Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-07-28
OLD-TIME LANDMARKS.
Foundries and Furnaces Stand on the Sites
of OIden Mansions-How Pittsburg
IL Spreading Into the
Dfsfricta.
WRITTEN FOR THE DIsrATcH.I

WRITTEN FOR THE DIsrATcH.l
The first fashionable suburb to which our
city's successful merchants retired in search
of country air and smooth shady lawns was
along the Allegheny river in the district
now embraced in the Eighteenth ward. 1t must
have been when the century was very young
that attention was first directed to this section
as place for country seats. The old stone
mansion, which stood until recently, short
distance within the Allegheny Cemetery gate
and known in olden time as the Bayard man.
sion, was built in the year 1906 Reuben Miller,
ST.. having done the stone work. This, with
the Ewalt mansion, which still stands on
Forty-fifth street, near Butler, and the Bishop
farmhouse, a little above the present site of
the Lucy furnace, were the principal land
marks in that section of'the three-quarters of
century ago.
1t must have been early in the thirties that
the tide began to set strongly in that direc-
ton as place for country seats. Among the
first to find country home there was DIR.
Mowry, one of the most prominent physicians
of the city in the olden time. Then followed
three of the prominent attorneys of the city,
Mr.. Collins Richard Biddle and Wilson Nc
Candless. In course of time these suburban
residents were reinforced by successful bust
ness men who were able to retire, and the
homes of Shoenberger, Patterson, Blssell Sam
pie, Davis, Roseberg, Graham and others
sprang up along what was, in the olden time
known as the Lower road, to distinguish it
the Forks or Thirty-fourth street. In the early
forties the section between the Allegheny Gem
etery and the Sharpsburg ferry became famil-
lar to one boy, and no scenes have ever since
seemed so beautiful and fair as those old time
suburban homes hidden in luxurious foliage
surrounded by velvet lawns They stand as
pictures in the memory which will never grow
old.
A few days ago I strolled among those old
boyhood haunts, and tried to find the old famil-
lar places pictured in memory, but for the most
@1,, -s.-...
Mowry is now occupied by Lucy Furnace and
the Keystone Bridge Works. The little cozy
retreat where Richard Biddle entertained his
friends, in the olden time, is now a part of
went to the front in the time of the nations
great need. Many of the boys who gathered
fruit and flowers along those then charming
hIllsides are at rest amid those same scenes.
Among them he who lut into immortal melody
"Come where my love lies dreaming" and
How my heart grows weary, far from the old
folks at home" 1t was during the dark
Manassas days that the body of Stephen Foster
was laid to its final rest in one of these shady
ravines while the band was rendering these
AS one now strolls through the Eighteenth
ward it is hard to conceive of the many spots
of beauty which in the long ago were to be seen
where to-day are mills, furnaces. immense oil
tanks and solid squares of houses where toilers
dwell.
The first white settler who located in this re-
gion built his cabin on the banks of Allegheny
close to where McCandless station now is. This
was George Croghan, the celebrated Indian
trader. At that cabin George Washington
spent night when he made his first visit to
this section as young Virginia surveyor. This
fact he mentions in his diary, describing the
Croghan home as four miles above the fort on
the eastern bank of the Allegheny. A century
after that entry in Washington's diary the
same section was the center of Pittsburg's
prettiest suburb. Now 1t promises soon to be-
come the busiest and most populous section of
the city and in few more years every vestige
of the olden time will have passed away.
YO