PART II: Main Thoroughfares
Pittsburgh: Main Thoroughfares and The Down Town District
Frederick Law Olmsted report to The Pittsburgh Civic Commission, 1910
page 84
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along the Castle Shannon railroad to the Library Road at Oak Station. The road should be built on the uphill side of the tracks to facilitate running branch roads to the high country east thereof. If the Sawmill Run valley shall become park land* this new street will be a border drive with a commanding location overlooking the park.
74. Fairhaven County Road. -- Just south of Fairhaven the county road climbs the hill to the Brownsville Road on a 10 per cent gradient. This can easily be reduced one half by shifting the road a little west, down the hillside, and reaching the high land twelve hundred feet farther south.
75. Carrick Connection from the South Hills tunnel. -- Perhaps the most important district to be reached, via the proposed South Hills tunnel, is that tapped by the Brownsville Road, i. e. Mount Oliver, Lower Saint Clair, Carrick and most of Baldwin township. To serve this district requires a thoroughfare connection past the bad gradients of the Beltzhoover ridge, to Brownsville Road at or beyond Charles Street.
There appear to be two possible routes for such a connection.
The shorter is as follows; along Washington Avenue east to Curtin Avenue, thence diagonally southeast to Climax Street, along Climax Street widened to a point about 200 feet east of Allen Street and thence diagonally southeast and through a short tunnel under the ridge to the corner of Charles and Amanda Streets. Amanda Street connects south to the Brownsville Road; and Charles Street, if widened straight through to the Brownsville Road, would furnish a reasonably direct connection with Arlington Avenue leading along the ridge to the east. This route could probably be brought to a very reasonable gradient, say 3-1/2 per cent as a maximum.
The other route is by a new street rising around the northerly end of the Beltzhoover ridge and connecting with Michigan Street. The latter would be widened and regraded, cutting through the two narrow ridges over which it now humps at Gearing Street and Estella Avenue. These streets would be carried over it by bridges at the present grade. The improved Michigan Street would be connected with Charles Street; and the latter would be widened and improved in gradient, with another
* Part IV, Section 7, page 119.
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