CHARLES MULFORD ROBINSON
AUTHOR OF MODERN CIVIC ART, ETC.

In studying the civic improvement possibilities of Pittsburgh, one is impressed by a curious mingling of antagonistic conditions. A wonderful natural picturesqueness is contrasted with the utmost industrial defilement, smoke and grime and refuse pervading one of the finest city sites in the world. Similarly great wealth and great squalor are side by side. Nation-wide business is done on very narrow streets. A royal munificence in public benefaction goes with a niggardliness that as yet denies to many children a decent playspace. Immense private houses, with the amplest grounds to be found perhaps in any great city, abut on meanly proportioned streets. One is impressed first by the hugeness of the city and then by its lack of coherence. It has been built up as an aggregation of integers, mighty, resourceful, pushing; but lacking as yet in unity. That power, which is the keynote of the city, is not civic. It is not communal power but a dynamic individualism.

But still steep hillsides close with magnificent self-assertion the vistas of business streets, still the mighty rivers, polluted with refuse though they be, flow in great streams to meet at the "Point"; still from heights there are views of surpassing interest; and in the rolling country that encompasses the city with ravine and wooded slope, there still remain gentle loveliness and restfulness in impressive contrast with the throbbing industry of the town. Thus, in spite of itself, picturesqueness such as even Edinburgh, the "queen city of Europe," might envy is thrust upon Pittsburgh, and there is a surrounding beauty that Florence might covet.

In the midst of this strange mingling of opposites, of great opportunities and fearful handicaps, of vast needs and vast resources there appears the gradual stirring of a new ideal. A civic consciousness is awaking and that social conscience which has heretofore operated in individuals merely is becoming popularly active. At this wonderfully interesting juncture, the serious study of civic improvement in Pittsburgh is to be made. What Pittsburgh wants, what she has done and dreamed, what she must do, as a community, for her improvement,—these are the questions for the citizens of Greater Pittsburgh if "greater" is to have all its true significance.

In discussing them let us follow these most obvious divisions of the subject:

First, the congested business district of Pittsburgh proper, that is, the peninsula: its needs and its possibilities. Second, the slum district,—a band of varying width that, regardless of intervening rivers, surrounds the business section. Third, the manufacturing area, very widely extended and therefore affecting the whole city. Fourth, the homes of wealth, typified by the East End, and the educational and cultural center that is building there. Fifth, the suburban district. Sixth, the park requirements of the Greater City. Seventh, the community as a whole.

I.

The business district of Pittsburgh is as restricted as that of an old world city bound in by compressing fortifications. But its boundaries are not to be readily moved like the works of men. They are the broad rivers and the obstructing hill. The district extending from the "Point," where the rivers join, to the "Hump," is approximately an equilateral triangle, of which the sides are less than half a mile in length. Into this small area is crowded the business of an enormous manufacturing center. Here the railroads and boats bring their passengers; here the trolley roads of the whole district converge; here reach the bridges with their continual traffic. The condition is similar to that of Manhattan, except that in Pittsburgh the space in proportion to the business is even smaller.

The pressure in such a restricted area is of a double character. There is a pressure for traffic room, and an equally insistent pressure for building sites. One [Pg 804]
[Pg 805]demand is as legitimate as the other. Therefore, although the streets are too narrow, relief must be sought rather by increasing their carrying efficiency than by changing their dimensions or adding to their number. To accomplish this three plans have been under consideration.

One, and an obvious one, is to increase the area of the business district by leveling the low hill (the "Hump") that bounds it on the east. This plan seems now to have been abandoned. It would involve great cost, and it would not certainly better conditions in the most crowded area. Furthermore, business has about climbed to the top of the hill already.

The other plans have to do with the trolley cars that come here from all sections of the city. As most of the cars do not pass through the district, but go out as they came in, there are numberless "loops", each of the various lines making a turn around two or three blocks, with the result that loop overlaps loop, and the cars interfere with one another as well as with general traffic. One plan would put many of the cars underground, in a subway, in the business district; the other, while permitting them to traverse the district, would carry them on into Allegheny to make their loops.

It were better, however, that there should be no loops at all; that the cars should not "go out as they came in." By the substitution of long through lines for the loops which are only a survival of other times and conditions, all the advantages would be gained with none of the drawbacks of transferring the loops across the river.

