Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/160

Rh 150 PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH, the second largest city of Pennsylvania, and the leading iron, steel, and glass manufacturing centre of the United States, lies at the confluence of the Alle gheny and the Monongahela, which unite here to form the Ohio, 250 miles west by north of Philadelphia. The business quarter of the city is built on a nearly level triangular plain, between the two rivers, measuring about three quarters of a mile on each side back to the hills which rise to the east. The manufacturing establishments stretch for a distance of 7 miles up the Allegheny, 7 up the Monongahela, and 2 down the Ohio, and occupy the strip of low ground usually a few hundred feet broad between the river banks and the hills which generally face them. The slope of the hills to the east of the business quarter is closely built with residences and retail stores for the distance of a mile and a half, but the summits, 400 or 500 feet high, are partially unoccupied. Beyond the hills extends a rolling country which, for a space of about 5 miles long by 2 wide is occupied by the villas of the citizens. The hills the city is obtained from a view of the suburban quarters of the East End and the parks and residence quarters of Allegheny. And, all disfigurement and dirtiness notwith standing, it is full of interesting and striking sights. The interiors of its rolling-mills and glass-houses, and the views of the city from the surrounding hills, with the manufac turing quarters marked out by their smoke by day and their fires by night, are of a unique and picturesque char acter. Along the rivers are fleets of steamers towing barges laden with coal for consumption at this point and for shipment to the cities lower down. Joining the various quarters of the city are ten bridges for ordinary traffic and four railway viaducts, among which the Point Bridge and the Smithfield Street Bridge are fine examples of engineering in iron. Six inclined-plane railways afford access to the summits of the high hills. Pittsburgh is of historical interest from the struggle (1755-1758) for its possession between England and France in the Seven Years War, and the fact that the public and military career of George Washington was commenced with those campaigns (sec WASHING TON ). With the termination of that struggle in the capture of the facing the rivers are generally precipitous, and vary in ruins of Fort Duquesne by the British, the history of the place height from 300 to 600 feet, but at different points they becomes that of an ordinary frontier town. A new fort was erected rpppdp from thp rivpr banks and nfford sites for the ! and named Fort Pitt in honour of the prime minister whose energy had urged the war forward to its capture, and wrested the Ohio valley and Canada from French control. After one or two Indian wars, in which the post was threatened, and on one occasion nearly taken, Fort Pitt lost its military character and became a trading town. The first streets were laid out near the fort in 1764. and in 1769 the first survey of the unsettled lands in the vicinity was made for the proprietors, the heirs of William Perm, under the name of the manor of Pitts burgh. After the termination of the revolu tion, the legislature of Pennsylvania incor- porated Pittsbxirgh as a village on April 22, 1794, and on March 18, 1816, its charter as a city was granted. During the colonial period a dispute arose between Virginia and Penn sylvania as to the possession of the territory surrounding tlie town, and in the first few years of its history under the United States it attracted attention from its proximity to the famous &quot; Whisky Insurrection&quot; of Western Pennsylvania. After it had attained a popu lation &quot;of 30,000 it was visited on the 10th of April 1845 by a disastrous conflagration in which the buildings in the business centre, covering a space of 56 acres, and valued at $5,000,000 dollars, were consumed. Plan of Pittsburgh. In the Pittsburgh of to-day there is little besides names of streets, hills, and suburbs to recall the struggle which decided the Anglo-Saxon character of the country. The locality known as the Point, where Fort Duquesne stood, is covered with thickly built factories and dingy tenements. In a squalid and obscure court a portion of the wall of a blockhouse erected in 1763 by Colonel Boquet, one of the British commandants of Fort Pitt, still forms a part of a building, and on the wall of the staircase of Municipal Hall is a stone bearing the inscription with which that officer commemorated its erection. Immediately across the Monon gahela a range of precipitous hills some 500 feet high bears the names of Mount Washington and Duquesne Heights. On the first hill rising to the east of the level part of the city, a red granite court house, to cost $2,000,000, is in process of construction near to the spot where Major Grant was defeated and slain, and the new build ing will replace the brown stone structure which for many years fronted on the street bearing that unfortunate officer s name. Twelve miles away, the suburb long known as Braddock s Field and now as Braddoek s, attracts attention chiefly by the roar and glare of its great steel manufacturing establishment, Derivin&quot; its early importance in commerce from its position at the head of the Ohio, which was until 1855 the principal route between the middle States and the west and south-west, Pittsburgh has since obtained its greatest growth from the coal which under lies nearly all Western Pennsylvania. This has made the city and its immediate suburbs the most important manufacturing district in America, in both pig and bar iron, steel, glass, and copper. In 1883 Allegheny county produced 11 i per cent, of the pig iron produced in the United States, and 21 per cent, of the rolled iron and steel. The ducing, in 1883 suburbs of Lawrenceville (on the Allegheny), Hazlewood, and Birmingham (on the north and south banks respec tively of the Monongahela), which are within the muni cipality of Pittsburgh, and (on the north bank of the Allegheny and Ohio) for the city of Allegheny, which, with its separate municipal government and population of 78,000 inhabitants, is commercially and socially a part of Pittsburgh. The two cities together cover an irregular space of 9 miles between the extreme eastern and western points, with a breadth varying from 2 to 4 miles. From the character of its site Pittsburgh would natur ally be very attractive, but the free use of the bituminous coal which has been the principal agent in its development has so spoiled its beauty as to give it the name of the Smoky City. Not only do the manufacturing quarters show long lines of smoke-stained buildings, but the busi ness quarter, which is composed of rather narrow streets laid out early in the century, is mainly constructed of brick and iron, and in spite of the presence of some fine public buildings in granite and brown stone the municipal hall, the petroleum exchange, the new United States post office and court-house (1884), the new county court-house (1884), &c. has a generally grimy and unattractive appearance. A better opinion of the wealth and taste of 3 iron industry consists of 16 blast furnaces, pro- . 592,475 tons ; 32 rolling mills, producing 472,351