Pittsburgh, Leader of All

Just in time for the Pittsburgh Summit, a rousing march by Alma Y. Johnson to use as our anthem. It was originally published in 1926 by Ms. Johnson herself. Click on the pictures for full-size JPEG pages that you can print and carry to your piano or parlor organ. The cover alone is worth your time: it bears a sketch of the Pittsburgh skyline as it appeared in 1926, and its black-and-gold colors show us that some things never change.

These are the lyrics, reprinted as they are punctuated in the original:

1. The Spirit of Progress took wing
O’er America’s land coast to coast,
From the East where of Pilgrims they sing
To the West, where of wonders they boast
From the North, where the lake waters gleam
To the South, where the Rio Grande flows,
And came to the place of her dreams,
Where the fire of genius glows.

CHORUS

Oh! Pittsburgh, City born of skill,
The child of river and of hill,
Heir to blessings from on high
The promise of time gone by.
Comrade gay to all who thrive
The hope of those who bravely strive,
Father of Industry, Patron of the Arts,
Pittsburgh! Leader of all.

2. The deeds of thy children are known
Where courage and faith have joined hand,
Thy standard of learning has flown
On the breeze, over ocean and land
Thy steel, bright and true, spans the world
’Cross river and mountain and glen
Thy banner of Progress unfurled
Leads on the souls of men.

CHORUS

Note: Father Pitt reproduces this music in the belief that its copyright has lapsed. If you happen to own the copyright, and wish Father Pitt to remove this material, please let him know.

The Old Custom House

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The old custom house in Pittsburgh as it appeared in 1857, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. In the middle nineteenth centuy, Pittsburgh was making its transition from a rather grubby industrial town to a magnificently grubby metropolis; note the difference in scale between the custom house and its neighbors.

Rare Surviving Victorian Lettering

The demolition of a building on Forbes Avenue downtown laid bare not only a splendid canvas for some rather unimaginative graffiti, but also half of a painted sign for a Victorian cafe that once occupied this spot. The part that survives is in an extraordinary state of preservation, so we can appreciate the rakish backslant of the bold but ornate letters that spell out “–mmel’s Cafe.”

Fireproof for Price of Fire Trap

Enlarged from a 1914 advertisement, an engraving of the J. O’Neil Sanitary Storage building, on Diamond Street, probably uptown. Fire Proof Storage for Price of Fire Trap! You carry your own key! The you-store-it industry is obviously nothing new.

Spiraling Crime

Everyone loves to talk about how much worse things are now than they were then. The golden-age fallacy causes us to imagine that our current state of sin and corruption is a decline from the high standards of the generations before us.

Thanks to the Library of Congress’ collection of printed ephemera, here is a notice (click to enlarge) that would have greeted hotel guests in Pittsburgh in the Victorian age, that time of strict morality and righteous virtue:

Before We Get That Subway…

An editorial cartoon by Jamieson of the Dispatch (click to enlarge) from 1906, when the need for a subway in Pittsburgh was already obvious and urgent. The subway downtown opened in 1985, seventy-nine years later.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Selling Brookline

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Brookline today is a pleasant city neighborhood whose central avenue, Brookline Boulevard, is the broadest commercial street in Pittsburgh–a fact that will greatly surprise visitors from other cities, where residential streets may well be broader than Brookline Boulevard. In 1905, it was mostly vacant lots, but this advertisement promises a glowing future that–for the most part–actually came to pass. The neighborhood will enjoy even greater advantages when it is taken into the city of Pittsburgh: “the vote has been taken, the matter is officially settled.” The acrimonious annexation of Allegheny was still very much up in the air at that point, and the public would need assurance that Brookline would not present similar difficulties.

I Love You, Lillian Russell

Lillian Russell may be the most celebrated beauty in the history of the United States.

Her fourth and last husband was a Pittsburgh newspaperman, which earned her a mausoleum in the Allegheny Cemetery. On Valentine’s Day, someone left glass pebbles spelling out “I love you” in front of the door.

Andrew Carnegie Donates a Library

Andrew Carnegie attributed his own success to the reading he did as a boy, and he thought the best way to give everyone the same opportunity was to give every community a library. Today public libraries are so ubiquitous that we forget what a novelty they were in those days, and some communities actually refused Carnegie’s gifts. This caricature makes the reason clear: Carnegie gave the library, but insisted that the community undertake the responsibility for maintaining it. In this drawing, Carnegie is a benevolent but enormous genie whose gift of a library is almost too much for the ordinary citizen to bear.

Interurban Lines in 1914

This 1914 map of “Electric Lines of the Pittsburgh District” (click to enlarge) shows the remarkable system of interurban cars that ran through every substantial town in southwestern Pennsylvania. The line that runs almost due south from Pittsburgh is still active as far as Library in the form of the 47L streetcar route.