Category Archive: News Wire Services
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Former Mayor Tom Murphy heads into the record books (with an *)
A strange deal with the feds was the latest twist in a career that began with activism, ended with aloofness
An analysis by Dennis B. Roddy,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, July 04, 2006In a city renowned for political horse-trading, Tom Murphy preferred to travel by foot: walking door-to-door, retailing himself as a leader beyond politics, a youthful voice of reform in a town he said was slowly dying from doing things the old way.
Now, with a two-year federal probe ending in a strange agreement not to prosecute in return for Mr. Murphy’s acknowledgement that he traded a generous contract for the support of the firefighters union, a self-made reform politician goes into the record books with an asterisk.
This was a former seminarian and Peace Corps volunteer who in 1975 got chucked into the back of a police wagon when, he says, he stopped to help a group of youths who were being beaten by police.
In 1989, Mr. Murphy, then a state legislator from the North Side, came in a surprising second in the Democratic mayoral primary to incumbent Sophie Masloff, beating three others, including the favored county Controller Frank Lucchino.
Elected mayor four years later, he succeeded in building two stadiums and a new convention center. But in the course of those successes, the often aloof Mr. Murphy alienated old friends and newfound allies, finally losing both his political edge and his reformer’s label.
“The dark side of the force is strong. I don’t know how much it was Tom or how much it was the system that pushes people,” said Mark Fatla, who entered Mr. Murphy’s orbit during his days at the Community Technical Assistance Center, part of the stew of community groups with whom Mr. Murphy built his early base.
Mr. Fatla recalled Election Night 1993, when the room was filled with community activists drawn to the campaign.
“By the first re-election campaign, those persons were not active or their participation had been reduced,” Mr. Fatla said. The first signs of problems were budget cuts for community groups, he said. Later, it was access.
“I think as he became enmeshed in the bigger issues in the mayor’s office, it got harder and harder to talk to him, but it got much harder to hold his attention. And when you did talk to him you got the sense that his mind was already made up, that he wasn’t open any longer to what you were telling him. I think that was the change,” Mr. Fatla said.
To many who saw the transformation, Mr. Murphy’s disaster was caused by his straying from his political base and embracing another — the more traditional city politics with which he never felt comfortable and whose practitioners never quite accepted him.
Mr. Murphy and his chief lieutenant, Executive Secretary Tom Cox, cut their teeth as North Side community developers. In the idealistic atmosphere of the early 1970s, he should have fit in — but didn’t.
“Tommy was not a reformer. Tommy was a loner. There’s a big difference,” said Bob Cohen, a Shadyside consultant who preceded Murphy as director of the North Side Civic Development Council.
Tom Murphy was first elected a state representative in 1978. Mr. Cohen, who now advises clients in Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, views Mr. Murphy’s management style as both his strength and weakness. Appointed to the chairmanship of the Insurance Committee in the state House, Mr. Murphy disappointed party leaders by refusing to raise campaign funds from lobbyists who did business with the committee, a long-standing Harrisburg practice Mr. Murphy found repugnant. Caucus politics did not interest him.
“Tommy was the world’s worst politician,” said Mr. Cohen.
In 14 years as a state representative, Mr. Murphy strengthened his reputation as a neighborhood builder, but never became a coalition builder.
Instead of making the Harrisburg tavern circuit, where lobbyists and legislators share drinks and ambitious legislators map out deals, Mr. Murphy’s work in the house was literal. He spent his evenings rehabbing a rundown house he co-purchased with four other members for $4,000 at 1616 Green St. in Harrisburg.
“He would stay back and work on that house. He wanted the neighborhood to look better,” said Allen Kukovich, one of the residents at 1616 Green.
Mike Dawida, another legislator who entered the House the same year as Mr. Murphy, and with whom he aligned himself politically, recalled his colleague as an idealist capable of spotting important policy issues, but not adept at working the legislative levers to bring them about.
“He wasn’t always good at working with the Legislature. Others would have to take up the ideas,” Mr. Dawida said.
Mr. Murphy’s biggest weakness, Mr. Dawida said, was a failure to listen.