In the plans for a downtown subway loop, it is proposed that all the stations be located on private property, so putting no additional burden on the streets, and furthermore that the loop be open to the cars of all companies. This would give much relief; and as subways have proved too successful in other cities to be regarded any longer as experimental, it seems that one here, properly constructed and authorized with equal regard for financial and municipal interests, is a civic improvement necessary for Pittsburgh's business district.

As it would take some years to construct the subway; and as the relief to the streets afforded by straightening out the surface car routes might be overbalanced by a rapid increase in the number of cars, it is necessary to consider other immediate measures for traffic relief. A rounding of curb corners even at alleys, and the substitution of a well laid grooved rail for the present T-rail may be here suggested. With the grooved rail there is less temptation for teamsters to use the car tracks, the tracks can be turned out more readily and the whole width of roadway is made available, instead of being divided as now into longitudinal sections.

Costly as is the widening of streets, or the opening of new ones, such heroic measures are already being adopted for short distances in the peninsular district. For instance, the city is completing the widening of Sixth street, from Grant to Forbes, an improvement tending to facilitate a further eastward march of business. Of even more importance is the discussed and much needed provision of a better outlet for Grant boulevard. This comparatively new boulevard was designed to afford pleasant access to the East End on a thoroughfare free of car tracks, for those who drive or who ride in motor cars. But the boulevard itself can now be approached from the business district only by Seventh street, which is crowded with freight traffic, or by an ill paved narrow alley. The plan is to widen and repave the alley and thus carry the boulevard to Sixth street, which is slightly less crowded. Another interesting proposal is to give the boulevard, by means of a curving [Pg 807]
[Pg 808]bridge over the Pennsylvania tracks, direct access to the Union Station, which can now be reached only by a detour. These may be called local improvements, but they have a relation to the whole district, and are likely to be worth their considerable cost.

A new retail shopping district is building up in the East End, and by the erection of great warehouses to the north along Penn avenue, and across the river on the South Side, a great part of the heavy wholesale trade has been removed from the "Point." Nevertheless it is clear that the little triangle, which is the business heart of Pittsburgh, will remain crowded; and that with all these measures taken, the normal growth of a few busy years will produce a congestion demanding some radical measure of relief. Ultimately this might take the form of an elevated structure, or a second street-story for the tapering western end of the plat. The area thus to be raised, and so given double capacity, is not very large, and the merest glance at the topography shows that the bridge near the "Point", which strikes Pittsburgh proper well above the street grade, is about on a level with the top of the "Hump". To build a second story over the intervening streets, reserving the lower story for heavy, slow moving traffic, giving to the abutting buildings two street floors—and thereby increasing their rent productiveness, would present no insurmountable difficulties either from the engineering or the financial point of view. It is a long look ahead, and perhaps not entirely desirable; but it would be a typically Pittsburghian thing to do.

In the limited space available, there can be no consideration of the commercial and industrial aspects of the waterfront; nor can there be a discussion of the project for a deep waterway from Pittsburgh to New Orleans on the one hand, and from Pittsburgh to the Great Lakes and, via the barge canal, to New York on the other. These projects are mentioned only to emphasize the city's need for safeguarding and developing in some useful way every foot of river frontage that it possesses. They would justify a careful and elaborate study of this problem, even were the present river traffic less important than it is, and were the need of breathing spots less urgent.

As regards the traffic, slips might with advantage be substituted for the present sloping bank and floating docks. One commission is studying this subject, and another the problem of floods. The reports of these commissions may be awaited with confidence that their recommendations will mean improvement. Sociologically and aesthetically, the gains will be indirect.

As to breathing spaces, however, these gains would be direct, and the step to be taken is yet more obvious. A great deal of river frontage,—as along the Allegheny, under the elevated tracks,—is not now utilized. If would be nothing derogatory to the commercial greatness of Pittsburgh to turn this space into a park. Nobody thought London commercially decadent when the Thames embankment was built. Unused, waste space, in fact, reflects more seriously upon a city's business enterprise than does the humanitarian or aesthetic use of it; and there is no better place for a park designed as a breathing space for shut-in workers, than a river bank with its inevitable current of air.

