By the terms of his father’s will, George Jay Gould obtained control of the Gould family millions and about fifteen thousand miles of railroad empire, not to mention his father’s interests in the lucrative Western Union Telegraph Company and the Manhattan Elevated Railway. Unlike his self-made father, the younger Gould attended private school, and he received a seat on the New York Stock Exchange as a gift for his twenty-first birthday.
George Jay Gould liked the good things that his money could buy. He was known for his love of parties, the theater, and particularly the sport of polo, which he helped popularize in the United States. His first wife was a stunning actress, and after her death, he married his showgirl mistress, who had already borne him three children.
Gould attempted to realize his father’s dream of controlling America’s first coast-to-coast rail system. He bought, built, and extended many railroads, culminating in his enormously expensive Wabash-Pittsburgh Terminal Railway project. After the Panic of 1907, Gould lost railroad after bankrupt railroad, a collapse that caused him to turn from active participation in business to the management of his personal investments.
Another blow came in 1916, when his family sued him, claiming that he had mismanaged his father’s estate. Gould made the headlines one last time when he died in France in 1923. Though he died from pneumonia, he had just been visiting the recently discovered tomb of King Tutankhamen in Egypt, causing many contemporaries to attribute his death to “King Tut’s Curse.”
Sampling the Region’s Railroad Scene
The Port Authority of Allegheny County
The Port Authority of Allegheny County was created in 1956 to plan and develop port facilities for Pittsburgh. Its mandate changed but not its name in 1959, when legislation made it responsible for operating mass transit in greater Pittsburgh and acquiring the facilities to do so. By 1964, all local transit companies had been rolled into the Port Authority, including former bus companies, operators of inclined planes, and the former Pittsburgh Railways Company, which had operated the city’s many trolleys since the turn of the century.
In the 1960s, the Port Authority expanded service to the city’s growing suburbs. It met the challenge of operating in congested traffic with the concept of busways, roads intended exclusively for the use of buses. The Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway opened in 1983. The authority expanded this program in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Between 1975 and 1989, Pittsburgh briefly had commuter rail service from the city to a suburban borough called Versailles. Known as the PATrain, its equipment was operated by the Chessie System, subsequently CSX, but the Port Authority covered operating expenses. Unfortunately, the service turned out to be a big money loser, and PATrain was replaced by express bus routes.
There had been plans for subways in Pittsburgh during the 1920s and 1930s, but nothing materialized until the Port Authority broke ground for its Light Rail Transit Program in 1980. Locally known as the T, the system connects a downtown subway with reconstructed trolley lines extending into the South Hills suburbs via Station Square. Construction progressed through the 1980s and 1990s, spurring the building of office complexes near T stations. In 2005, the Port Authority had plans to expand the T under the Allegheny River to the developing North Shore area and allow for further future development east, north, and west. Despite facing financial problems between 2007 and 2010, the Port Authority opened the North Shore Connector in 2012.
Station Square and the South Side
Pittsburgh’s Light Rail Transit Program, called the T, connects the city’s downtown and its South Side, making it easy to reach Station Square, a riverfront complex combining retail shops, restaurants, and office space. Light-rail cars heading for Station Square emerge into daylight around First Avenue, near the site of the south end of the State Works canal, under Grant’s Hill, and proceed over the Monongahela River on the old PRR Panhandle Division Bridge. Passengers disembark near the busy intersection of Carson and Smithfield Streets, beneath a bluff that used to be known as Coal Hill but is now called Mount Washington because George Washington is supposed to have surveyed the Golden Triangle from its summit. The flat plain between Mount Washington and the river was called Birmingham back when it was a busy industrial town of glass factories and ironworks. It is still known as Pittsburgh’s ethnic district, where many German, Scots-Irish, and Eastern European immigrant workers settled and their descendants still reside.
The company headquarters and passenger station of the P&LE, now restored as part of Station Square, are seen from the top of Mount Washington.
