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BRIDGES AND
TUNNELS OF
ALLEGHENY COUNTY,
PENNSYLVANIA

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Frederick Law
Olmsted
report to the
Pittsburgh Civic Commission

"Pittsburgh:
Main Thoroughfares and The
Down Town District"
1910

00 Cover Page

00 Contents

01 Down Town
   District

02 Main
   Thoroughfares

03 Surveys and
   a City Plan

04 Parks and
   Recreation
   Facilities

05 Special
   Reports

06 Index


PART I: The Down Town District
Pittsburgh: Main Thoroughfares and The Down Town District
Frederick Law Olmsted report to The Pittsburgh Civic Commission, 1910


page 6

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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 all 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.

pic

Bridge of distinctive character at Budapest

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,


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Last modified on 22-Dec 1999
Design format: copyright 1997-1999 Bruce S. Cridlebaugh
Original document: Frederick Law Olmsted, 1910