

[Sidenote:

The Market]

It may be necessary to provide elsewhere for the Market, and a site is suggested in the block between Third and Fourth Streets on Liberty Avenue, having the great advantage of rail connections. On account of the character of the surrounding country, an exceptionally large proportion of market supplies comes to Pittsburgh by rail and must continue to do so. It is highly uneconomical, and adds needlessly and considerably to the congestion of the streets, to unload the market supplies from the railroad a full mile away (as is now done) and to then haul them by team through the heart of the retail district.[3]

Within the interior of the Point District, Diamond and Market Streets widened, supplemented by the existing Liberty Avenue, appear to be the only thoroughfares of Metropolitan dimensions which it is reasonable to provide for. But around the borders of the district there is much that ought to be done.

[Sidenote:

The Water Front]

In its water front Pittsburgh has a great public asset which now lies undeveloped both from the point of view of transportation and from that of recreation and civic beauty.

As a transportation factor, its primary use is for the transshipment of water-born commodities. As discussed elsewhere,[4] the actual amount of river freight is at present relatively small; but it is potentially important, and one of the reasons for its lack of growth is the neglect of Pittsburgh and other river ports to provide for the quick, convenient, and economical handling of river-born traffic at the public wharf.

At river ports throughout the world, the first primitive step, beyond the mere dumping of stuff and passengers on the natural shelving bank or river bed of mud or gravel, is the paving of the slope, as at Pittsburgh, still leaving the goods to be dragged up and down the bank by main force. But among the live modern river cities of Europe, wherever a real water competition with rail service has been desired, even though such competition be limited in its range, the day of the primitive or mud-bank type of shore has long gone by; and the public wharf has been reconstructed into one of the many well-recognized types of commercial embankment providing an up-to-date equipment for handling freight, and decent, attractive conditions for passengers. This development of the public wharf properties in Europe has kept pace with the activities of the railroads, making for the steady and intelligent improvement of terminal facilities. Indeed in many European river ports the improvement of the water terminals has rather forced the pace for the railroads.

In contrast to this active aggressive spirit, Pittsburgh, like most American river towns, where she has not actually turned her water front over bodily to the railroads, has left it in a most inefficient primitive condition.

But the value of Pittsburgh's water front lies not merely in its use as a wharf, however much improved. Another use, shown by the varied experiences of other river cities, is that, in a commercial water front on modern lines, there is generally opportunity for a wide marginal thoroughfare for the relief of traffic congestion in the adjacent streets. Sometimes such a water-front thoroughfare becomes a busy avenue of retail trade and general travel; but more usually its peculiar value lies in diverting some of the main streams of heavy teaming from the older interior streets where the retail trade and office business tend to concentrate, and where the passenger travel is most dense. Especially with an isolated and limited business district like that of Pittsburgh, made up almost wholly of narrow streets and connected with the rest of the city by a series of bridges and of bridge-like gaps in the hills which wall it in, it becomes of the utmost importance to secure the formation of a wide circuit street connecting these outlets together, so that not all the travel is forced to filter slowly through the midst of the business district.

A third undeveloped asset of the Pittsburgh water front is its value for recreation and as an element of civic comeliness and self-respect. One of the deplorable consequences of the short-sighted and wasteful commercialism of the later nineteenth century lay in its disregard of what might have been the esthetic by-products of economic improvement; in the false impression spread abroad that economical and useful things were normally ugly; and in the vicious idea which followed, that beauty and the higher pleasures of civilized life were to be sought only in things otherwise useless. Thus the pursuit of beauty was confounded with extravagance.

Among the most significant illustrations of the fallacy of such ideas are the comeliness and the incidental recreation value which attach to many of the commercial water fronts of European river ports, and it is along such lines that Pittsburgh still has opportunity for redeeming the sordid aspect of its business center.

Wherever in the world, as an incident of the highways and wharves along its riverbanks, a city has provided opportunity for the people to walk and sit under pleasant conditions where they can watch the water and the life upon it, where they can enjoy the breadth of outlook and the sight of the open sky and the opposite bank and the reflections in the stream, the result has added to the comeliness of the city itself, the health and happiness of the people and their loyalty and local pride. This has been true in the case of a bare, paved promenade, running along like an elevated railroad over the sheds and tracks and derricks of a busy ocean port, as at Antwerp; in the case of a tree-shaded sidewalk along a commercial street with the river quays below it, as at Paris and Lyons and hundreds of lesser cities; and in the case of a broad embankment garden won from the mud-banks by dredging and filling, as at London. Pittsburgh has an unusual opportunity to secure this incidental value for recreation in the treatment of its river front. Immediately across the Monongahela are the high and rugged hillsides of Mt. Washington and Duquesne Heights, and below these are the lesser but still striking hills along the Ohio River from the West End to McKees Rocks. The outlook over the river with its varied activities to these hills immediately beyond, would be notable in any part of the world. Furthermore, the rivers and the hills are the two big fundamental natural elements characteristic of the Pittsburgh District. Thus, any provision close to the heart of the city, whereby the people can have the enjoyment of these mighty landscapes, is of peculiar importance.