In the early twentieth century, when the P&LE opened its new passenger station and company headquarters here, this location already had a trolley tunnel under Mount Washington, an inclined plane stretching up its face, and the utilitarian buildings of a rail yard. Because it was an era of stunning and impressive passenger terminals, and perhaps because the Pennsylvania Railroad was building its own stunning and impressive passenger terminal across the river, the P&LE chose to grace this particular crossroads with an outstanding example of American architecture.
The former P&LE company headquarters and passenger station.
William George Burns was the architect for the structure begun in 1899 and opened in 1901. He embellished a fairly modest front façade with a fanciful tablet that is still standing on the roof, decorated with classical scrolls that surround a bas-relief of a steam engine emitting clouds of smoke. In the days when the building functioned as a train station, visitors entered its vestibule from Smithfield Street and walked down a flight of stairs to its passenger waiting room. As they descended, they were greeted by a stained-glass barrel-vaulted ceiling and what appears to be an extravagant use of marble and gold, but really is faux-painted wood, in this dramatic space decorated by the firm Crossman and Sturdy of Chicago.
Like most other railroads, the P&LE suffered a decline in its passenger traffic during the twentieth century, and its passenger terminal might have been demolished save for the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, whose members didn’t believe that urban renewal necessarily meant knocking down older buildings. Locally known simply as Landmarks, this organization, led by Arthur Ziegler, was seeking a challenge for the principle of adaptive reuse, restoring old buildings for different and modern purposes. The P&LE passenger station and headquarters building was surrounded by other interesting P&LE rail yard structures at a waterfront location that looked as though it could attract a lot of visitors, with ample parking and an unequaled view of the Pittsburgh skyline. In 1976, contrary to expert advice, Landmarks came to an agreement with the railroad for a grand experiment in urban revitalization. Landmarks obtained its initial funding from the Allegheny Foundation, a charitable trust headed by Richard M. Scaife. The trustees approved the project not just for what it would accomplish in historic preservation, but also because it would create jobs and help Pittsburgh grow.
The construction of Station Square began with the restoration of the P&LE waiting room, where the stained-glass ceiling, originally open to a skylight, had been sealed with tar in 1927. The faux surfaces also had to undergo extensive cleaning and retouching in order to restore the original color scheme. Restaurateur Charles A. “Chuck” Muer then spent millions converting the space into a restaurant called the Grand Concourse, at the time Pittsburgh’s largest.
The Grand Concourse is still open, is still a favorite with both residents and tourists, and is still one of the city’s best restaurants for fresh fish. Today people enter the building at ground level, but you can get the full impact of the waiting room by climbing the stairs and looking down. The modern foyer is decorated with vintage photographs of the P&LE complex and its trains. The main dining room has been furnished in a way that recalls a turn-of-the-century passenger station, where the clatter of restaurant operations seems somehow appropriate for the space. Many visitors ask for a table on the porch, once a passenger walkway outside the building proper that has now been enclosed in glass. Here you can observe traffic on the S
mithfield Street Bridge as well as the Monongahela River, with the skyline of Pittsburgh as a backdrop. The little caboose on display outside is a 1904 P&LE “drovers’ caboose,” which provided transportation for drovers handling cattle on the way to market. The occasional CSX freight train moving along the tracks between the building and the river only enhances the dining experience. The Grand Concourse must be one of the best, if not the best, train station restaurants in the Commonwealth.
The Grand Concourse restaurant now occupies the waiting areas of the P&LE passenger station.
The old freight house adjacent to the building reopened as a retail and restaurant mall in 1979, and shops now stretch into Commerce Court, the old P&LE central warehouse built in 1917, which also includes office space constructed around a central atrium. Other office space is available on the upper floors of the Landmarks Building, the new name for the old P&LE passenger station and headquarters. West of the P&LE complex lies Bessemer Court, with its choreographed fountains called Waltzing Waters Liquid Fireworks. The Gateway Clipper Fleet of riverboats offers cruises. On certain weekends, kids and their parents can ride a diminutive trackless train called the Station Square Express around part of the complex. Farther west, a Sheraton hotel has been constructed on the site of a former train shed. The spacious lobby seems to architecturally suggest a train shed, and inside is a large painting of B&O locomotive number 5082.
