Another typical town planning scheme was to line streets parallel and perpendicular to a waterfront to make a grid. Businesses that depend on river traffic spring up in a strip along the wharf to handle the boats, their cargo, and to sell goods to people going back and forth. The city grows out from the wharf. A through-road will often parallel the river to take advantage of the level route, it creates a strip of commercial businesses to serve both travelers and residents. These patterns repeated themselves throughout the 1800s as towns around Pittsburgh established themselves along the river plains.
Towns typically move out as they grow, extending their grid plan as they go.
Long after trains and steamboats revolutionized long distance travel, local traffic still depended on the muscles of humans and horses. Pittsburgh's neighborhoods were further confined by the practical limitations of hills, valleys, and rivers. Now only two survive the Monongahela and Duquesne Inclines , which flank Station Square . Collection of Susan Donley 1913 postcard of the Monongahela Incline showing the freight incline to the left of the passenger incline. Pittsburgh's inclines Even Downtown was confined between two rivers and Grants Hill during the 1800s.