itjoined with twopennsy- controlled lines to the west, and PRR's Allegheny Valley Railroad To serve these terminal facilities, the

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3 itjoined with twopennsy- controlled lines to the west, and PRR's Allegheny Valley Railroad To serve these terminal facilities, the to the north. The station stood across Liberty Avenue from the Main Line Canal terminal 1902 Ft.Wayne Bridge was built as a doublecompleted 20 years before. The canal crossed the Allegheny River over an aqueduct, and deck span carrying through-trains on the was extended through a tunnel beneath Grant Hillto the Monongahela Wharf, a route upper level, and local freight switchers on that would soon be duplicated by the railroad. 5 The Pittsburgh, Ft. Wayne &Chicago the lower, which is no longer used. This Railway drove west from Union Station in 1857, giving its name to the Ft. Wayne Bridge knot ofrailyards and depots at the northern across the Allegheny River immediately downstream from the site of the oldcanal aqueduct, apex of the Triangle was left moribund and From 1857 until the construction of the David Lawrence Convention Center in1981, the abandoned by the contraction of the railblock between 10th and 1lthstreets west of Penn Avenue was occupied by the Ft.Wayne's roads in the 1950s and '60s, and built over (PRR) Penn Avenue Freight Terminal, and the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Freight during the expansion of the central busi- Terminal. The Pennsylvania Railroad built its sprawling 11th Street Freight Terminal ness district in the 1970s and '80s. directly across the street. Railroad tracks also dominated the Strip 40 WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY SPRING 2002

4 41 District north of 11th Street where the Pennsylvania Railroad located its produce terminal in early 20th century. The yards have since been replaced by parking lots, but the Pennsy's five-block-long Fruit Auction and Sales Building, constructed in 1926, still stands on Smallman Street as testimony to the Strip's rail-oriented past as the city's primary wholesale district. 6 Pittsburgh's only other remaining passenger terminal secured the south side of the Triangle for the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad. By the time the P. &L. E. Railroad opened in 1879, there was no available land left in the Golden Triangle, forcing the line to construct its terminal yard on the south side of the Monongahela River. The extant P. &L.E. Terminal and train shed, built in1901, was reincarnated as Station Square in Birmingham Station stood across Smithfield and Carson streets, about where the "T"light rail station is today; itoriginally served as the northern terminus of the Pennsy- controlled Pittsburgh, Virginia and Charleston Railroad. Arrivals at either the P. &L.E. or Birmingham stations crossed the Smithfield Street Bridge into downtown Pittsburgh, passing the Baltimore and Ohio terminal that stood on the opposite end of the bridge until it was demolished for the Penn- Lincoln Parkway inthe 1950s. The B. &O. Freight Station just east of Grant Street survived until the recent construction of the PNC Bank Center. The new Allegheny County Prison occupies the former B.&O. terminal yard, and the line itself is now the Eliza Furnace Trail bike path. The onlystructure stillstanding from this once-sprawling terminal complex at the southeast apex of the Triangle is a nondescript warehouse loft on Second Avenue bearing the letters "REA" above its door (for "RailwayExpress Agency"). The pairing of depot and post office is a forgotten link inamerican cities that is still preserved inthe 1932 siting of the neoclassical Post Office and Federal Building on Grant Street along the tracks where mail cars were once loaded and unloaded before being assembled into trains at the adjacent Penn Station. The Post Office replaced the Pennsylvania Railroad's Grant Street Freight Depot The tracks, virtually obscured from view and now used by Pittsburgh Area Transit's light railline,marked the eastern edge of the Golden Triangle. Originally built as the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad in1865, the line came to be known as Pennsy's Panhandle Divisionbecause of its route west into Ohio across the "panhandle" of West Virginia. The line extended south from Penn Station through the Grant HillTunnel, and past the Fourth Street Station before crossing the Monongahela River over the Panhandle Bridge. The Fourth Street Station served commuter trains stopping at the civic complex clustered around the Allegheny County Courthouse. The station site is buried beneath a parking deck behind the County Office Building, across from what used to be the Try Street Yard (itself now buried beneath the south end of the Crosstown Expressway). The Pennsylvania Railroad commandeered the Point at the western apex of the Golden Triangle for its Duquesne Freight Station as early as The terminal originally occupied a two-block lot at Liberty and Third streets, but eventually expanded westward to Duquesne Way. Like the MainLine Canal before it,the Pennsylvania Railroad desired access to the Monongahela Wharf where most of the city's commerce took place. Commercial Pittsburgh was born on this wharf during the early 19th century, and spread northward over George Woods's and Thomas Vickroy's 1784 plan of streets. 8 The Mon Wharf area was so heavily developed by the time the railroads arrived in the 1850s, that tracks and terminals had to be located toward the fringe. The Main Line Canal Basin, and later Union Station were located, ina sense, "behind" downtown to the north. The canal and later the Pittsburgh, Chicago and St. Louis (Panhandle) Railroad were routed to the Monongahela River along the eastern fringe of the city proper. The Pennsylvania Railroad's Duquesne extension skirted the downtown's northern and western fringe, the tracks being laid right down the center of Liberty Avenue, a less densely settled peripheral street at the time. No tracks ever penetrated the important, river-oriented Mon Wharf between Smithfield Street (location of the B. &O. terminal), and LibertyAvenue (site of the Duquesne Freight Station). The Pennsy's Duquesne freight line acted as the spine of the city's wholesale district into the 20th century, until the expansion of the central business district forced most of the wholesaling activities to move to the Strip. In 1906, the tracks were removed from Liberty Avenue, rapidly becoming Pittsburgh's "main" street, and rebuilt as the Duquesne Way elevated railroad on the very edge of the Allegheny River. TRIANGLE TRACKS

