Laundry day, Ambridge's Marshall Alley homes, July 1938

 

Laundry hung between some Marshall Alley homes
"Housing conditions in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, home of the American Bridge Company"
Photographer: Arthur Rothstein
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
July 1938

It must be laundry day in some Marshall Alley homes. 

This is another of a series of photos photojournalist Arthur Rothstein took in July 1938 as part of a project for the Farm Security Administration, documenting life during the Great Depression. 

Most of the photos Rothstein took in Ambridge focused on the First St. area. The iconic photo of the Dead-End Pool built by First St. children, and the frequently shared photo of a girl in a wash tub, were taken by Rothstein.

The Marshall Alley projects consisted of three rows of homes, only two of which were on Marshall Alley. The third row faced First St. The rows ran between Merchant St. and Maplewood Ave. They were built circa 1904 and housed some of Ambridge's poorest families.

Location of Marshall Alley homes
snip from 1923 Sanborn Insurance map

Because the homes which were actually on Marshall Alley faced each other, as shown in the blog post "The children of Marshall Alley," and this photo shows the backs of two rows, it must have been taken behind the First St. row of homes. So in a Marshall Alley alley. 

Those are not outhouses attached to the back of the houses. I've been told that the additions were meant to help keep out the cold and dirt. I'm not sure how successful they were. Although the homes did not have a bathroom, each had a toilet in the basement. Someone who lived in a Marshall Alley home as a child remembered the basement as a dark and scary place, with rats scurrying past when someone came down the stairs. 

Laundry would probably have been done in big metal tubs like the one in the "girl in a wash tub" photo, with water heated on the stove, and perhaps scrubbed on washboards. 

The Marshall Alley homes were razed in the 1950s.

Big Sewickley Creek Bridge 1917: "Longer to complete than did the building of the Panama Canal"

 

Big Sewickley Creek Bridge
From Allegheny Co. looking north into Ambridge, Beaver County
1917
credit: Allegheny Co. Dept. of Public Works

About the photo above:

Streetcar tracks crossed the bridge in 1917. The dark building just above the photo's center and the first building on the right were on the part of Beaver Rd./Beaver St. that leads into Ambridge from the bridge. To the dark building's left is a home that I think was on Bank St. and the backs of some buildings in the 300 block of First St. The dark building and all buildings to its left have been razed. The tall building farther up the left side of the street must be the S. P. Kristufek Department Store. If you enlarge the photo enough, you can see a horse standing next to the Kristufek store. And, above the first utility pole on the right, a carriage.

The nearest building on the right is still standing; Hark's Place bar is now there, 70 Beaver St./Rd. Beyond that, the building with all the porches was one of the infamous "Crackerbox" tenements that stood on the hill above Merchant St./Beaver Rd., razed in 1960.

Far in the background are homes in the 100 block of Merchant St. And behind them, the domes of Holy Ghost Orthodox Church, 210 Maplewood Ave.

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Long before Ohio River Boulevard connected Ambridge with Allegheny Co., the small Big Sewickley Creek Bridge provided the connection.

The Economy Centennial was being celebrated when Ambridge's June 6, 1924, Citizen* newspaper noted on its front page: 

an important milestone in the history of Ambridge...the beginning of the end of the work on the Big Sewickley Creek bridge between Ambridge and Fair Oaks, which has been a bone of contention between two counties, a street car company, residents of three boroughs and tourists of 48 States for a number of years.

Because that very morning, a contractor had started pouring concrete in the bridge's road bed and expected the work to be completed "in about two weeks."

Even though the bridge is only about 200 feet long, that same Citizen article claimed it took "longer to complete than did the building of the Panama Canal and has cost enough to build a bridge across the Ohio River."

The history of the bridge's construction is murky. The Citizen article said Allegheny County records showed a bridge at the site    "[96] years ago" according to a construction inspector, who said he had found a 1828 "road view plan" showing a bridge at the same location.

However, the inspector's history was questioned by John Frederick (Fred) Knoedler, who was a non-Harmonist caretaker of Old Economy and its property both before and after the Harmony Society dissolved. Knoedler said that according to Harmonist records, "the Economites drove through the creek to get to Leetsdale" during their early years in Economy. But, he says, "much later," there was a bridge across the creek when the Harmonists had pastures on both sides of Big Sewickley Creek. Knoedler remembered "wire gates hung from the bridge to keep the [Harmony Society's] cattle from going up the creek." 

