When people ask me where I come from, I tell them Pittsburgh. However, this is only partly true. I grew up in what we in Pennsylvania call a borough — a self-governing community in the suburbs without an actual center to it.
The street my parents live on was built in 1950. What was there before it? “Woods” is what I was told. Our neighborhood was built as one large project. The developer was said to have named our streets for himself and his children. That’s all anybody seemed to know.
This idea of living where no one had ever lived before is one that has always fascinated me. Other places had history. Pittsburgh itself has plenty of history. But the suburbs? Our house’s original owners must have been like pioneers, except that they arrived in an Oldsmobile instead of a covered wagon.
Our house’s original owners must have been like pioneers, arriving in their Oldsmobile
Our street — a cul-de-sac on the side of a hill — comes off of a main road that runs along the top of a ridge. This road connects Pittsburgh with what was once a rival town 40 kilometers to the south. So the road had to have been well-traveled.
Without the Internet, I could only guess. But some online research has taught me the rest of the story.
The main road — like most older roads in America — was once an Indian trail. This one connected to other trails that went all the way to Virginia. Originally, such trails were paths made by animals through the forest undergrowth. Various native peoples probably traded and hunted along this one for hundreds of years.
By 1785, the Indians had been displaced, and the land was surveyed. Land grants were given to veterans of the Revolution. Some sold theirs; others built farms. Many held onto the deeds and waited for their property to increase in value.
What’s now the borough took its name from a tavern 1.5 km up the main road from where I lived. This establishment, built as early as 1804, was a popular stopping point for people traveling by stagecoach. Some of the patrons would walk down to a nearby racetrack for entertainment. In 1874, a popular hotel opened as well.
The racetrack became a golf course in 1919. The tavern changed owners and became a funeral home in 1937. And in 1950, the hotel was leveled to make room for what may have been Pittsburgh’s first shopping center.
The area right near my parents’ house offered more startling discoveries. I grew up without knowing that only 500 meters away, hidden behind a hillside we’d never explored, there stands a small Lutheran church that German-speaking farmers had built in 1800. Half that distance in the opposite direction, an oddly curved street turns out to be the path taken by a 19th-century railroad that stopped at the racetrack on its way to West Virginia.
My neighborhood really does have a history. Woods were there, but people almost certainly walked through them.
From this research, I can finally connect the names of present-day streets and buildings to individuals who lived long ago. But that raises a question in my mind.
In the 1700s, a whole town could be named for you if you lived there first. In the 1800s, a street would be named for you if you owned all the property around it. In the 1900s, a building would be named after you if you had it built. The radius of fame has been getting smaller and smaller. What’s left in the 2000s?