5 42 WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY SPRING 2002

6 43 The Pennsylvania Railroad's Panhandle line, operated as the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago &St. Louis Railroad, crossed the Monongahela River from Union (later Penn) Station on a bridge completed in One hundred years later, the second Panhandle Bridge was double-tracked. The new double-track configuration for the northern approach span can be seen to the right of the bridge just prior to its repositioning in place of the old track approach. A tiny, walled island ofgreen broke the gray tangle of tracks and team houses, factory lofts, and warehouses at the Point. On itstood the 1764 Ft. Pitt Blockhouse, the last remnant of Pittsburgh's pioneer past which had otherwise been buried by the tracks ofchange tracks that would themselves be ground beneath the wheels offurther progress. Pittsburgh's ever-expanding central business district and its associated commercial office and retail functions pushed the Duquesne Freight Station and its elevated feeder line completely out of the Golden Triangle in the 1950s when the Point was cleared for Gateway Center and Point State Park. Only the Blockhouse survived the many reconfigurations. Long a warren offreight tracks, the western apex of the Golden Triangle was anchored by a passenger station in 1904 when the Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railroad's Wabash Terminal was constructed. The triangle-shaped terminal tower faced Liberty Avenue at Ferry Street, heading a cavernous train shed that stretched south four blocks to First Avenue. The elevated terminal included a freight house that interfaced with the Pennsy's Duquesne Station, and the Ferry Street Station Post Office. The Wabash Terminal was the closest passenger depot to Pittsburgh's downtown retail district, but the P. &W. V.paid dearly for its prime location, necessitating the construction of a tunnel through Mount Washington and a 1,504-foot long cantilevered bridge across the Monongahela River. The line was originally constructed as part of George Gould's ill-fated transcontinental railroad, but did not carry enough traffic toallow it to survive the Great Depression. Although the Wabash Tunnel stillrests unused beneath Mount Washington, the Wabash Bridge was dismantled for scrap during World War II,its stone piers remaining on the riverbank. The terminal itself burned in1946, clearing the wayfor the construction ofgateway Center. Allegheny City the North Side remained separate from the city of Pittsburgh until As such, itattracted its own cluster of stations from the railroads that crisscrossed its streets. The city's first railline west originated from Allegheny as the Ohio and Pittsburgh Railroad in Located on Federal Street the O. &P. Terminal eventually functioned as the PRR's first Ft. Wayne Station. A rail link over the Allegheny River to Union Station was not made for another seven years, after the O.&P. was absorbed by the Pennsy-controlled Pittsburgh, Ft. Wayne and Chicago Railroad. In 1866, the Pennsy-controlled Western Pennsylvania Railroad opened from the Main Lineat Blairsville as a low-grade route through the Conemaugh, Kiskiminetas, and Allegheny valleys to Pittsburgh. The railroad followed the route of the filled-in canal along the north shore ofthe Allegheny River, and terminated at a depot built on the south side of the tracks and across Federal Street from the Ft. Wayne Station. The Pennsy's Federal Street Freight House was constructed on the north side of the tracks. Both stations and freight house were demolished during the clean sweep urban renewal of the 1950s and '60s that preceded the construction of Allegheny Center and the elevated highway that would become Interstate 279. Closer to the Allegheny River, the Pittsburgh and Western Railroad was laid out TRIANGLE TRACKS