In a book written during the early stages of this project, Station Square: A Golden Age Revived, James D. Van Trump of Landmarks presents a history of the site and the story of its restoration. But even the project’s most enthusiastic proponents could not have foreseen the impact Station Square would have on Pittsburgh while it also saved a whole neighborhood of Pennsylvania’s railroad history.
The old freight house at Station Square is now a retail and restaurant mall.
Proceed east on East Carson Street and you will come across the South Side’s many small restaurants and businesses, including art galleries. East of Twenty-sixth Street, across the river from the Pittsburgh Technology Center and the University of Pittsburgh, is SouthSide Works, a complex of shops, restaurants, offices, and apartments built between 2002 and 2004. In the late nineteenth century, this was an area where much iron and steel were manufactured. In fact, the Hot Metal Bridge, built in 1900 over the Monongahela River, got its name because railroad cars once used it to carry iron smelted on the north shore (that is, hot metal) to mills and furnaces on the south shore. In the years before the bridge was built here, it would have been necessary to cool the metal, ferry it across the river, then remelt it.
Bessemer Court at Station Square.
The Hot Metal Bridge that once carried trains is now a gateway to SouthSide Works.
When a large steel plant occupying the area shut down in 1985, the property was abandoned. It was more than a decade until remediation could be completed and the site was declared safe for redevelopment. Riverboat gambling and a new ballpark for the Pittsburgh Pirates were considered for the spot before a different master plan was approved. When we visited in 2011, we found a number of high-end shops and chain restaurants. Had we visited in the summer, we might have experienced street festivals with live music and the works of local artists on display. We did enjoy a great view of the Hot Metal Bridge from the restaurant called the Hofbrauhaus Pittsburgh, which overlooks the river.
Monongahela Incline
The lower end of the Monongahela Incline is located at the same intersection as the main entrance of the Station Square complex. This little inclined plane railroad has been part of Allegheny County’s Port Authority transit system since 1964 and part of a daily commute for many people, but it also beckons tourists like an amusement park ride.
The Monongahela Incline was the first of many inclined planes that once scaled Mount Washington or Coal Hill. It is said that the German immigrants of this area proposed its construction, which resulted in the development of the top of Mount Washington as a residential district about a quarter century before trolleys opened up Pittsburgh’s other suburbs. Assisting John Endres, its chief engineer, were his son-in-law Samuel Diescher and his daughter Caroline, one of America’s first female engineers. John Roebling made the cables, and the incline was opened in May 1870. The Monongahela Incline is 635 feet long, and its cars hold about two dozen people at a time. They travel at a speed of six miles per hour, which seems a lot faster on the descending trip, especially as the car gets closer to the roof of the lower terminal.
The Monongahela Incline.
From 1884 until 1935, the incline had a parallel sister conveyance designed for hauling freight and horses. Older residents of Pittsburgh recall a time when automobiles were loaded on it and lifted to Grandview Avenue, before new roads made it easier to drive to the top of Mount Washington.
An observation platform constructed near the upper station offers the most breathtaking view of the city, from a height of almost four hundred feet. Visitors can gaze down at skyscrapers unobscured by any trace of smoke or smog. At the apex of the Golden Triangle, you can see the outline of Fort Duquesne and, in warmer months, its landmark fountain in operation. You can also see the sports complexes on the north side of the Allegheny River, which is becoming an attractive destination. While we gazed at this view on our visit in 2011, we watched two CSX freights pass on the tracks parallel to the river.
Duquesne Incline
The Duquesne Incline was Pittsburgh’s fourth incline when it opened in 1877. Its tracks followed those of an early coal hoist that had been operating in the same part of the bluff since the 1850s. It was engineered by Samuel Diescher, who had by then become one of the area’s foremost incline engineers.
