This wonderful industrial development all came within the nineteenth
century. There is still preserved as a relic of its origin the little
block-house citadel of the old Fort Pitt, down near the point of the
peninsula where the rivers join. This has recently been restored by
the Daughters of the American Revolution--a small square building with
a pyramidal roof. The surrounding stockade long ago disappeared. There
is in the Pittsburg City Hall an inscribed tablet from Fort Pitt
bearing the date 1764. The old building, which was the scene of
Pittsburg's earliest history, for it stands almost on the spot
occupied by Fort Duquesne, is among modern mills and storehouses,
about three hundred feet from the head of the Ohio. Pittsburg, after
an almost exclusive devotion to manufacturing and business, began some
years ago to cultivate artistic tastes in architecture, and has some
very fine buildings. There is an elaborate Post-office and an
interesting City Hall on Smithfield Street; but the finest building of
all, and one of the best in the country, is the magnificent Romanesque
Court-house, built at a cost of $2,500,000, and occupying a prominent
position on a hill adjoining Fifth Avenue. There is a massive jail of
similar architecture, and a "Bridge of Sighs" connects them, a
beautifully designed arched and stone-covered bridge, thrown for a
passageway across an intervening street. The main tower, giving a
grand view, rises three hundred and twenty feet over the architectural
pile, and, as in Venice, the convicted prisoner crosses the bridge
from his trial to his doom. There are attractive churches, banks and
business buildings, and eastward from the city, near Schenley Park, is
the attractive Carnegie Library and Museum in Italian Renaissance,
with a capacity for two hundred thousand volumes, a benefaction of Mr.
Andrew Carnegie, originally costing $1,100,000, to which he has
recently added $1,750,000 for its enlargement. The residential section
is mainly on the hills east of Pittsburg and across the Allegheny
River in Allegheny City, there being many attractive villas in
beautiful situations on the surrounding highlands.
But the great Pittsburg attraction is the multitude of factories that
are its pride and create its prosperity. Some of these are among the
greatest in the world--the Edgar Thomson Works and Homestead Works of
the Carnegie Steel Company, the Duquesne Steel Works, the Keystone
Bridge Company, and others. The Edgar Thomas mills make over a million
tons of rails a year, and at Homestead fifteen hundred thousand tons
of steel will be annually produced, this being the place where
nickel-steel armor-plates for the navy are manufactured. They largely
use natural gas, and employ at times ten thousand men at the two great
establishments. The Duquesne Works, just above Homestead on the
Monongahela, have the four largest blast furnaces in the world,
producing twenty-two hundred tons of pig-iron daily. The Keystone
Bridge Works cover seven acres, and have made some of the greatest
steel bridges in existence. The Westinghouse Electrical Works
manufacture the greatest dynamos, including those of the Niagara
Power Company, and the Westinghouse Air-Brake Works is also another
extensive establishment. In the Pittsburg district, covering about two
hundred square miles, the daily product of mines and factories is
estimated at $6,000,000.
The two men whose names are most closely connected with Pittsburg's
vast industrial development are Andrew Carnegie and George
Westinghouse. Carnegie was born at Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1837, and
his father, a potter, brought him to Pittsburg when eleven years old.
He began life as a telegraph messenger boy, attracted the attention of
Colonel Thomas A. Scott, and was by him brought into the service of
the Pennsylvania Railroad. Then he entered business, and became the
greatest developer of the iron and steel industries of Pittsburg and
its wealthiest resident. He some time ago sold out his interests to
the Carnegie Steel Company, in which he is largely interested.
Westinghouse, born in New York State in 1846, combined with business
tact the genius of the inventor. He invented and developed the railway
air-brake now in universal use, has established a complete electrical
lighting and power system, and was the chief adapter of natural gas to
manufacturing and domestic uses, being the inventor of many ingenious
contrivances for its introduction and economical employment. He had a
gas well almost at his door, for Pittsburg overlaid a great deposit.
The enormous coal measures underlying and surrounding the city have
been its most stable basis for industry and profit, as the Pittsburg
coal-field is one of enormous output. The deposits of Lake Superior
furnish the ores for its furnaces, and the railroad development is
such that each enormous establishment now has its special railroad to
fetch in the ores from Lake Erie, where they are brought by vessels.
Across in Allegheny City, where most of these ore-bringing roads go
out, about one hundred acres in the centre of the city are reserved
for the attractive Allegheny Park, one portion rising in a very steep
hill, almost at the edge of the Allegheny River. Upon its top, seen
from afar, stands a Soldiers' Monument, a graceful column, erected in
memory of four thousand men of Allegheny County who fell in the Civil
War. Soldier statues guard the base, and look out upon the smokes and
steam jets of the busy city below, and thousands climb up there to
enjoy the grand view.