Christmas and New Year's Gift - 1829

A souvenir from Pittsburgh (by way of Cincinnati), some old west stories...

 

 

For a future post maybe...the contribution "The Last of the Boatmen" was composed by "N_____."    

 

The whole thing is worth the read...embedded for your viewing pleasure below - am I the only one who uses the embed feature from the archive?!:

The Challenge of Pittsburgh

I came across "The Challenge of Pittsburgh" on archive.org.  

The City of Pittsburgh's population in 1916 was about 550,000.   Now it's hovering around 300,000.

The City had 812 police officers in 1916.   Now we have about 858.

Prorating the arrests through the rest of 1916, there were likely about 50,000 arrests that year, half for drunkenness.  

It looks like there were about 48,000 arrests in 2004 (of people over age 18).  I wonder how many of those were for drunkenness?

City of Friends

 

 

 I didn't know where Reedsdale St. was until I looked it up:

 

From Harrison Mason's 1924 Some Pittsburgh memories; incidents and reminiscences, with a little history intermingled, of seventy years residence in the city at the forks of La Belle Riviere.

Cheer Up Pittsburgh

I'm not giving up on the canal boat idea. Destination Cleveland.     

And then there's Smithfield St. and 6th Avenue.   In German.

The view here:  Standing in across from Mr. Simonds' mountain glade (Mellon Square), looking down up 6th Avenue.   In 1787

A little later (circa 1815)

 

Later still. Is that a green roof on that building in the foreground?   (Note: corrected angle inserted):

I'm glad Google Earth has a sunlit frame for Mellon Square, all the more so after watching this:




Mellon Square: A Modern Masterpiece from Melissa McMasters on Vimeo.

Please Pittsburgh, watch that video.  You will be in a better mood.

Old Mad Men - and Women

Last week in honor of the National Day of Listening I got my friend Bob talking about his experiences in New York City in the late 1940's. He spent three years as the Public Information Officer for the First Army headquartered in New York.

I looked through the Library of Congress and found some old photos of the "Federal Advertising Agency," which may or may not have been involved with his work (I need to ask him). The Federal Advertising Agency, Inc. was not a government agency. I learned that from the oral history of Laura Elizabeth Seiler, a pioneer suffragist who was also a pioneer in advertising -- she retired (for the first time) in 1948 as a Vice-President of the Federal Advertising Agency, Inc.



I found this Time magazine blurb from 1927 that mentions it. The Federal Advertising Agency is also mentioned in this article from the Journal of Applied Psychology (1945). Also mentioned in Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940.

To Hear Your Banjo Play (1947)

Old Pittsburgh James Brown

 

Flem's Views of Old Pittsburgh  (1905)

 

Our Lincoln

The Lincoln program on "Nat Geo" last night covered the way Lincoln managed his public image.  

Here is our Lincoln:

The program also explored how he personally commanded troops in the field.  It brought to mind this from J.B. Corey's memoir:

J.B. Corey, 1860:

Remembering the newspaper editor's introduction to his memoirs:

 

More from the editors in Corey's own introduction:

 

Continued here:

St. Clair Lost and Found

This old Bethel kid has new respect for the St. Clair neighbors.   

Dennis Roddy's piece in the Post-Gazette on Arthur St. Clair was fascinating.  It's sad that St. Clair could be all but forgotten, but thanks to Roddy and the PG for telling the story.

This jumped out at me: 

"As important as he was, there is no biography of him today," said Martin West, director of the Fort Ligonier Museum.

I'm not sure if it qualifies as a full biography, but I found "a brief sketch" (1910) on the old Internet Archive.  It has only been downloaded 8 times (!)

From later in the sketch:

 

(Thank you to the Sloan Foundation for being the "digitizing sponsor" of the NOT_IN_ COPYRIGHT book.)

It's actually possible to read the entire 41 page book right here via this nifty embed feature on the archive:

History of Old Braddock Hospital

The Unwritten History of Braddock's Field (1917) contains the story of Braddock Hospital's founding.  Interesting that the idea for the hospital was first championed by a local newspaperman (his editor was not happy with it).

It took almost 12 years from the first donation until the opening.  They quickly realized it was way too small, so they set out to raise more funds for 2 more wings.

Here are some excerpts (click to enlarge if they appear too small):

- Snip -

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lest we forget...

 

Hotel Radio - Health Care Edition

More from Mayor Lawrence circa 1950:

A population of 1.5 million in the county supported:

There were 70 hospitals in the county back then, but just 1,800 physicians and 1,000 nurses.  That's amazing.


A quick check of the government's Hospital Compare site shows 17 hospitals in Allegheny County now (UPMC Braddock included) for our population of 1.2 million. How many physicians are there in the county now?  Nurses? 


The change since 1950 in terms of how our health care needs are met (or not) is pretty incredible.   So many tertiary care centers and ancillary services now, it's like comparing apples and oranges.
 

I love how radio stations were based in hotels back then.   Now we have retirement communities with their own TV stations.

Pittsburgh Veterans on Election Day

I am not a city resident, so I have no say in the Mayoral race.  

But I did like this video that Franco "Dok" Harris put up featuring his visit to a senior center in Brookline.  He talks about the potential to harness for good the experiences of "Pittsburgh Veterans" to develop "senior living technology."   Cool vision, but I hope for a low tech approach too -- promoting new ways to organize care and support for elders and persons with disabilities.

Here's a few from the personal vault of me wearing my Franco shirt (and football pants!) raking leaves in Bethel Park, circa 1979.

 

A Few General Facts