“Reformers tend to be people who listen. He didn’t cultivate that talent very well,” Mr. Dawida said. “It got a lot worse in the mayor’s office.”
Dan Cohen, who served on City Council during Mr. Murphy’s tenure as mayor, remembers a man who rarely initiated contacts on his own.
“There was an aloofness,” said Mr. Cohen, who now works as a telecommunications lawyer. “Was Tom a politician? Not as we typically use the term. He was the anti-politician.”
That anti-politician posture would sometimes frustrate Mr. Murphy’s supporters. His staff would sometimes be frustrated that, during fund-raisers, the mayor didn’t seem to know who his biggest donors were.
For that matter, he didn’t always know when his fund-raising events were scheduled, said Sal Sirabella, deputy mayor under Mr. Murphy.
On one occasion, Mr. Sirabella recalls Mr. Murphy returning from a run and saying, ” ‘You know what? I think we have a fund-raiser tomorrow. Isn’t it great that we don’t even know when our fund-raisers are?’ ”
Some Democratic ward leaders gradually became disenchanted. “The only time he knew my name was when he was up for re-election,” said Barbara Ernsberger, who has chaired Shadyside’s 7th Ward Democratic Committee since 1994 and who was elected city Democratic chair during Mr. Murphy’s administration.
She recalls putting in a phone call to the mayor’s office to suggest a meeting between Mr. Murphy and the Democratic committee.
“I was told we were not on his agenda,” she said.
A partnership with Allegheny County Commissioners Mike Dawida and Bob Cranmer helped Mr. Murphy build two new stadiums and a convention center. That, too, frayed.
One notable moment came Sept. 29, 1998, when government buildings along Grant Street were evacuated when an unexplained noxious odor wafted through. City and county emergency officials didn’t communicate with each other, even though they shared some of the same buildings. The ensuing turf battle between the city and county climaxed when Mr. Murphy announced he was calling off plans to merge the city’s 911 center with Allegheny County’s.
Mr. Dawida was stunned by the reaction.
“I guess what I’m saying is there were these issues that popped up from time to time when a little bit of listening would have done the guy some wonders,” Mr. Dawida said.
Relations with City Council were strained, thanks to both fiscal constraints and Mr. Murphy’s infrequent communication with council, said Dan Cohen.
Then came the publicly financed construction of two new stadiums despite taxpayer resistance, and the mayor’s controversial effort to revitalize Downtown’s Fifth and Forbes retail district.
Mr. Murphy wanted to seize properties and turn them over to a Chicago developer. “We asked for an open process, and in fact it was a closed process,” said Arthur Ziegler, president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. A Murphy enthusiast in 1994, Mr. Ziegler joined the many vocal critics of the Fifth and Forbes plan.
Mr. Dawida sees Fifth and Forbes as the turning point leading to Mr. Murphy’s slide.
“He had invested a lot of his capital in it because the Downtown of Pittsburgh was always a kind of showplace,” Mr. Dawida said. “It was the public perception that this was a very important thing and then it never happened.”
When retailer Nordstrom pulled out, Mr. Murphy abandoned the plan. But with his neighborhood base disenchanted, and his foes energized, the mayor had to build a new base.
He reached out to firefighters.
In April 2001, Mr. Murphy attended a meeting at Larry’s Roadhouse with his campaign manager David Caliguiri, Arlington neighborhood activist Michele Balcer and Pittsburgh Fire Fighters Local 1 President Joseph King.
On April 30, Mr. King wrote to union members that he’d reached agreement with the city on contract basics that would preserve jobs and raise wages between 4 percent and 8 percent. Mr. King later estimated that the raises would have cost the city $10 million to $12 million over four years, had the deal not been trimmed after 2002.
At around the same time, the 870-member union switched its endorsement from then City Council President Bob O’Connor to Mr. Murphy.
“I told Tom at the time I thought it was a bad deal. But he didn’t often listen,” Mr. Dawida said.
Mr. Sirabella doesn’t think the fire union’s endorsement decided the 2001 primary, which Murphy won by 699 votes.
