1914

Much water has run under the bridges of the Allegheny and the Monongahela rivers, since the sketch, "The Names of Pittsburgh Streets" was written, and changes as radical as those that took place between the first years of the Nineteenth Century and the early days of the twentieth, have revolutionized the historic "Point" in the last decade.

Just as the French and Indians stole down the river before the advance of Gen. Forbes and his British and Colonial troops in 1758, so did the denizens of the aforesaid "Point" melt away in every direction before the steam shovels, creaking derricks and snorting engines of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1904-05.

With the consolidation of Pittsburgh and Allegheny into one city came other changes. Some of the old streets whose names commemorated dead patriots associated with Colonial and Revolutionary Pittsburgh, are buried under embankments, concrete walls and brick warehouses. Other names have been dropped and certain etymological curiosities have been put in their places. Still others have been transferred to distant and irrelevant localities, and an old resident, returning from the world of shades would be sadly confused if looking for old landmarks, Fort Pitt and all pertaining to it, excepting only the Block House, vanished long ago. There is nothing left of the later age which saw "Rice's Castle" in its glory. The new industrialism is steadily and rapidly blotting out the picturesque and historic all around us. Let all good Pittsburghers unite to preserve the little that is left, the Redoubt built by Col. Bouquet in 1764.

Julia Morgan Harding.

1914.