| Mount Washington | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Highest point | |
| Coordinates | 40°25′38″N80°00′40″W / 40.4271°N 80.0112°W Coordinates: 40°25′38″N80°00′40″W / 40.4271°N 80.0112°W |
| Geography | |
| Location | Pittsburgh |
Mount Washington is a hill in Pittsburgh, on the southern banks of the Monongahela River and Ohio River.
In the early history of Pittsburgh, Mount Washington was known as Coal Hill, but Coal Hill was actually on the south bank of the Monongahela River. [1] Easy access to the Pittsburgh coal seam's outcrop near the base of Mount Washington allowed several mines to operate there. Also, rock was quarried from the hill. Gray sandstone, for example, was quarried at Coal Hill for the second Allegheny County Courthouse.
By 1876, the name had been changed to Mount Washington, [2] and a year later, the view of the City of Pittsburgh was first drawn from Mount Washington. [3] Many photos of the Pittsburgh skyline are from Mount Washington, due to the elevation of the hill overlooking the river valley and Downtown Pittsburgh below. [4]
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The original switchback trails that wound up the steep slopes of Mount Washington were barely passable to a team of horses pulling a loaded wagon. Immigrants, predominantly from Germany, settled Mount Washington by the early 19th century and worked in the plants adjacent to the Monongahela River. They became weary of climbing steep footpaths and steps to their homes, from the river valley, after work. They remembered the standseilbahns (inclines) of their former country, and proposals were advanced to construct one or more of them along Coal Hill. The Monongahela Incline was the first of these to be built in 1869–1870. The Duquesne Incline opened to the public in May 1877, and it was one of four inclined planes climbing Mount Washington that carried passengers and freight to the residential area that had spread along the top of the bluff. As the hilltop communities were virtually inaccessible by any other means, many of Pittsburgh's inclines carried horses and wagons as well as foot passengers. All carried some light freight. A third incline, the Castle Shannon Incline, which closed in 1964, also served the hilltop community on Mount Washington with a lower station at the corner of East Carson Street and Arlington Avenue, just east of the present Station Square Transit Station. This incline was closed by its owner, the Pittsburgh Railways Company, just prior to all of their streetcar and bus routes being taken over by the Port Authority.
The Monongahela and Duquesne Inclines allow access to Mount Washington's overlook of the downtown area of Pittsburgh. Tourists experience the view while riding two of only a few remaining inclines in the country. The inclines remain the best way for thousands of Pittsburghers on Mount Washington to get to their jobs, entertainment and shopping in downtown Pittsburgh and Station Square.
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In the 1930s, a huge neon billboard sign, 226 feet wide and 30 feet high, was erected on the Mount Washington hillside near the Duquesne Incline tracks. Its earliest known advertisers were Iron City Beer, Clark's Teaberry Gum and WTAE-TV Channel 4. In 1967, the Alcoa aluminum company took over the sign and changed its plain background into a gray-and-white mosaic font pattern that spelled out "PITTSBURGH" when seen in the daytime, giving the sign new popularity. Alcoa became the sign's most well-known advertiser, remaining for the next 25 years. In 1992, Miles Laboratories moved their U.S. headquarters from Elkhart, Indiana to Pittsburgh and became the sign's new advertiser. In April 1995, the Miles brand name was absorbed by its parent company, Bayer AG and the sign was changed to feature the Bayer name and its circular cross logo. Bayer AG declined to renew their lease on the sign in 2014. As of May 2015, Lamar Advertising and the City of Pittsburgh were in disagreement over the proper use and maintenance responsibilities of the sign. [5]
In June 2016, Lamar Advertising erected a new vinyl sign over the old neon sign for the Sprint Corporation; a gold banner with black letters reading "Pittsburgh WINS with Black & Yellow". Many Pittsburgh natives reacted negatively to the wording "black & yellow" as opposed to the city's traditional "black & gold" moniker. On April 30, 2019, with Sprint's lease on the sign expired by that time, Lamar mounted a new sign bearing an American flag representing the National Flag Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Pittsburgh. The future of the long-rusted Pittsburgh sign and its neon lighting is unknown as there are no current plans for renovation.
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The first tunnel through Mount Washington was the Pittsburgh and Castle Shannon Tunnel, which began life as a coal mine but was extended through from the Mount Washington Coal Incline to Saw Mill Run in 1861. This was followed by the Mount Washington Transit Tunnel for Pittsburgh Railways and Wabash Tunnel for the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway, both in opening in 1904. The former continues in use by Pittsburgh Light Rail and the latter as a High Occupancy Vehicle tunnel.
The Liberty Tunnel through Mount Washington opened in 1928.
The Fort Pitt Tunnel beneath and through Mount Washington opened September 1, 1960.
Downtown Pittsburgh, colloquially referred to as the Golden Triangle, and officially the Central Business District, is the urban downtown center of Pittsburgh. It is located at the confluence of the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River whose joining forms the Ohio River. The triangle is bounded by the two rivers. The area features offices for major corporations such as PNC Bank, U.S. Steel, PPG, Bank of New York Mellon, Heinz, Federated Investors and Alcoa. It is where the fortunes of such industrial barons as Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, Henry J. Heinz, Andrew Mellon and George Westinghouse were made. It contains the site where the French fort, Fort Duquesne, once stood.
The Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) is a 150-mile (240 km) rail trail between Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Cumberland, Maryland. Together with the C&O Canal towpath, the GAP is part of a 335 mi (539 km) route between Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., that is popular with through hikers and cyclists.
The Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway was a railroad in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Wheeling, West Virginia, areas. Originally built as the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway, a Pittsburgh extension of George J. Gould's Wabash Railroad, the venture entered receivership in 1908 and the line was cut loose. An extension completed in 1931 connected it to the Western Maryland Railway at Connellsville, Pennsylvania, forming part of the Alphabet Route, a coalition of independent lines between the Northeastern United States and the Midwest. It was leased by the Norfolk and Western Railway in 1964 in conjunction with the N&W acquiring several other sections of the former Alphabet Route, but was leased to the new spinoff Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway in 1990, just months before the N&W was merged into the Norfolk Southern Railway.
The Duquesne Incline is a funicular located near Pittsburgh's South Side neighborhood and scaling Mt. Washington in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Designed by Hungarian-American engineer Samuel Diescher, the incline was completed in 1877.
The Monongahela Incline is a funicular located near the Smithfield Street Bridge in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Designed and built by Prussian-born engineer John Endres in 1870, it is the oldest continuously operating funicular in the United States.
Pittsburgh, surrounded by rivers and hills, has a unique transportation infrastructure that includes roads, tunnels, bridges, railroads, inclines, bike paths, and stairways.
The Pittsburgh Light Rail is a 26.2-mile (42.2 km) light rail system in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and surrounding suburbs. It operates as a deep-level subway in Downtown Pittsburgh, but runs mostly at-grade in the suburbs south of the city. The system is largely linear in a north-south direction, with one terminus just north of Pittsburgh's central business district and two termini in the South Hills. The system is owned and operated by Pittsburgh Regional Transit. It is the successor system to the streetcar network formerly operated by Pittsburgh Railways, the oldest portions of which date to 1903. The Pittsburgh light rail lines are vestigial from the city's streetcar days, and is one of only three light rail systems in the United States that continues to use the Pennsylvania Trolley (broad) gauge rail on its lines instead of 4 ft 8+1⁄2 instandard gauge. Pittsburgh is one of the few North American cities that have continued to operate light rail systems in an uninterrupted evolution from the first-generation streetcar era, along with Boston, Cleveland, New Orleans, Newark, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Toronto. In 2021, the system had a ridership of 27,975,600.
In 1763, King George III provided John Ormsby approximately 2,400 acres (9.7 km2) along the south bank of the Monongahela River as payment for his services during the French and Indian War. The land was then divided into four boroughs: South Pittsburgh, Birmingham, East Birmingham, and Ormsby. The four boroughs were annexed into the City of Pittsburgh in 1872. These areas, collectively, provided for the foundation of the South Side as it is known today.
The Wabash Tunnel is a former railway tunnel and presently an automobile tunnel through Mt. Washington in the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Constructed early in the 20th century by railroad magnate George J. Gould for the Wabash Railroad, it was closed to trains and cars between 1946 and 2004.
The South Shore is a neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania South Side. The South Shore consists of the area surrounding Carson Street, from the West End Bridge to the Liberty Bridge.
The Whitehall Branch was a rail line owned and operated by the Pennsylvania Railroad in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The line ran from Monongahela Branch near the 30th Street yard to a connection with the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad and the Allegheny and South Side Railway at 21st Street Yard in the South Side of Pittsburgh. The line was abandoned by Conrail and has been removed.
The Wabash Bridge was a railroad bridge across the Monongahela River at Pittsburgh. It was constructed between 1902 and 1904 by railroad magnate George J. Gould for his Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway.
Mount Washington Transit Tunnel is an important public transportation link in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The 3,492-foot (1,064 m) tunnel connects Station Square to South Hills Junction, and is used only by Pittsburgh Light Rail cars and buses of the Port Authority of Allegheny County. The tunnel changes 204.54 feet in elevation from its north portal at 750.36 feet above sea level to its south portal at 954.90 feet above sea level, resulting in a grade of 5.86%. With the cessation of bus service in the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel in 2019, the Mount Washington Transit Tunnel is the only tunnel in the United States shared by bus and rail services.
Samuel Diescher was a prominent Hungarian-American civil and mechanical engineer who had his career in the United States. After being educated at universities in Karlsruhe and Zurich in Europe, he immigrated to the United States in 1866 and settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. There he supervised construction of his first inclined plane. He later moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he worked with John Endres on the Monongahela Incline (1870), the first passenger incline in the city.
Caroline Endres Diescher, also known as Caroline Endres, was notable as one of the first female engineers in the United States. With her father John Endres, who was born and educated in Prussia, she designed two inclines in the Pittsburgh area: the Monongahela Incline and the Mount Oliver Incline, which opened in 1870 and 1871, respectively.
The Pittsburgh and Castle Shannon Tunnel, also known as the Mount Washington Coal Tunnel, was a 3 ft 4 in narrow-gauge railway tunnel under Mt. Washington.
The Mon Line is an 85-mile long Norfolk Southern rail line which runs along the Monongahela River for most of its route.
Media related to Mount Washington, Pittsburgh (mountain) at Wikimedia Commons