Nonetheless, had 350 people — firefighters or otherwise — moved from Mr. Murphy’s to Mr. O’Connor’s column, the former wouldn’t have had to contend with a budget meltdown and, presumably, last week’s odd settlement that suggested Mr. Murphy had done something if not indictable, at least wrong.
To some old friends, it seems almost as if Mr. Murphy’s lack of skill in the kinds of insider dealing he so flatly rejected starting with his Harrisburg days, might have left him unprepared for the junctures at which politics and governance sometimes merge.
“It would seem to me that there are some people who might be what’s described as wheeler-dealers in political jargon, who might know how to handle those situations better, perhaps, than someone who’s not used to figuring out how to deal with tough contracts when there’s an election coming up,” said Mr. Kukovich. “It takes someone with rare skill. For someone who’s not adept at that sort of thing, I guess it can be a problem.”
It remained for Mr. Dawida to sum up the paradox of his old friend: “He was bullheaded, stubborn and opinionated. But he wasn’t ever dishonest. This kind of thing implies that he was and he wasn’t.”
(Staff writer Rich Lord contributed. Dennis Roddy can be reached at 412-263-1965 or droddy@post-gazette.com. )
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Carnegie Library repairs pegged at $2M
By Tony LaRussa
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, July 3, 2006A lightning bolt that struck the clock tower of the Allegheny Regional branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in April caused at least $2 million in damage to the historic North Side building.
The repair cost will be covered by insurance, library spokeswoman Suzanne Thinnes said.Library officials have been working with the city, which owns the building and leases it to Carnegie Library, to come up with specifications for repairs. Officials do not know when work will begin. The library has been closed since the lightning strike.
The lighting, which hit the building at 5 Allegheny Square about 8 p.m. April 7, exploded a pyramid-shaped portion at its top, blasting gaping holes in the roof.
A chunk of granite weighing several hundred pounds ripped into the second-floor lecture hall, imbedding itself — point first — in the floor. A piece of stone weighing about 2,000 pounds had to be pulled out of the attic, where it wiped out the building’s heating and cooling system.
Water lines also were damaged, sending a stream cascading through parts of the building. The building was closed at the time, and nobody was injured.Library patrons, who have been without a facility for nearly three months, soon will have access to the library in the Woods Run section, which has been closed for renovations.
“We don’t have an exact date yet. We should be opening (Woods Run) early in July,” Thinnes said.
Library officials have had no luck finding a temporary replacement for the North Side library, Thinnes said.
“We’ve looked at probably 20 buildings, but none of them was suitable,” she said. The space would not have to be as big as the 42,000 square feet that was lost, but it must be wired for Internet use and be accessible to people with physical disabilities.
The Allegheny Regional branch was the fourth most-visited library in the Carnegie network, Thinnes said. Last year, it circulated 76,000 items and had more than 96,000 visits.The branch has about 100,000 items in its collection.
The building also was used to store historic collections, including directories, meeting minutes, photos and newspaper clippings of Allegheny City, a portion of the North Side that existed as a city separate from Pittsburgh until 1906. A private company has been hired to make sure those rare documents are protected, Thinnes said.
Despite the extensive damage to the building, none of the library’s collection was damaged.
The Romanesque-style building, which opened in 1890, was designated a historic landmark by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation in 1970. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
Tony LaRussa can be reached at tlarussa@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7987.
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Book salutes closed school – Pupils take their memories with them
By Al Lowe
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Thursday, June 29, 2006Jonah Bayer, 10, of Allentown, remembers the bowling alley as the “coolest place” at Bishop Leonard School.
The school closed June 7 and will merge with St. Mary of the Mount in Mount Washington, opening Aug. 28.
Bishop Leonard in Mount Oliver was formed from a previous merger, and is affiliated with St. John Vianney parish. Like St. Mary, it served pupils in kindergarten through eighth grade.
The Diocese of Pittsburgh said the name of the merged school is Bishop Leonard-St. Mary of the Mount Academy. Pupils will go to the St. Mary building on Bingham Street in Mount Washington.