It does not diminish the essential grandeur of the situation that the river swarms with barges and steamers; that it is spanned by busy bridges; that the flat lands along the rivers are crowded with railroads, buildings and smoking factories; and that the hillsides are crowned with houses. It is a spacious and impressive landscape in any case. But for the people to get the good of it two things are needful. A locally agreeable place must be provided from which the scene can be enjoyed; and the landscape must be treated with the respect which it deserves, by the elimination of certain features which are merely indicative of neglect, waste, and abuse, and which have no economic justification. Especially is it desirable that the precipitous hillside rising to Mt. Washington, now largely an unfruitful waste, a place of raw gulleys and slides mingled with some painful advertising signs, should be treated with respect as a vital part of the great landscape of the city. It should be protected from defacement and its earthy portions should be reclothed with the beauty of foliage.

The accompanying illustrations are suggestive of the sort of thing which might be done by Pittsburgh with its remaining public water front, and in time, let us hope, with portions of the water front which have passed into private hands. But the actual details of the treatment to be adopted can be properly worked out only in connection with the comprehensive plans for flood protection with which the Flood Commission is now grappling.

The great majority of river cities which have undertaken modern improvements on their water fronts have had to deal with more or less serious flood problems, and the complex and varying conditions of each river have had an important influence on the design of the embankment. The technical problems involved in the control of rivers are among the most complex and baffling with which the engineering profession has to deal, and any attempt to forestall the investigations of the Flood Commission, by definite plans for permanent improvements on the water front, would be folly. Nevertheless, the experience of hundreds of cities and the work of thousands of engineers have developed certain types of treatment, one or more of which, with suitable local modifications, will pretty surely appear in the final solution of the Pittsburgh problem. Subject, therefore, to the conclusions of the Flood Commission, a satisfactory development of the Pittsburgh wharf may be expected to include the following features.

First, there should be an amply wide water-front street, presumably formed by extending Water Street and Duquesne Way over the upper part of the present sloping bank. Second, the outer sidewalk of this street should become at most points a tree-shaded promenade, of such width and with such equipment of benches and other features for public recreation as the circumstances permit, so arranged that the people using it will neither be in the way of the transportation activities nor be annoyed or endangered by them, and so designed that the people can enjoy to the full the natural beauty of the river valley and the always interesting activities of which it is the stage. Third, there should be next the water a commercial quay, substantially level, of adequate but not unnecessary width, and accessible from the streets by inclined roads of reasonable gradient, parallel with the river, in place of the present excessive slopes.

In the first typical section here given is shown one such arrangement. Here, the level of the promenade is such that its solid parapet rises above the maximum flood level. This is of a type adopted for rivers that are subject to occasional excessive floods, as at Pittsburgh. It assumes the embankment to be made water-tight; the sewers and drains to be provided with proper back-pressure gates, and the openings from the streets, through the promenade and its parapet to the commercial quay, to be arranged for prompt damming on the rise of the water above the danger level. Thus would the entire business district be protected from floods, not only on the surface but also in the basements. The quay shown on this section is supposed to be at a level just above ordinary navigable stages, and to be equipped with power cranes for direct loading and unloading between steamers or barges, tied up at the quay, and wagons upon it. Provision could also be made for a freight track running in alongside the cranes for transfer between cars and vessels (if thought desirable), in addition to the facilities provided on railroad property. Alongside the quay, floating landing-stages for packets and so forth, reached by gang-planks or bridges, would be provided as at present, but in a more decent and commodious style.

This section is of a type tested by practical experience and is clearly a great improvement upon the present primitive conditions. But it is open to two objections: first, that the quay is flooded at intervals, although so designed as to suffer no injury and to be put out of commission only when the river is practically closed to navigation by the height of the flood; and, second, that at low water, that is to say "pool full," it is not at the most convenient height.

An alternative section is therefore suggested, which has less precedent behind it, but which might prove better adapted to the Pittsburgh conditions. In this the fixed level of the commercial quay is replaced by a continuous landing stage formed of long floats or barges, of permanent construction, moored against the wall and free to rise and fall with the changing level of the river. The approaches to the floating quay for wagons would be, as in the case of the fixed quay, by descending inclines parallel with the river just outside the main wall; but in this case the roadway would be formed by a line of barges which would rest on a fixed incline during low water. The rising water would lift the barges off the incline successively, beginning with the lowest, so that at all stages of the water they would maintain an uninterrupted roadway to the quay on a proper gradient. Successful precedents for such use of permanent floating quays, and of alternately floating and grounded driveways to the landing stage, are to be found in Italy and in the recent harbor developments at Manaos, Brazil.