7 along the bank inthe 1870s witha downtown depot that was eventually erected on Sandusky neighborhood lingers as the Allegheny Street. The P. & W. station was at the north end of the Seventh Street Bridge, directly River bike path. opposite the Golden Triangle. These tracks were later used by the Buffalo, Rochester and Pennsylvania Main Line train traffic Pittsburgh Railroad, and eventually absorbed into the B.& O. system, which sought a through downtown Pittsburgh became so branch line into the waterfront industrial district on the North Side. The B.R. &P. builta congested by the end of the 19th century roundhouse and engine shop at Robinson and Corry streets, and a block-long freight that a bypass had to be constructed not house was thrown up along Alcor Street at River Avenue. Two blocks north, a B.& O. unlike the bypasses demanded by the autowarehouse eventually replaced the old P. &W. Sandusky Street Station. mobile 60 years later. The bypass lynch pin Although the Allegheny River separated this industrial rail corridor from the Golden was the half-mile-long Ohio Connecting Triangle, it was not immune to the influence ofan aggressively expanding central business Railway Bridge built across the Ohio River district. The North Side waterfront began its transition into the downtown's playground at Brunots Island in Eastbound with the 1971 opening of Three Rivers Stadium. The roundhouse was leveled for stadium through-trains stillcross the O.C. Bridge to parking, as was the B. &O.'s Smoky Island Yard, now the site of Heinz Field. The freight the old Pennsy tracks along the Ohio and line and support buildings were abandoned; 30 years later, PNC Park was standing on the Monongahela rivers to the Port Perry freight house lot,and the new Alcoa Headquarters occupied the former site ofthe Sandusky Bridge at Braddock, reconnecting with the Street Station. The ghost of the former rail line that once denned the character of the Main Line inpitcairn. Increased traffic over The last line to arrive, the Pittsburgh & West Virginia Railroad forced its way into the Golden Triangle in 1904 over an expensive snub route that tunneled beneath Mount Washington. Itcrossed the Monongahela River and Mon Wharf via the Wabash Bridge, then went to its terminal facility along Ferry Street. The bridge was dismantled for scrap during World War II,but its piers remain. 44 WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTOR* SPRING 2002

8 the O. C. Bridge necessitated the addition of the Crosstown Expressway, Interstate 279, and the Penn-Lincoln Parkway. These are the ofa second track in1915. To accommodate new gateways and circulatory system serving the Golden Triangle. the extra width, a larger span was literally.. KevinJ. Patrick is a professor ofgeography at Indiana University ofpennsylvania. built around the smaller, originalthroughtrusses, which were then dismantled from..,,,., ' q Burgess, E.W. "The Growth of the City: An Introduction to a Research Project," in Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess, and inside the newer bridge..,..., _ &.., Roderick D. McKenzies The City Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, The Ohio Connecting Railway; Bridge '?_..,. Patrick, Kevin J. Pittsburgh as a Concentric Triangle, in Kevin J. Patrick and Joseph L. Scarpaci, Jr.,eds, A Geographic Percompleted the triangle of steel that spectiveof Pittsburgh and the Alleghenies-. From Precambrian to Post-Industrial, (Washington D.C.: Assoc. of American surrounded downtown Pittsburgh. Allbut Geographers, 2000). two passenger stations are demolished, 3 Kobus.Ken and Jack Consoli. The Pennsy in the Steel City: 150 Years of the Pennsylvania Railroad inpittsburgh (Kutztown, Pa': most of the railyards are builtover, and the V ^ * Railroad Tech " ical and Historical s ciem 1997: 6 9- " freight houses pulled 4 down but the tracks Slianl11 wi"' am nree Hundred Years With the Pennsylvania Traveler (York, Pa.: American Canal and Transportation Center, 1976): 79. remain inactive service, with the Panhandle. «,.,., Ma, franm'm. Pittsburgh: AnUrban Portrait (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1986): 193. Bridge retrofitted to serve the T light rail 6 Van Trump, James 0. Station Square: A Golden Age Revisited (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, Iineinl ). The paths of the many raillines are now 7 Lorant stefan pjttsburgh. Thg stgfygf gn American c/fy 3rd Edition (Garden city NY. Doubleday, 1980): 75. more visibly7 marked by; a triangle-shaped & f 8o,, Kobus and Consoli, 66. ring of limited access highways consisting Q 3 Patrick, KevinJ. "Pittsburgh: City of Bridges," inpatrick and Scarpaci, eds. A Geographic Perspective, 60. TRIANGLE TRACKS 45