On the last day, copies of a book, “Bishop Leonard Memories,” compiling their contributed written memories, were distributed to the 224 pupils. Jonah’s memories were among them.
“The kids were really excited taking away something with such good memories of their school,” Principal Cindy Baldridge said.
The bowling alley was a favorite memory for many.
“Not too many grade schools have them,” wrote Nina Ricciardi, 11, of South Side. “From the outside, it looks really small, but inside, you can tell how big it is. It’s really big for the kind of space it is in.”
The four-lane alley had been unused for years but was refurbished in 2004 through the efforts of teacher Patty Nelson and other volunteers and was dedicated a year later as a recreation center, featuring air hockey and ping-pong tables. It was used for occasional gym classes, Spirit Days and the Bowling Club.
Some other memories shared by the pupils for the book:
“I experienced everything from scraped knees to a broken heart on that playground,” wrote Maegan Wagner, 13, of Mount Oliver.
“My favorite building is the cafeteria. I love food,” wrote Brandon Lewis, 12, of Arlington.
“What people don’t usually notice is the engraved statue [of St. Joseph] near the front door of the school. When I first came to this school in fourth grade, that was the first thing I noticed. I stared at it and it stared back at me. In seventh grade, we had to make a poem and picture about something. I found that same beautiful, detailed, though faded and chipped statue to draw,” recalled Jami Szalla, 12, of South Side.
“The squeaking bleachers have a vibration. I like it when it does that because at Mass, I get tired and it wakes me up,” wrote Dillon Secilia, 11, of Bon Air.
“I’ll miss the church, the lunchroom with the big windows, the creaky floors, the so-so view of downtown from Room 408, the stairs never ending, the long hallways and, most of all, the school,” wrote Jamie Miller, 12, of South Side.
“My favorite part of the school was the tunnel that connects the school to the cafeteria. I know no other school will have a tunnel,” wrote Dustin Miller, 10, of Bon Air.
“The most meaningful spot for me would have to be the four seats in the cafeteria. Every lunch, my friends and I shared laughs, gossip and, of course, lunches there. We would torture each other and never hold a grudge. We didn’t care who else was at the table or what was going on around us. We were in our world,” wrote Drew Miller, 13, of Bon Air.
The books were underwritten by PNC and were published by the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, with funding support from South Side Local Development Co.’s Neighborhood Assistance Program/Compehensive Service Program and the Grable Foundation.
(Al Lowe is a freelance writer. )
Copyright © PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved.This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Drive-through proposal prompts turnout
By Richard Byrne Reilly
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, June 29, 2006Opponents of a proposed Walgreens drive-through in Point Breeze blasted developers and urged City Council to reject a request to alter zoning laws that would permit three 100-year-old homes to be demolished for the project.
“We want to see viable, creative development in our neighborhood, not a condescending lesson about what is good or bad for it,” said Bill Anthes, who recently moved to Pittsburgh with his wife to pursue a doctoral degree at Carnegie Mellon University.Protesters packed a meeting Wednesday at the City-County Building, Downtown, waving fluorescent red and green placards that said, “Don’t Re-Zone Park Place.” Resident Joan Rabinowitz handed out freshly baked cookies bearing the same slogan.
Park Place residents said rezoning the site at Penn and South Braddock avenues would drive down property values and hurt the character of the neighborhood, where many homes are 100 years old. Paradise Development Group wants to demolish three houses for a two-lane drive-through developers say will alleviate traffic congestion.
City planners voted to allow the rezoning. Council will decide next week whether to approve it, said Council President Luke Ravenstahl.
Brandon Miles, a project manager in Pittsburgh for the Tampa, Fla.-based Paradise Development Group, said he has tried to accommodate Park Place residents’ concerns and has worked to meet city code requirements for the project. Paradise has signed letters of intent with the three families to sell the homes that would be razed, Miles said.
“We’ve worked to protect the welfare and integrity of the neighborhood,” Miles said.
Asked what might happen if council rejects the rezoning, Miles said he was “reserving judgment until a decision is made.”
