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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 III: Surveys and a City Plan
Pittsburgh: Main Thoroughfares and The Down Town District
Frederick Law Olmsted report to The Pittsburgh Civic Commission, 1910


page 98

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volumes and of the various charts stamped to show the dates to which they are corrected.

Management and Cost

It would seem advisable to put a first-class man of broad experience and ability in charge, to establish a new division under the Bureau of Surveys, coordinate with the existing force, which is dealing with the current routine work, but distinct from it; and to go at the work with an annual appropriation amounting, after the first six months or so devoted to organization, to say $50,000 a year until the arrears of work shall have been cleaned up.

Sample Maps

The following data in regard to the topographical survey work of New York and of Baltimore is of considerable interest in this connection. There are on file in the office of the Civic Commission single copies showing the kind of sectional topographical maps published by the official surveys of New York, of Baltimore, of the District of Columbia and of Zurich, Switzerland (representing European cities); and a sheet of the large-sized detailed sectional map published by the City of Paris, which covers the whole city at the scale of 1/500 or about 40 feet to the inch.

New York

In the City of New York, for the first four years after the consolidation in 1898, the work of preparing a comprehensive topographical map, and, upon the basis thereof, a general plan of streets, was in the hands of the Board of Public Improvements; but most of the work has been done since the establishment of independent topographical Bureaus in 1902. It is now proposed by the Comptroller that the Bureaus of the several Boroughs be again centralized under the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. The triangulation, upon which the whole work depends, was done in cooperation with the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey.

The following tables indicate the magnitude of the work and the amounts expended up to December 31, 1909, the force required to prosecute the work and a detailed analysis of the cost of the work in the Borough of Queens. The last table is taken from a report of Assistant Engineer H. K. Endemann to W. C. Elliott, Engineer-in-charge. In the first table, no data are given as to Manhattan and Brooklyn because of the abnormal conditions which they present.


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