logo

BRIDGES AND
TUNNELS OF
ALLEGHENY COUNTY,
PENNSYLVANIA

Introduction
List by Location
List by Design
List by Name
List by Use

Search This Site

Article Index

Frederick Law
Olmsted
report to the
Pittsburgh Civic Commission

"Pittsburgh:
Main Thoroughfares and The
Down Town District"
1910

00 Cover Page

00 Contents

01 Down Town
   District

02 Main
   Thoroughfares

03 Surveys and
   a City Plan

04 Parks and
   Recreation
   Facilities

05 Special
   Reports

06 Index


PART II: Main Thoroughfares
Pittsburgh: Main Thoroughfares and The Down Town District
Frederick Law Olmsted report to The Pittsburgh Civic Commission, 1910


page 85

Contents : Previous : Next


separation of grades at Knox Avenue where there is now a sharp hump in the Charles Street profile. Instead of following Charles Street through to a right-angle corner at Amanda, the thoroughfare might curve at the end so as to join Amanda Street a block or two farther south. This route is at least two thousand feet longer than the other, but if the mouth of the tunnel is not dropped too low, it can probably be brought to a maximum gradient of not over 3-1/4 per cent.

In the absence of complete and accurate information as to grades and distances throughout these two routes, it is impossible to say which is to be preferred. If, upon further study on the basis of reliable topographical data, it should develop that a materially better gradient can be secured by the longer route, that line would be the more desirable. But if the saving in gradient should prove to be very slight, perhaps not more than a third or a half of one per cent, it is believed that the shorter route, that via Climax Street, should be adopted.

76. Arlington Avenue and Washington Avenue Connection. -- Arlington Avenue is the direct road east from the junction of Washington Avenue and the Brownsville Road, but between this point and South Eighteenth Street it has two bad gradients, 7 per cent and over. To get a good cross-town connection without such gradients and at the same time to give better access to the Mount Oliver incline, Washington Avenue should be widened east from the Knoxville incline to Amanda Street,* and thence cut through on a curve to the corner of Angelo and Mount Oliver Streets. By widening Mount Oliver and Freeland Streets, by rounding off the east corner of Amanda and Freeland Streets and by cutting back the southwest corner of Freeland and South Eighteenth Streets, a nearly level, though somewhat circuitous, connection can be secured between Washington Avenue on the west and Arlington Avenue on the east.

77. South Eighteenth Street. -- Plans have been proposed, by the Bureau of Surveys, to widen, pave and otherwise improve South Eighteenth Street from the South Side up the hill to Arlington Avenue. The gradient, which is now about 7 per cent, cannot be improved without very radical and costly changes in the street location; and since the proposed South Hills tunnel will reach, on easy gradients, practically all the hilltop territory now served by

* Improvement to this point is provided in the current bond issue.


Contents : Previous : Next


Submit info

Website Introduction

Last modified on 22-Dec 1999
Design format: copyright 1997-1999 Bruce S. Cridlebaugh
Original document: Frederick Law Olmsted, 1910