Arnold Horovitz, a land-use attorney representing the Greater Park Place Neighborhood Group, said residents don’t necessarily oppose a Walgreens in the neighborhood, just the drive-through.
The demolition, he said, would be “out of character with the neighborhood.”
Arch Pelley, an urban planner who attended the hearing, said the issue comes down to compromise.
“The question is, ‘What is the best way to develop this site?’ ” he said.
Richard Byrne Reilly can be reached at rreilly@tribweb.com or (412) 380-5625.
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Store plan draws ire
By Richard Byrne Reilly
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, June 27, 2006Angered by a developer and the city’s planning process, people fighting a proposed drive-through for a Walgreens drug store in Point Breeze plan to attend a special City Council meeting Wednesday.
Their opposition centers on the fact that the two-lane, 24-hour drive-through for the Penn Avenue store would eliminate three Victorian homes in the neighborhood’s Park Place section.“Number one, the drive-through is not necessary. And two, we fear the loss of the residential properties will be a serious detriment to the neighborhood,” said John Mayberry, president of the Greater Park Place Neighborhood Association.
Council will hold a public hearing at 1:30 p.m. and will vote next month whether to approve zoning that would allow the store to be built. The Planning Commission has recommended the rezoning.
Opponents also are riled about planning commissioner Todd E. Reidbord’s role in the process.
Reidbord is president of Walnut Capital, a Shadyside investment company that previously developed a property that had Walgreens as its anchor tenant, raising concerns about conflict of interest, said Arnold Horovitz, an attorney representing Mayberry’s civic group. Reidbord did not disclose his previous affiliation with the drug-store chain when the Planning Commission considered the plan, and he shouted down and cut short residents when they tried to voice their opposition, said Horovitz and others who attended the meeting. Reidbord voted to recommend rezoning April 4, when the commission backed the move 7-1.
“Our real problem was his attitude at the previous meeting when he tried to stop opponents from speaking,” Horovitz said. “It was an aggressive effort to control the meeting because opponents couldn’t make their case.”
Reidbord did not return calls for comment.
City Planning Director Patrick Ford deemed the concerns regarding Reidbord valid.
“The community is correct. (Reidbord) should have recused himself and disclosed the conflict,” Ford said, referring to Reidbord’s company.
Ford said the conflict-of-interest issue would be discussed at Wednesday’s hearing and that “a number of residents” complained about Reidbord’s behavior in the meeting.
City planning staffers recommended approving the zoning change to the Planning Commission, Ford said.
Park Place resident Jim Hart said the integrity of the neighborhood would be affected if the three antique homes are torn down.
“We have to take a stand now, before it’s too late,” Hart said.
Richard Byrne Reilly can be reached at rreilly@tribweb.com or (412) 380-5625.
Back to headlines
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South Side wins national preservation award
By Diana Nelson Jones,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Monday, June 19, 2006The South Side has received one of three national awards for transforming its economy while preserving its history.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation recognized the neighborhood, along with Dubuque, Iowa, and Roslindale Village, Mass., with an Urban Pioneer award at a recent Main Street conference in New Orleans.
All three winners were among the first seven Main Street designees when the program was established in 1985. About two decades earlier, the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation had begun agitating for historic restoration for the South Side.
“We began to educate residents on the importance of what was under their aluminum siding and InsulBric,” said Cathy McCollom, chief programs officer with Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. “We held a lot of meetings and went door to door.”
Architect John Martine bought a building on Carson Street in 1974, one year after establishing his practice in Oakland, and lived above his office, across from the Birmingham Bridge. The South Side wasn’t languishing then. The chamber of commerce membership included Jones & Laughlin and U.S. Steel.
“But people were not flocking to the South Side, and it was an area people didn’t see as an investment,” said Mr. Martine. It had traditional merchants — a five-and-dime, clothing and appliance stores, bakeries — but by the late ’70s, artists and antiques shops started to appear, “to some extent what is happening in Lawrenceville today,” he said.
“Storefronts had undergone lots of remuddling,” he said, “with some very unsympathetic things done to the ground-floor facades” — garish signs, small windows. The chamber established a committee to campaign for facade restorations and the city authorized paying Mr. Martine $50 a building for historic renderings for merchants.