The crowding of Pittsburgh's business district has resulted in exceedingly high land values. In the whole downtown section no open space, save the plaza before the Union Station, has been preserved for the use of the people. Public buildings have been constructed flush with the walk, and the streets are cramped and narrow. No sumptuous effect is offered anywhere. One of the buildings, however, the county court house, is the best work of H. H. Richardson. It stands on the "Hump," at the eastern edge of the business district, overlooking to the north a tract that is not yet improved. Two other buildings, the city hall and post office, are so out of date that new structures must soon take their places. Thus the opportunity has offered for a civic center group, and there are citizens who have dared to dream and plan. Unfortunately, however, the post office site has now been chosen at a place where it cannot be brought into a civic center scheme. When the choice was pending, the architects, in whose hands the matter mainly rested, were not ready with a sufficiently definite plan. This failure has spurred them on, and they will not be caught napping again. A committee of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the American Institute of Architects has now worked out a civic center plan that is not merely spectacular, but which aims in practical ways to provide sufficiently wide, through avenues for the transportation lines to the business district. The plan will be best understood from the accompanying diagram.

It would substitute for a mean and shabby portion of the city an ensemble beautiful and effective, and it would bring a large open space to the very edge of a poor tenement section. Owing to the local topography, the proximity of the improvement would not change the character of a large portion of that section; but it would bring civic art almost to the doors of the residents of the neighborhood. My judgment is that the plan does not go far enough. I shall reserve my supplementary suggestion, however, for more appropriate consideration at another point in this paper.

One more comment might be made upon the aesthetic possibilities of the business section before we pass to the tenement district. It is the universal experience of towns that the first streets parallel the water courses. As the business portion of Pittsburgh is located on that tapering point of land where the rivers draw together at an acute angle, it follows that streets must meet at similar angles, and the cross streets multiply them. Very often at these intersections, small triangles are formed, which might have been preserved as open spaces at slight expense before the demand for building room became so great. Although that opportunity has passed, the sharp building lot corners, with the conspicuousness given by a directly approaching street, still offer to architects an opportunity that is rare in American cities. Little advantage is taken of this opportunity. The Wabash Station is one illustration of how much more interesting from an architectural standpoint business Pittsburgh may some day be made.

II.

Completely surrounding the business district of Pittsburgh, in a belt of varying width that disregards the intercepting river, is a section of mean streets, of crowded housing conditions, and if not of genuine poverty, at least of the discomforts which poverty elsewhere brings. This juxtaposition is a familiar phenomenon in urban development, for it is based on the social necessity that the least paid wage earners live within walking distance of their work; on the willingness, and even desire, of the well-to-do to live at a distance from the noise and smoke of business sections; and on the attraction which the constant stimulus of "city" life exerts on those who have few other sources of entertainment. That the river sides do not relieve and break up this belt, is due in part to the local topography. Across the Allegheny, the land is low and subject to flood; across the Monongahela, there is only a narrow strip between the river and the highlands that, rising steeply, offer sites with purer air and wider outlook but that must be reached by riding. Neither river is itself attractive as an outlook for residences.

The civic improvement needs of this poorer and crowded district may be grouped under five general heads. These are: (a) municipal,—as the matter of street improvement; (b) housing,—with which this discussion does not attempt to deal; (c) playspace and opportunity for children; (d) park provision,—which may best be considered in connection with the similar needs of the whole community; and (e) bathing facilities,—which here can be no more than mentioned.

(a) Municipal. The primary municipal need, in so far at least as the region adjacent to the Allegheny is concerned, is flood prevention. That is a city matter plus a good deal else, which will be considered elsewhere in this issue.

The street needs are many and pressing. Conditions in this matter are absolutely disgraceful. Narrow streets are the rule in old Pittsburgh, and smooth pavements cannot be expected upon steep streets. But with all possible allowance for these facts, there is much that might be undone. The streets are not all steep. Steep streets can be kept clean,—more easily, indeed, than others. Cobblestone pavements can be banished.

Well laid brick pavements, or asphalt, or smooth wood blocks where practicable,—and all frequently flushed, are a necessity for this region. Cleanliness, too, should be the rule in the streets and alleys of the poorer sections; and it is here especially that the standard of municipal administration in Pittsburgh needs raising. Only within the past year has the public removal of rubbish been adopted as a municipal function.