The Citizen also said that "during the youth of John Duss," who was born in 1860, the bridge was condemned, and Duss designed an arch under the bridge to strengthen it. "The original arch still stands, but is is now encased in concrete."

A 1906 G. M. Hopkins & Co. map shows a narrow bridge in that spot. Eventually, the bridge was raised and the walls heighted to accommodate street cars.

Then, during the WWI years, a decision was made by some entity to further widen and rebuild the bridge. Beaver County's commissioners claimed they had no money for such a project. So Allegheny Co. undertook the work on its own. I believe the photo above shows that reconstruction project. 

But the work did not go well. In fact it went so wrong that The Citizen said:

The [whale] may have swallowed Jonah, according to tradition, but no one who ever had any thing to do with the Big Sewickley Creek Bridge from that time on would believe that Jonah was anywhere but right handy to that bridge. His hoodoo seemed to be always present.

What was supposed to be a one year project took two. Twice high water moved the derrick. Once all the bridge's "large stones were washed down the creek, requiring lines to be tied to them to 'snake' them out of the creek." 

Even after the construction project finished, problems continued when the streetcar company said it wouldn't pay to move its tracks. So in 1923, the two counties agreed to do the job themselves. But then, after the contractor had moved one of the tracks, he claimed that he didn't have enough money to finish the job. And the work dragged on and on into the spring on 1924--bad weather didn't help. But finally--finally--the bridge construction appeared to be nearing completion.

But wait, there's more!

If you enlarge the photo at the top, you can see what appears to be the back of a carriage, and near that carriage, part of a sign peeking out on the right side of a pole. And if you're like me, you thought, "I wish I could read what that sign says. 

Well, wish granted. Because there's another photo! And while the photo was focused on the bridge's stone arch, it shows more than that.

Big Sewickley Creek Bridge
from the Allegheny County side of Big Sewickley Creek
1917
credit: Allegheny Co. Dept. of Public Works

First, an enlargement of the sign: 

Ambridge speed limit sign
Merchant St. near Valley Rd.
1917

About the photo above:

The sign says "Ambridge Borough, Speed Limit, 15 miles per hour." It appears to have stood about where the "Welcome to the Borough of Ambridge" sign is now, just north of the intersection of Valley Rd. and Merchant St.

An enlarged photo also shows a tailor's signs painted on the windows of the building with the awning, now Hark's Place.  I think the left window says "Merchant Tailor." The one on the right window says "John [last name I couldn't read], Tailor."

The sign on the side of the one story wooden building says "Favorite Cigarettes." While there are more signs on the side and on the front, I can't make them out. 

Could the house on the right side of the photo, above those two buildings, have been on Valley Rd.? And the houses on the very top of the hill on Glenwood Dr.?

And towards the right side of the photo, a man wearing a hat is standing, looking toward the photographer. And us.

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Thanks to Debby Rabold, Bell Acres Borough's historian, for sending me the two photos above. Debby has also written about the Ambridge-Leetsdale Big Sewickley Creek Bridge and provides a somewhat different history of its construction than the one written in The Citizen. She also has included some early photos of that bridge. Here's a link to Debby's article: "Big Sewickley Creek...Early Bridges," which also includes information about other bridges that cross Big Sewickley Creek. 

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* The Citizen's June 6, 1924, article was republished in the March 21, 1939, Daily Citizen. The latter did correct several typos in the original article, including that a bridge was at the site "6 years ago." That befuddled me at first, because I knew that the bridge had been built before 1918. In 1939, the bridge was referred to as the "Ambridge-Fair Oaks Bridge."

Zion Lutheran Church's landmark parsonage razed

Zion Lutheran Church's parsonage being razed
8th St. between Park Rd. and Maplewood Ave.
Daily Citizen
November 2, 1948

Daily Citizen caption:

The former Zion Lutheran church parsonage on Park Rd. near Eighth St. is being razed. Constructed some 47 years ago, it is a landmark of the community. The residence was vacated when the congregation erected a modern home for their pastor, Rev. Frederick B. Haer and family, on the corner lot, Maplewood and 8th St.