“We did get a number of people to fix up their storefronts at their own cost,” he said. In fact, merchants spent a collective $200,000, with which the chamber leveraged a matching grant from the city for streetscape improvements. The Birmingham mural at 12th Street, a mid-block parklet across from the post office and brick handicap ramps resulted, from 10th to 24th streets.
Mr. Martine then produced a booklet, “Streetfront and Storefront: A Planning Guide for East Carson Street,” a design and marketing tool, he said, “to get people to invest.”
New residents began teaming with longtime residents to form the Birmingham Union, which lasted about six years, “long enough to get things going.”
South Side Local Development Co. was established in 1982 to counteract the increasing number of vacant buildings in the twilight of steel and two years later won Carson Street a place on the National Register of Historic Places. The Main Street designation came the next year.
(Diana Nelson Jones can be reached at djones@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1626. )
Copyright © PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved.This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Building to be converted into office condominiums
By The Tribune-Review
Sunday, June 18, 2006The owner of the six-story building at 610 Wood St., Downtown, plans to convert the building into office condominiums, said Loretta Taylor, an agent with Beynon & Co., who will market the building. At this time, no price has been set and potential buyers are being offered an opportunity to lease space in the building prior to purchase. Rittenhouse Commons of Philadelphia, the owner, will make improvements to the structure, such as the exterior facade and the elevator, and have a model unit available within four to six weeks. CVS Pharmacy, which occupies the ground level, will remain.
• The former Pitt-DesMoines site on Neville Island has been purchased by Frank Bryan Inc. for $1.2 million in what the company said is an expansion of the firm’s concrete operation currently on Pittsburgh’s South Side. Thomas J. Bryan III, identified as a Bryan shareholder on a deed filed in the office of Allegheny County recorder of deeds, would not disclose what type of expansion is planned nor what affect the new site would have on the Pittsburgh operation. The 16.2-acre site, located off Neville Road and along the Ohio River, was sold by CB&J Co., a Texas-based firm. Bryan has been at the South Side location since it purchased the former Dravo Corp. plant there in 1980.
• Matrix Solutions has relocated its headquarters from Ross to 901 Pennsylvania Ave., North Shore. The firm, which provides sales strategy management software for the media industry, currently has 30 business and technology professionals and has the ability to add 25 additional staff at the new office, a 15,000-square foot warehouse-style building, formerly a valve manufacturing facility.
• Burns & Scalo Real Estate Services Inc. acquired a 3.85-acre site in Starpointe Industrial Park for Miller Plastic Products Inc., and will build the 40,000 to 50,000-square-foot manufacturing and office space in the Hanover Township, Washington County complex. Construction will begin this summer.
• The 30-year transformation of East Carson Street, South Side, was the topic at the recent 2006 National Main Streets Conference in New Orleans and featured three local residents as speakers. The discussion, “Transforming a Local Neighborhood into a Regional Destination,” was by John A. Martine of Strada architectural firm, Cathy McCullom of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, and Tom Hardy, formerly with the South Side Local Development Corp.
• Old School Partners, LP, headed by Alfred E. Thomson IV, has purchased a warehouse at 10 Allegheny River Blvd., Penn Hills, for $900,000 from Fagen’s Inc., according to a deed filed in the office of Allegheny County recorder of deeds. A small portion of the property is located in Verona. Plans are to demolish the structure and build a state-of-the-art 65,000-square-foot Atlas Self-Storage facility. Two other Atlas self-storage facilities are located on Saltsburg Road, Penn Hills, and in the North Hills.
• Construction is under way on Pinehurst Village, a new carriage home community located within the Seven Oaks Country Club complex in Beaver County. There will be 39 units on 15 acres, developed by TDS Group, a carriage home specialist, said Darlene Hunter, Howard Hanna Real Estate Services New Homes South/West manager, who is marketing the units. Four models are available, starting at $198,900.