It may be profitably reflected that in no other area of the Pittsburgh District would an equal amount of improvement affect so many residents. With original paving costs a general tax, with sanitation in this section a matter of prime importance outside the locality itself, and with the borrowing capacity of the city very large, there ought to be a pretty general reconstruction of the street surface of this district on modern lines. Such improvement ought not to be difficult and, incidentally, should appeal to the pride of Pittsburgh. The stranger, arriving at any of the railroad stations, finds little to admire in the business district. And when he leaves that, in whatsoever direction he goes,—whether to the fashionable East End, to the Carnegie Institute, to any of the parks, to the pleasant old-fashioned homes in Allegheny, or to the heights beyond the Monongahela, he must pass through this dreary belt of municipal neglect. It is here that unfavorable first impressions become fixed. These regions give a bad character to the whole city.

The necessity for playgrounds is pressing, so pressing that an earnest, self-sacrificing effort has been made to meet it. The work of the modern playground gives benefit in three directions: physical, social and educational. This is recognized by the Pittsburgh Playground Association, an incorporated body which receives appropriations from the municipality, supplements these with private donations, and with the volunteer work of individuals and clubs. In recognition of the threefold aspect of what is sweepingly called the "playground" movement, the association conducts "recreation parks" and vacation schools, as well as mere playgrounds. It holds the theory that "there should be three kinds of recreation centers: first, the school-yard for small children who cannot go more than a few squares from home; then the larger playground with apparatus and facilities for healthy play for all the boys and girls of a neighborhood; third, the athletic field, where teams may meet and where the interest of the community may center." It is clear from this that the lack of play facilities arises from insufficient material provision rather than from inadequate ideals. These provisions are gradually increasing but they have far to go before they will be complete. Thirty square feet of playground space for each child is the minimum provision recommended in Washington and London, and in a bill lately introduced in the Massachusetts Legislature. If the allowance seems too liberal, translate the "thirty square feet" into six feet by five,—the size of a desk! Rich Pittsburgh falls woefully short of this figure. Her need is for more, and more adequately fitted, playgrounds. The poorer districts need them most and the first provision should be made there. This is said with due regard to the limitation of a playground's scope. The sore need for parks located more conveniently to the immense working population, than the present parks of Pittsburgh are, and developed more appropriately to their needs, has not been confused with the community's need for children's play-spaces and recreation grounds. The latter is a separate, urgent and co-existent want, concerned, as is park provision, with the very structure of the city, involving similarly its social welfare, and making a strong appeal in the name of the children. Such a survey of available sites (without buildings or with buildings of little value) as that undertaken by the playground association the past summer should be made the basis for the reservation of sites in congested neighborhoods and outlying districts.

III.

The manufacturing area will not detain us long. It is no one region. Industry is evident everywhere. Pittsburgh is held inescapably beneath its thraldom. Two matters in particular present themselves in noting the relation of the manufacturing plants to the improvement of the city. One deals with their own surroundings and grounds; the other is the smoke.

With a few encouraging exceptions, there has been little attempt to beautify factory surroundings. The exceptions prove what can be done, but it should be recollected that in the Pittsburgh District the handicaps to such ameliorations are particularly great. The ground is mostly clay and shale; smoke and ore dust are very trying to vegetation under the most favorable conditions, work is done at tremendous pressure, the products are heavy, and as a rule the manufacturing plots are no larger than necessary, for actual manufacture, storage, and shipping. Yet it would seem that the Chamber of Commerce might properly add to its committees one that would foster this kind of improvement.

As to the smoke, Pittsburgh's most famous because most obvious drawback, the subject has in the last two years been tackled bravely by the Chamber of Commerce. Its campaign resulted in the appointment of a chief smoke inspector and three deputies, attached, significantly, to the Bureau of Health. Large powers are given to these inspectors. The undue emission of smoke is declared a "public nuisance" for which "the owner, agent, lessee or occupant" of the building, and the "general manager and superintendent, or firemen" are held accountable. In support of the ordinance, two hundred business men went in a body to the council's chamber, vigorously resisting the attacks made upon it.

IV.