If the parsonage was built in 1901, as the caption indicates, that means it was standing before there was an Ambridge, predating the building of the American Bridge plant. And it would have been older than the first Zion Lutheran Church, for which construction started in 1904. No wonder it was a landmark.

Although the caption describes the parsonage as being "on Park Rd. near Eighth St.," it actually sat very close to 8th St., about half way between Park Rd. and Maplewood Ave.

An article about the new parsonage in the September 16, 1948, Daily Citizen, said that the plan was to sell the old parsonage, but it was demolished less than two months later instead. Perhaps the congregation, thinking ahead, decided to retain the property so it might eventually build a new church building there?

Here's a photo of the replacement parsonage, still on the corner of Maplewood Ave. and 8th St., after construction was completed, and the pastor was getting ready to move in.

"Zion First Lutheran Church Parsonage Completed"
Daily Citizen
September 16, 1948

500 block of Maplewood Ave. circa 1907 - 1913

These two vintage postcards show the 500 block of Maplewood Ave. from 5th St. looking north.

The upper card is the older of the two scenes. If you compare the two postcards, you'll see this first scene doesn't have the trees planted along the street that are shown in the lower card.

Note the horse and wagon way down the block, left side of the upper card.

The upper postcard with the older scene was never mailed, so there's no postmark to try to date the scene. But since the later postcard was mailed, and postmarked 1913, the scene on the older view must have been earlier.

More clues as to the date of the older postcard: Both postcards have divided backs on the address side, a style that the post office only allowed to be used beginning in 1907, so I know that the older postcard dates from after 1907. And before 1913. *

500 block of Maplewood Ave. looking north from 5th St.
postcard
circa 1907 - 1913

Compare the scenes in both postcards with this "now" photo taken by P. J. Shotter. Most of the houses shown in the two postcards are still there. As far as I can determine, the modern flat-roofed building on the right side of the photo, 510 Maplewood, was built on the last empty lot on the block in the 1950s. A podiatrist is there now. Earlier, it was was a dental office for many years.

500 block of Maplewood Ave. looking north from 5th St.
March 8, 2020
credit: P. J. Shotter

There's one other difference I see between the two cards: there's a house not in the older scene that's shown in the later one: 517 Maplewood, the third house on the left side of the later scene with the peaked roof and brown shingles at the top.

500 block of Maplewood Ave. looking north from 5th St.
postcard
postmarked 1913

Beaver County property records say 517 was built in 1916 which isn't possible. The house has to be older since it appears on a 1911 Sanborn insurance map** and the postcard mailed in 1913.

The yellow brick house with the pointed roof on the left side of the street in the "now" photo is also 517, so brick veneer may have been added after 1913. Better guess (maybe): although the postcard was mailed in 1913, the scene on the postcard predates 1911, since the 1911 Sanborn insurance map indicates the house was veneered. Either that, or the coloring of the houses on the postcard isn't accurate.

Here's the latest Google Street View of 517 and the neighboring houses on both sides:

515, 517, and 521 Maplewood Ave.
Google Street View
July 2019

Most of the street trees shown in the later postcard scene are now gone, although a few remain nearer to 6th St.  I wonder if they were some of the 200 - 300 trees planned for Ambridge for which the "shade tree commission" was accepting bids in 1908. (Daily Citizen, August 25, 1954)
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Personal memory: I spent many happy visits to 517 Maplewood when my Uncle and Aunt, Pete and Helen Gause, lived there with my three cousins.

* And yes, I realize that just because the postcard was printed in 1907 that also means the scene on the card is from 1907. But the October 1905 Sanborn insurance map shows more empty lots in the 500 block on Maplewood than the scene appears to show. So 1907 seems to be a good approximate date of the earlier scene.

** On the 1911 Sanborn map, the address of the house that is now 517 Maplewood house was 508. Building addresses in Ambridge were changed in 1917, making Ambridge history involving old buildings so much more fun.

Here's the address side of the two postcards:

Address side of 1907 postcard

Address side of 1913 postcard