Burgh. Olmsted, in 1909, Stood at the Center of the Healthier, More
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by John F. Bauman and Edward K.Muller ITH the help of the prominent Boston for their planner they chose Frederick Law Olmsted, landscaping firm of Olmsted Brothers, Jr., a familiar and trusted figure, best known among Pittsburgh's wealthiest citizens fash- the elite for his firm's private landscaping inPitts- ioned a beautiful and orderly private burgh. Olmsted, in 1909, stood at the center of the world in the suburban East End and young urban planning movement. His work as a the Sewickley area. With the same verve, they professional consultant on Pittsburgh planning looms undertook to redesign and to order the public as a benchmark inboth Pittsburgh and planning universe outside the stone portals guarding their history. Olmsted bequeathed a significant legacy; in landscaped estates. George Nicola's visionary civic addition to his impact on the Pittsburgh landscape, center inOakland, and Edward Bigelow's Schenley he instilled an ethos of cityplanning, which survived Park mirrored some of that reformist energy. But, as despite early falterings. this second of two articles on "The Olmsteds in Pittsburgh" argues, the crusade to make over the Atthe turn of the century, reform -minded urban-industrial environment went deeper than the Pittsburghers struggled in their battle for urban- quest for beauty for beauty's sake. 1 environmental change. In1901, when John C. The reform-minded among the region's rich — Olmsted and the younger Frederick Law Olmsted ascribed the appalling state of the urban landscape were stillcarving their reputation in the world of the teeming, moldering slums, the narrow unlit private and public landscaping, Pittsburgh appeared courts and alleys, the traffic-congested— streets, and environmentally debased and hopelessly politically the tangle ofrailroad yards to the irrational greed corrupt. Despite Nicola's Oakland and Bigelow's and competition of nineteenth century industrial Schenley Park, the City Beautiful movement in capitalism. Now, in the enlightened 20th century, Pittsburgh progressed haltingly and inpiecemeal they believed reason prevailed. Guided by scientific fashion; ithardly addressed the larger issue of urban and bureaucratic-minded experts, order could be squalor and decay. 2Reform-minded groups such as restored to the urban environment, making it safer, the Civic Club of Allegheny County, the Chamber of healthier, more efficient, more humane, more socially Commerce and the Voter's League blamed much of harmonious, and, ofequal importance, more profit- this urban blight on corrupt machine politics. Signifi- able for business. cantly, inhis recent book MakingIron and Steel, Between 1906 and 1911, Pittsburgh reformers John Ingham attributed the "great ferment of fullyembraced the gospel of urban progressivism, progressivism" inPittsburgh to the social and politi- especially the belief inthe need to control rationally cal anxieties of the city's major ironand steel families, the use of urban space. Atlast, when these progres- especially their concern that the city's Republican sive political forces had sufficiently coalesced in political machine blocked members of the elite 1909, they sponsored the city's first urban plan, and community from exerting moral control over working class behavior. Ingham identified the East End's John F.Bauman is Professor ofHistory and Urban Studies at Calvary Episcopal Church and its minister, the Rev. CaliforniaUniversity ofPennsylvania and anAdjunct Research George Hodges, as a hive oflate 19th century and Associate inHistory at the UniversityofPittsburgh. He is the early 20th century reform. Inspired by the English author of Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban Plan- clergyman Charles Kingsley, founder of London's ning in Philadelphia, 1920-1974 (Temple University Press, Toynbee Hall, 1987) and numerous articles on American history and plan- the home of the settlement house movement, Hodges beseeched ning. History at his elite East End Edward K.MullerisProfessor of the Univer- parishioners bridge sityofPittsburgh. Heis co-editor ofThe AtlasofPennsylvania to the chasm separating them (Temple University Press, 1989) and author of numerous from the denizens ofSoho and the lower HillDis- articles on the history and geography of American cities, trict. Hodge's message ignited the social conscience including Pittsburgh. Both men are frequent contributors to of the elite, including George Guthrie, Henry D.W. Pittsburgh History. English, a board member of several large city corpo- 191 Pittsburgh History Winter 1993/94 rations including United States Glass, locomotive outrage, and millenarian optimism energized the Porter, Joseph Buffing- progressive "search for order" that informed the manufacturer H.Kirke and 6 ton.3 social and moral environmentalism of the era. That Moreover, when mass markets and bureaucratic passion aside, apparently the defining moment in rationalization engendered the restructuring of Pittsburgh's reform history unfolded less dramatically. industry and commerce, business elites regarded their InMarch 1906, several months before Guthrie took traditional costly "arrangements" withboss politicians office, AliceB. Montgomery, chief probation— officer such as Pittsburgh's Christopher Magee and William of the Allegheny County Juvenile Court inspired Flinn as increasingly intolerable. Elite and upper by an article in the social work journal Charities and middle class civicleaders excoriated not only the Commons reporting—a study ofsocial problems in corrupt and expensive "ring"control ofcity con- Washington, D.C. wrote the journal editors, tracts, but also the decentralized ward- based politics Edward Devine and Paul Underwood Kellogg, that validated immigrant working class values over requesting a similar study inPittsburgh. Kellogg what they perceived as the enlightened "normal" accepted. Montgomery won endorsements for the interest of the "commonweal." Byrestructuring survey from Pittsburgh's small but growing band of urban politics, they sought toregain control ofan upper class reformers including William Matthews, urban environment that they saw indisarray. 4 headworker at the Kingsley settlement house, and In1906 Pittsburgh elected a Democratic reform Judge Joseph Buffington of the U.S. Circuit Court. mayor, George W. Guthrie. Asocially prominent Pittsburgh's new reform -oriented Chamber of lawyer, a communicant at Calvary Episcopal, and a Commerce, headed by Calvary Episcopal's Henry longstanding member of the CivilService Reform D.W. English, sponsored the survey, and the CCAC Association, Guthrie perfectly fit the mold ofa 19th pledged financial support which was rendered century Pittsburgh reformer. A typical "Gilded Age" unnecessary when the Russell Sage Foundation good government crusader, Guthrie believed the allocated $7,000 tounderwrite the whole study. 7 panacea for urban ills was installing the "best men" in A sociological tour de force carried out by such office. Inhis own words, he had been "counted out" expert social surveyors as Elizabeth Butler, Margaret by the Flinn-Magee machine as the Municipal Byington and John Fitch, the study exposed the League's 1896 anti-ring mayoral candidate. Un- dichotomy between the efficient industrial production daunted, between 1896 and 1905, inalliance with in the Pittsburgh district and the resulting social and CCAC president and Municipal League founder environmental degradation. By blaming the worst Oliver McClintock and A.Leo Weil of the Voter's social injustice on Morgan interests and other League, Guthrie battled the ring over such reform "outside" owners ofPittsburgh capital, historian John issues as clean water, smoke abatement and the Ingham contends, the survey "deliberately" served annexation ofperipheral communities to form a the interest ofPittsburgh elites in their effort to Greater Pittsburgh. Lincoln Steffens's 1903 broadside maintain corporate as well as social control over the "Pittsburgh: A City Ashamed" fueled Guthrie's anti- destiny of the city. Nevertheless, Kellogg's exposures, ring campaign, which finally succeeded inFebruary serialized in Charities and Commons and reported 1906. 5 regularly in the local and national press, stung the As a Democratic mayor tilting against machine- pride and sensibilities of Pittsburgh's wealthy lead- controlled Republican legislative councils, Guthrie ers. 8 They also fueled crusading passions and excited faced almost insurmountable political odds. The 1907 a vision ofan environmentally purified city. In1907 annexation ofadjoining Allegheny City merely the Carnegie Institute and the Pittsburgh Chapter of buttressed machine domination. Accordingly, few of the American Institute ofArchitects hosted a graphic Guthrie's reforms happened. However, he introduced presentation of Pittsburgh as "The CityBeautiful." "economic" management ofcity departments, The imagined city featured not only Nicola's Oak- scrupulously awarded city contracts, and successfully land, but also a redesigned modern downtown replete persuaded the Pennsylvania Railroad to vacate Liberty with a dazzling Beaux Arts civic center, graced by a Avenue for an elevated right-of-way adjoining baroque plaza and wide tree-lined boulevard. 9 Duquesne Way. Ayear later Pittsburgh's Municipal League, the Nevertheless, ifProgressivism can be defined at American Civic Association, the Tuberculosis League least in part as the upheaval ofcivic outrage against and the CCAC combined forces to hold the first the physical ugliness and social injustice wrought by Civic Exhibit. Guthrie chaired