The East End I can best discuss under three heads: a. The residential section. b. The educational and cultural center, which is building at its portal. c. The approach from the business section.

As a section of beautiful homes, the East End is at once disappointing and satisfying. If there is the usual conglomeration of architectural styles and if occasional atrocities in domestic construction and landscape design for private grounds are to be found here as in other cities,—and they certainly are,—yet the general average of the domestic architecture and of the garden, or lawn planting, is unusually high. This can be asserted without regard to the money expended,—since good taste is happily not dependent on high cost. The expenditure for both houses and grounds is certainly well above the average, but this only increases the danger. It is to the credit of Pittsburgh's architects and gardeners, and to that of the well-to-do citizens who are so likely to demand their own way in the creation of their homes, that the results are so excellent. Significant in this respect is the fact that several of the churches are of great merit; and if it be said that the irregularity of topography readily lends itself to unusual and charming effects in house location and lawn development, there should be recollection of the balancing handicaps of poor soil and grimy air.

But if private work is, as a whole, of a high order, the municipal work with the exception of some fine schools is mean, unimaginative and weak. Here surely in street work was the place for boldness, splendor, and large conception. Here liberal outlay was justifiable and would probably have been popular; here, in this comparatively new territory, obviously to be the home of the well-to-do of Pittsburgh, there was a chance to plan for the city beautiful, to design in accordance with modern artistic principles.

Think of what ought to be here,—the broad avenues, with wide strips of parking at side or center; the well-built roads; the interesting vistas; the occasional bridle paths; the rapid transit facilities, in a reserved right of way partially planted out, where cars could make quick time without peril to other traffic; the round points at important intersections of avenues; and all the other beauties and conveniences known to the modern art of city building. But see what we actually find! The narrow streets persist. The heavy cars go rattling and roaring along the middle of the road on protruding and dangerous T-rails, the tracks taking a good half of the total space. The strip of parking between walk and curb, if there be any, is hopelessly narrow. Gaunt telegraph poles, burdened with a mesh of wires, stand where the trees should be. Here and there billboards and lettered fences flaunt commercialism and burlesque art in the face of beautiful homes and of the Carnegie Institute itself. Of course, there are exceptions. There are some short streets and semi-private ways that are good. But the general impression of Pittsburgh's East End has been described.

If it be not too late, if the rich of Pittsburgh are willing to contemplate a generous expenditure for the better setting of their homes, they should secure a plan for the recasting on noble and comprehensive lines of the whole section.

Because a few such men, who command the means to make their ideas effective, have had public spirit, generous impulses and broad ideals, a very interesting educational and cultural center is developing at the portal of the East End. It is one of the few examples in this country of consciously directed growth, though it should be added that it has its limitations in the fact that as yet that growth has not had professional direction, and seems still vague and uncertain as to the general scheme. Take, for descriptive purposes, the Carnegie Institute as the center of the scheme. We find directly west of it the entrance,—yet to be formally developed,—of Schenley Park. On the edge of the park and still back of the institute, the great group of Technical schools is building. On the other, or north side of the institute, is a valuable tract as yet vacant. A bit to the east of this, and a couple of blocks north of the institute, is the new cathedral, with no adequate setting and at an unfortunate angle with the institute, but inevitably a unit of the general scheme. In the same neighborhood the new high school is to rise. On the other, or west side, of the vacant property is the Schenley Hotel in spacious grounds; further north is the War Memorial Building and across from it are the sites of the University and Athletic clubs. Then comes the new property of the University of Pittsburgh, which is built with ampleness of design. Back of all, reaching over a hill that will frame the picture in this direction, lies the Schenley Farms property,—a large tract, held at high prices for expensive development, and capable of a picturesque and beautiful treatment,—if only that costly, commonplace checkerboard development can be foregone, which consists of cutting straight streets into the hills, at vast expense, to the destruction of what is picturesque, and at the sacrifice of building area. This tract, owing to its elevation, is so conspicuous a feature that its proper treatment is essential to the artistic success of the whole scheme. The architects, who, at the exhibit of 1907, displayed a plan for a civic center, put forward also a plan for a rearrangement of the streets in this region, for a widening of public spaces, and a tying together of the various separated units.

CHRIST METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH.