Cul-de-sac streets create Pittsburgh's hidden neighborhoods
One of the delights of walking in Pittsburgh is the surprise of encountering a hidden or unexpected neighborhood. There are examples in most parts of our hilly city. But some of the best surprises are in just one small area of town — near to Ellsworth and Amberson avenues and Bayard Street in Shadyside.
Many of us drive on these thoroughfares regularly. But if you don't get out and walk, you may not realize that branching from them are some of the most beautiful small streets in Pittsburgh — or anywhere else for that matter. These are the dozen or so cul-de-sac streets of Shadyside.
Because they are not through-streets, they are easily overlooked. In simple terms they are “dead ends.” But as a result, they also tend to be quiet and private. Some are very special places.
They are “private spaces in public places,” says Robert John Jucha, a retired book editor who wrote his doctoral thesis in 1980 on the development of Shadyside and sometimes leads tours for the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
Some of the cul-de-sac streets are designated landmarks. One is well-known among urban planners and students because it's the first street illustrated in an influential book about the world's “Great Streets.” Others are lined with some of the most expensive homes in the city. And still others were developed with nearly identical houses, row houses or duplexes, giving to each an unusually consistent architectural identity of its own.
Shadyside was developed in the first half of the 19th century with fairly good-sized estates. Well above the rivers and the mills, it was an area of clean air and country living for wealthy Pittsburghers. But as the city grew in the later 1800s, Jucha says, Shadyside became a booming suburb based mainly on the coming of the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1860, the railroad built a station to serve what it called “Shady Side,” offering a 20-minute commute to Downtown. Two more stations were added in the area by 1872.
In 1868, Shadyside was annexed into the city, and by 1900, it was well-served by several streetcar lines, making commuting to the Downtown for businessmen and professionals even easier.
At that point, some of the owners of the early large estates, or their heirs, took advantage of this booming suburban trend by selling or subdividing the old estates. Sometimes they even took down the old mansions in favor of new housing for the new arrivals. And that's exactly how these unique cul-de-sac streets came to be.
Amberson Place, today one of the most elegant of the cul-de-sac streets, was developed off Amberson Avenue in 1910 by Mrs. David Aiken Jr. Her husband was an heir to the Aiken family land that originally encompassed much of the western third of Shadyside. Today's street is situated parallel to where the nearly 400-foot-long driveway to her estate was, and her 1864 Italianate-style mansion still stands near its end. Nearby, Pitcairn Place, another small cul-de-sac of big and impressively beautiful houses, was carved out of the estate of Robert Pitcairn, a top executive of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
The first cul-de-sac developed was Colonial Place, set off of Ellsworth, in 1897. Developer Edward B. Alsop subdivided an estate into 10 lots and hired Pittsburgh architect George Orth, noted for his designs of mansions, to plan upscale houses for the property, all in a similar style. Most of the original houses remain, and though one was taken down and others have been altered, the sense of a special place survives.
A favorite of Jucha's is nearby St. James Place. This small street has two charms — the intact Arts and Crafts style architecture of its duplex houses and a cul-de-sac within a cul-de-sac known as St. James Terrace, built about 1915. The terrace, a designated landmark, is a long double row of townhouses set perpendicular to St. James Place. Even today, it is still accessible only by foot. Eleven houses face each other along lushly planted embankments that line a 200-foot-long center walkway.
The most famous Shadyside cul-de-sac, well-known to many because it is one of the last streets anywhere still paved with wood blocks, is Roslyn Place. In 1916, wealthy civil engineer Thomas Rodd tore down a house adjacent to his own Ellsworth Avenue home and replaced it with 18 homes, some standing alone, some double-houses and some in a housing row. All are similar, most are red brick, but they are not identical except in height.
The uniformity of this intimate street and its overarching sycamores make it almost like an outdoor room, according to Allan B. Jacobs, professor emeritus of city planning at the University of California, Berkeley. Jacobs once lived on Roslyn Place and in an acclaimed book called “Great Streets,” he used it to set the tone for his book's examination of streets all over the world, explaining how the quality of street design contributes to the quality of life.
Cul-de-sac streets are not unusual. They've proliferated in the suburbs since the 1960s, and have long been prized for quiet and privacy. But where those in the suburbs offer you little option but to drive in and drive out to shopping or other destinations some distance away, Shadyside's cul-de-sac streets, with their own good-looking housing, are in the middle of the city, just a few short blocks from shopping, public and private schools, a wide variety of restaurants and even UPMC Shadyside hospital.
If you're into exploring the city, check them out someday. They are a special delight.
John Conti is a former news reporter who has written extensively over the years about architecture, planning and historic-preservation issues.