• Centria, based in Moon Township, recently received the Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence for saving $800,000 in energy costs at its Ambridge plant. Centria installed an oven system that features state-of-the-art heat exchangers to rapidly dry painted steel coils. The system made it possible to capture emissions of volatile organic compounds produced by drying paint and pump them into an incinerator to produce fuel.
Contributor: Sam Spatter
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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A giant forged
By David M. Brown
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, June 11, 2006A century ago, Western Pennsylvania’s sister cities of Pittsburgh and Allegheny were locked in a bitter battle that would profoundly alter the region’s future.
After decades of pushing to grow beyond its boundaries between the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers, Pittsburgh — the state’s second-largest city after Philadelphia — saw a chance to expand into a metropolis near the top rung of great American cities.
Allegheny — the third-largest municipality, situated north of Pittsburgh on the banks of the Allegheny and Ohio rivers — found itself in an outright struggle for survival. At stake: identity and autonomy after nearly a century of growth and development on its own.
On June 12, 1906, Pittsburgh won, swallowing Allegheny in a forced annexation.
Today, traces of resentment linger in the city’s North Side neighborhoods that once belonged to Allegheny City.
Mary Wohleber, 89, of Troy Hill, longs to carry old Allegheny City’s flag across Clemente Bridge to announce secession — should that day ever arrive.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s still Allegheny. I’m an Alleghenian,” says Wohleber, whose parents and grandparents opposed annexation.
“We could not possibly have won, because it was stacked. It could not be done today. It would be illegal,” she said. “Many people felt very, very bad about it.”
Unquestionably, the 1906 election was set up to favor annexation.
But a younger generation of North Side natives, such as Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato, 45, of Brighton Heights, say the action, in the long run, strengthened the region.
Now that its population has shrunk — from 534,000 in 1910 to 322,000 in 2004 — and Pittsburgh is still combatting economic decline from the downfall of the steel industry, the city’s diverse neighborhoods need each other more than ever, Onorato said.
“The good news is that here we are in 2006, and the North Side is becoming an extension of Downtown — new development, new business buildings, (and) Federal Street is rebounding,” Onorato said.
A Greater Pittsburgh
The Allegheny City Society and Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation are planning programs for next year to recognize the 100th anniversary of the merger, which officially took place in 1907.
It was one of the most controversial annexations in U.S. history. Voters flocked to polling places that June day in 1906 — many wearing pins proclaiming “Yes” or buttons defiantly answering “No” — and when it was over, Pittsburgh’s national ranking among cities jumped from 12th place to 7th. Allegheny City disappeared.
Annexation fever also was gripping other cities, including New York and Boston, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was considered part of a progressive movement to bring reforms to urban life. Allegheny, too, was annexing its smaller neighbors.
“In the minds of the people that supported the annexation, it wasn’t that they wanted to doom Allegheny City. They wanted to make a bigger and better city,” said John Canning, a North Side resident and retired Mt. Lebanon High School history teacher. Canning is a director of the Allegheny City Society, a group that works to preserve the history and landmarks of old Allegheny.
In 1906, debate on both sides of the river was passionate and loud.
H.J. Heinz, the food-processing tycoon whose plant was located in Allegheny City, spoke out in favor of consolidation at a rally attended by an estimated 4,000 people. “Let us stand before the world as we are, a great municipality, instead of an aggregation of villages,” Heinz said in news accounts of the time.
“The desire of Pittsburgh for its annexation was now a mania,” wrote local historian Charles W. Dahlinger, who witnessed the political battle, in his 1918 history, “Old Allegheny.”
“Newspapers which formerly had been lukewarm in their advocacy of annexation, came out strongly in its favor. The politicians in power in the state were also favorable,” Dahlinger wrote.
On the other hand, “Allegheny was proud of her existence, and her death struggles were severe. The consolidation savored strongly of force which the people resented,” he wrote.
Pittsburgh had been trying to annex Allegheny City, along with neighborhoods in the South Side and East End, for nearly 70 years.
Allegheny City’s eight square miles of space was particularly appealing to Pittsburgh, which needed room for industrial expansions and more residential neighborhoods. Allegheny also contained a sprawling park, room for other parks, and key railroad and water transportation links.
