In the limited space available, there can be no consideration of the
commercial and industrial aspects of the waterfront; nor can there be
a discussion of the project for a deep waterway from Pittsburgh to
New Orleans on the one hand, and from Pittsburgh to the Great Lakes
and, via the barge canal, to New York on the other. These projects
are mentioned only to emphasize the city's need for safeguarding and
developing in some useful way every foot of river frontage that it
possesses. They would justify a careful and elaborate study of this
problem, even were the present river traffic less important than it is,
and were the need of breathing spots less urgent.
[Illustration: THE BANK OF THE ELBE, DRESDEN, SHOWING PROMENADE, STREET
AND SHIPPING.]
As regards the traffic, slips might with advantage be substituted for
the present sloping bank and floating docks. One commission is studying
this subject, and another the problem of floods. The reports of these
commissions may be awaited with confidence that their recommendations
will mean improvement. Sociologically and aesthetically, the gains will
be indirect.
As to breathing spaces, however, these gains would be direct, and
the step to be taken is yet more obvious. A great deal of river
frontage,--as along the Allegheny, under the elevated tracks,--is
not now utilized. If would be nothing derogatory to the commercial
greatness of Pittsburgh to turn this space into a park. Nobody thought
London commercially decadent when the Thames embankment was built.
Unused, waste space, in fact, reflects more seriously upon a city's
business enterprise than does the humanitarian or aesthetic use of it;
and there is no better place for a park designed as a breathing space
for shut-in workers, than a river bank with its inevitable current of
air.
The crowding of Pittsburgh's business district has resulted in
exceedingly high land values. In the whole downtown section no open
space, save the plaza before the Union Station, has been preserved for
the use of the people. Public buildings have been constructed flush
with the walk, and the streets are cramped and narrow. No sumptuous
effect is offered anywhere. One of the buildings, however, the county
court house, is the best work of H. H. Richardson. It stands on the
"Hump," at the eastern edge of the business district, overlooking to
the north a tract that is not yet improved. Two other buildings, the
city hall and post office, are so out of date that new structures must
soon take their places. Thus the opportunity has offered for a civic
center group, and there are citizens who have dared to dream and plan.
Unfortunately, however, the post office site has now been chosen at
a place where it cannot be brought into a civic center scheme. When
the choice was pending, the architects, in whose hands the matter
mainly rested, were not ready with a sufficiently definite plan. This
failure has spurred them on, and they will not be caught napping again.
A committee of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the American Institute of
Architects has now worked out a civic center plan that is not merely
spectacular, but which aims in practical ways to provide sufficiently
wide, through avenues for the transportation lines to the business
district. The plan will be best understood from the accompanying
diagram.
[Illustration: THE SITE OF THE PROPOSED CIVIC CENTER.