A great advantage of the floating quay is that in this type of construction the bed of the river may be excavated to its full depth back to the face of the flood wall itself, and that the space necessary for the commercial quay is secured on the floating structure outside of this line without materially reducing the prism, or section, of the flood discharge. It would therefore be possible, with this design, to secure more ample width for street, for promenade, and for commercial quay, and at the same time have more space in the river for the passage of the floods.

Whatever may prove to be the best details of the river-front treatment, it is clear that it can and should provide an ample thoroughfare, a clean, pleasant, tree-shaded promenade, and a convenient, up-to-date wharf with easy access to and from the streets. There is no serious difficulty in providing for such an improvement from the junction of the two bridges at The Point to Ninth Street, on the Allegheny, and to Smithfield Street, on the Monongahela.

East of Smithfield Street the passenger station of the Baltimore & Ohio now blocks the way. But it is not unreasonable to expect that the main Baltimore & Ohio station will, before long, be moved to some point in Junction Hollow in order to avoid the long delay, to all through trains, caused by the run down to Smithfield Street and back again. The suburban business of the Baltimore & Ohio could then be turned in, parallel with the Panhandle tracks, to a new joint suburban station in connection with the important future center of traffic near the junction of Forbes and Diamond Streets with Sixth Avenue and the proposed South Hill bridge.

When the Baltimore & Ohio passenger station is removed from Smithfield Street it would be possible to continue the new water-front street and promenade east of Smithfield on a viaduct just outside of the present Water Street; this viaduct would rise over the Baltimore & Ohio freight yard and the grade entrances thereto at Grant and Ross Streets, and so connect along the line of the Panhandle (Try Street) with the proposed Second Avenue bridge over the railroad, and thence with Forbes Street and Sixth Avenue.

Any better connection than now exists from Ninth Street and Duquesne Way to Liberty Avenue would be so costly as to seem hardly worth while, although it would be a much-desired link in the circuit thoroughfare.

It is probably impossible for Pittsburghers, who are familiar with the present neglected aspect of the water front and are not familiar with the finer European quays, to form any conception of how fine a situation will be created for public or private buildings, especially on the southern water front when thus improved. If it were not so much to one side of the main streams of passenger travel, the river frontage between Smithfield and Ferry Streets would offer a most admirable site for public buildings in the down town district.

[Sidenote:

The Improvement of The Point]

At the opposite end of the business district from the proposed Civic Center is another spot where the civic pride of Pittsburgh should lead the City to make liberal expenditures for other than the economic ends which justify those Street improvements which are the main burden of this report.

At the end of The Point, where the two lines of water-front improvement would join, is a considerable area of public open space. Here is the spot where the Ohio River has its birth: here was built the fort which broke the peace of Europe and around which turned the frontier struggles of the war that gave America to the English speaking race. It is here that all the most inspiring associations of the city are chiefly concentrated. Poetically, this spot, at the meeting of the rivers, stands for Pittsburgh.

Because the eastward drift of the business center has followed the eastward drift of residences, and the growth of business has not yet expanded back to fill the void; and because The Point is left pocketed beyond the freight yards, and is visited only by the throngs who use the old Point bridge, it seems to be rather forgotten and disregarded by most Pittsburghers. But its historical and topographical significance can never be altered, and it is to be hoped that the City will rise to its opportunity and nobly form The Point into a great monument.

The North Point bridge is about to be rebuilt; the South Point bridge is very narrow and some day must be rebuilt in its own turn. In the placing of these bridges, in every feature of their design and of the design and decoration of their approaches, the monumental element ought always to control. The plan shown herewith in outline is an attempt to solve, in a dignified and monumental way, the obvious problems presented by the bridges and the means of approach to them. Whether just this plan or some better one be adopted, it is essential that the whole Point be regarded as one single monument, that no pains be spared in bringing the best artistic skill to bear in working out the details of the plan, and that the general plan, when thus worked out, shall really determine the construction of all the parts. At any time conditions may arise, as in regard to one of the bridges, for which the general plan does not exactly provide; but, if so, the plan should be adapted as a _whole_ to meet the new conditions, so that work may still proceed in accordance with a complete plan. Never can a single feature of The Point safely be designed independent of the rest, if worthy results are to be obtained. And what is true of this great monumental feature is true in large measure of all public improvements in relation to a comprehensive city plan.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] See Plan of the Down Town District.

[3] A general discussion of the Market problem is included in Part V.

[4] The City and the Allegheny River Bridges, Part V.