Alleghenians, though, placed importance on independence, and many feared a consolidation would result in higher taxes. In 1867, voters rejected the idea of a merger, and several later attempts also failed.
But in early 1906, the rules changed. State legislators quietly hurried a consolidation bill through, with the blessings of Gov. Samuel W. Pennypacker, a reform advocate.
Before, Allegheny City’s fate was tied to what a majority of its residents wanted. The Greater Pittsburgh Act of 1906 authorized a referendum that would count the total votes for and against annexation in both Pittsburgh and Allegheny as a whole, with an overall majority settling the issue.
Allegheny City, with half Pittsburgh’s population, essentially lost the day Pennypacker signed the bill. The referendum carried even though nearly two out of three Allegheny residents opposed it.
They continued the battle with court challenges, until the U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 18, 1907, upheld the Greater Pittsburgh Act as a legal annexation.
Allegheny City receded into history.
A lingering, prosperous city
“When I was a kid,” recalls 81-year-old North Side native Don Graham, now of McCandless, “people thought of the North Side as part of Pittsburgh.”
In the 1930s, an aura of Allegheny City lingered in historic landmarks, Graham said — such as the ornate Allegheny Post Office at the corner of West Ohio and North Diamond streets; the Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny, a gift of industrialist Andrew Carnegie, who got his start in Allegheny City; and the famous Market House, where ladies from Millionaires’ Row on Ridge Avenue once mingled with housewives from other sections of the city to buy fresh vegetables, poultry and other goods.
Although many Alleghenians crossed bridges daily to jobs in Pittsburgh, Allegheny City was not just a bedroom community or suburb, historians say. It was a distinct city with its own colorful history.
“It had a very strong sense of place,” said Edward K. Muller, a University of Pittsburgh professor and authority on urban history.
North Side resident Lisa Miles, a member of the Allegheny City Society, is writing a history of Allegheny City to be published in connection with the annexation’s centennial. The book, titled “Resurrecting Allegheny City: The Land, Structures & People of Pittsburgh’s North Side,” is sponsored by the History & Landmarks Foundation and paid for by the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission and the Buhl Foundation.
“Here we have twin cities, the second- and third-largest cities in the state, sitting right next to each other,” Miles said. “One was no lesser to the other, in terms of all the impressive statistics that make for a strong city — the output for business and industry and the accumulated wealth — except Pittsburgh was bigger.”
A coffee-table style book published in 1904, “In and About Allegheny,” for J.G. McCrory & Co., a five-and-dime store chain that had an outlet in Allegheny City, described the city as “beautiful and prosperous.”
“The enviable position of the city at the junction of the great rivers and near the immense fuel supply of Pennsylvania has given a wonderful impetus to the development of manufacturing enterprises,” the writer boasted. “Allegheny is one of those municipalities where progress in culture and refinement has accompanied prosperity. This is made manifest by her fine churches, schools, public library, hospitals, and benevolent institutions.”
Incorporated as a borough with about 1,000 residents in 1828, the population climbed to 10,000 by 1840, when Allegheny was designated a city, and shot to nearly 150,000 before it was annexed by Pittsburgh.
Allegheny City was the location of two institutions of higher learning, the Allegheny Theological Seminary and Western University of Pennsylvania, the forerunner of the University of Pittsburgh. It had prominent scientists, writers and musicians, including composer Stephen Foster, whose father was an Allegheny mayor.
A paid fire department and police force kept the community safe. A diversified base of manufacturers and thriving business community produced goods and services. For recreation, people flocked to Exposition Park, home of baseball’s first World Series between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston American League Baseball Club — now the Red Sox — in 1903. The city also had the original Phipps Conservatory, a gift of Henry Phipps, Andrew Carnegie’s partner.
Harold Haney, 83, of McCandless, grew up near Allegheny General Hospital, a landmark that remains.
“In my time, the North Side was Pittsburgh,” Haney said. “Old Allegheny faded during my dad’s time. My dad was born in 1889.”
David M. Brown can be reached at dbrown@tribweb.com or (412) 380-5614.