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EPILOG

The building of the West End-North Side Bridge coincided with the crash of the New York Stock Market and the plunge of the American economy into the Great Depression. Instead of consolidating the economies of North Side, West End, and South Hills in a marriage of prosperity, as Henry Tranter believed it would, the bridge loomed over a region gripped by high unemployment and industrial inactivity. The Great Depression weakened the nineteenth century manufacturing economy of the Chateau area. Following World War II, the effects of both the restrictive immigration legislation of the 1920s and the social legislation of the New Deal reshaped the demographic and ethnic composition of the area. The Immigration Restriction Acts of 1924 and 1927 slowed the movement of new immigrants into the area's working-class neighborhoods. The Wagner Labor Relations Act of 1955, the Federal Housing Administration Act of 1934 and the post-World War II veterans' mortgage program spurred the migration of second generation Polish, Italian, and Lithuanian-Americans to the "cool, green-rim" of suburbia. What these mobile white ethnics left behind in Manchester and Chateau area was the aging industrial plant and often ramshackle housing, These are the urban characteristics that University of Chicago sociologist Ernest Burgess labeled the "zone of emergency" (Goldfield and Brownell, 1979; Park and Burgess, 1967).

Considering the trauma of the Great Depression, and the significant social, economic, and physical changes transforming urban America after World War II, it is difficult to determine what particular effect the building of the West End-North Side Bridge had upon the Chateau area. By 1960, Manchester's Chateau area had mouldered in the shadow of the four elevated pony truss bridges for nearly three decades. Not only had industry in the area languished or migrated to the suburban fringe of the city, but the population composition had also changed. Displacement of the city's black population, as a result of the lower Hill District renewal in the mid-1950s, forced many black families to migrate to the available low rent, graying housing of Manchester. The social and racial composition of the Chateau area had changed considerably by 1960 when blacks comprised 32 percent of the population. At the same time, only 22 percent of the Chateau area population was of "foreign stock," compared with 57 percent in 1930. It was also an area of poverty. In 1960, almost 40 percent of the work force earned less than $4,000 a year (Bureau of the Census, 1960).

In 1961, the Pittsburgh Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) spotlighted Manchester for a comprehensive slum clearance and redevelopment project. The URA slated the Chateau area as the site for massive clearance and the development of an industrial park to house light industry. Although most of the old alley housing and two-story worker homes were demolished in the wave of redevelopment, by 1985 little had been built to replace the cleared structures. Most of the development activity taking place in the shadow of the West End-North Side Bridge had been undertaken by the developer, Tom Mistick and Sons. The Misticks' Allegheny Millworks occupies both sides of Belmont Street. Their offices occupy a historically preserved mill building on Western Avenue, and evidence of their handiwork can be seen in the preservation of the Rodgers Sand warehouse on Ridge Avenue. Indeed, it might be argued that the Misticks are perpetuating a tradition of building and supply first begun when Rodgers Sand bought the Benson Pump site in 1903 and turned it into a builders' supply emporium.

In 1985, the work of Tom Mistick and Sons, the Manchester Community Center, the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, and other neighborhood organizations promises to give the Manchester district and the Chateau area a second chance for glory. The four pony truss bridges that saw the area's demise will be replaced by new bridge approaches and ramps that will connect North Side, West End, and South Hills more effectively than the present structure. Perhaps, then, Henry Tranter's dream of 60 years ago will be fulfilled.

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