The incline was closed in 1962 because it needed repairs, but its declining ridership made its operator, the Duquesne Inclined Plane Company, doubt whether the expenses would be justified. Concerned residents of Mount Washington who used the incline organized the nonprofit Society for the Preservation of the Duquesne Incline and launched a fund-raising drive to get it repaired and reopened.
With a length of eight hundred feet, the Duquesne Incline is longer than the Monongahela Incline but less steep. It retains its vintage 1877 cars, which have been restored to reveal their original hardware and carved cherry panels trimmed with oak and maple. The upper station has a small gift shop and observation deck offering another dramatic view of the Golden Triangle. Like the Monongahela Incline, this one is also owned by the Port Authority of Allegheny County.
Riding one or both of Pittsburgh’s inclined planes is the best way to gain some understanding of how similar engineering features might have operated on early railroad systems such as the Allegheny Portage Railroad or the Danville & Pottsville Rail Road. You can witness the tension on the cable lifting your car and understand why fragile and fraying ropes were abandoned in favor of metal cables. You can admire the precision with which the counterweighted cars operate. You can experience the sensation that Charles Dickens described of witnessing scenes of daily life far enough below to be completely out of earshot. But it probably takes an excursion on the far scarier Johnstown Incline on a windy day to understand why Dickens chose the word “whirlwind” to describe the ride.
The Pennsy’s Old Station
Since about 1851, there has been a Pennsylvania Railroad station in the company’s Pittsburgh territory, which began around Eleventh Street and extended for many blocks east in an area along what had earlier been an old road to Philadelphia. The station that was burned by striking workers in 1877, the third station in that general location, was replaced that same year, but by the turn of the century, PRR president Alexander J. Cassatt decided to replace it with something bigger and better.
Daniel Burnham & Co. of Chicago was chosen in 1898 to design the structure. The result was a twelve-story brick and sandstone building—a skyscraper for its time—attached to a fanciful domed rotunda. While serving the utilitarian purpose of sheltering travelers being picked up or dropped off, the rotun
da’s dimensions made it monumental, and its ornamentation lent an Art Nouveau flair to its classical style. Beneath its dome, the sculpted faces of four lovely ladies smiled over the names of the four key cities that the Pennsy connected: Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and New York.
The PRR headquarters and passenger station in Pittsburgh was a skyscraper when it was designed in 1898.
Following the decline and demise of the Pennsy, the building was allowed to deteriorate, while Amtrak moved its Pittsburgh passenger station to a smaller space behind it. In 1988, the building saw rebirth as the Pennsylvanian, its interior transformed into apartments and offices, where one can find, according to its advertising literature, the “character, grace and splendor” of a previous age.
Daniel Burnham designed a waiting room for this building in the style of the Italian Renaissance, lined with marble and terra cotta and roofed with a skylight. The waiting room, with all its refurbished ornamentation, still occupies the first floor, but the typical visitor can get nothing but a glimpse of it through its glass front doors. Only those who live or work in the building can enter, unless they are guests at a function for which the former waiting room can be rented. The Amtrak station remains tucked beyond the Pennsylvanian, furnished modestly but adequately for the passengers it serves on the few trains that stop there each day.
The monumental rotunda was once how passengers entered the PRR passenger station.
The Strip
Around the corner from the Pennsylvanian and the Amtrak station, at the base of Eleventh Street, the old Pennsylvania Railroad’s Fort Wayne Bridge is now engulfed in a district that has seen great transformation. The eastern portion of this site has long been called Pittsburgh’s Strip district, since the area is a strip of land between Penn and Liberty Avenues. In 1868, the busy ironworks located there prompted writer James Parton to pen his famous comment comparing Pittsburgh to “hell with the lid off,” but Pittsburgh’s Strip now rivals Station Square as a place to dine and enjoy oneself.
Railroads of Pennsylvania Page 32