An Incomplete Historical Survey of Montrose Hill, O'hara Township
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An Incomplete Historical Survey of Montrose Hill, O’Hara Township, Allegheny County, PA and the Surrounding Area including Powers Run Area, RIDC Area, River Road Area, Blawnox Area and lands downstream as far as Aspinwall. Dan Nowak February, 2012 CONTENTS Introduction 2012 Map of the Area of this Study Page 1 Fairview Page 2 Riverboats, the Canal and the Railroads Page 5 The 1855 Map Page 10 The 1862 Map Page 12 William Speer Kirkwood Page 14 Oil and the Refinery Page 15 The Workhouse and Poor House Page 17 Fairview Becomes Montrose Page 21 The 1876 Map Page 22 The 1883 Map Page 25 The Fitzgerald Plaster Works Page 27 The Waterworks Page 30 Verona and Oakmont and the Ferry Page 32 The 1898 Map Page 34 Hardships and Disasters in the Late 1800s and Early 1900s Page 36 The 1906 Map Page 42 Summer Camp Page 44 A Glimpse of Life in the Early Part of the 20th Century – Elizabeth Van Horn Page 45 A Glimpse of Life in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s – Jim Murdock Page 74 A Glimpse at Life in the Area Surrounding Montrose Hill Page 93 In the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s - Bill Sproul A Glimpse of Life in the Period Immediately Following the 2nd World War – Eileen Hulina Page 105 CONTENTS A Glimpse of Life in the Period Immediately Following the 2nd World War – The Dolhis Page 113 A Glimpse of Life in the Period Following the 2nd World War – Dolores Nowak Page 125 Myra Boyd Page 132 A Glimpse at Life Growing Up Following the 2nd World War – Dave Dolhi, Pete Vogel, Kathy Cregan and Lori Van Horn Page 133 The 1965 Topographical Map Page 156 A Glimpse at Life Growing Up Following the 2nd World War – The Nowaks Page 157 Addendum The 1870 Census of Eastern Indiana Township The 1900 Census of the Area The 1910 Census of the Area The 1920 Census of the Area 1922 Publication of the Red Cross Pittsburgh Chapter – O’Hara Township Branch Cyrus Blackham Duganne Various Other People Hoboken Stuff Chronology Introduction I grew up on Montrose Hill. My family moved there in September of 1957 and I left my parents house on Lawrence Avenue in 1971 when I married. I always thought that it was a great place to live and raise children. It was a safe neighborhood where everyone knew each other, everyone seemed to be related to at least one other family on the Hill {if not three or four}. There was never a lack of playmates. Nor was there a lack of things to do. We had at lease two ball fields when I was growing up there, wooded areas surrounding the entire hill and stretching out along the Workhouse Farm from Montrose Hill to the hill overlooking Fox Chapel High School, the Allegheny River at the bottom of Powers Run Road, Blawnox within easy walking distance and bus service at the bottom of the Hill that gave us access to East Liberty and downtown Pittsburgh. I am an engineer by profession but have always been interested in history. I have worked with the Monroeville Historical Society {I have lived in Monroeville PA since 1975} and was coordinator of their oral history program. I always wanted to work on a history of Montrose Hill and the immediate surrounding area. When we were growing up on Montrose Hill, the playground and ball field that is now Raymond Schafer Park did not yet exist. If fact, there was an old reservoir located where the basketball court and playground are now. No one knew why it was there or who put it in, much less when. Some kids claimed that they found Indian arrow heads in the reservoir, but I never saw any. Most of the houses on the Hill were new when I was a child, being built {and a good many, if not most, were owner built} in the 1950s and early 1960s. There were, however, a few older houses that gave a hint that there were some people living there decades earlier. And then there was River Road. Some of the buildings down there looked as if they were “a hundred years old”. Also, there were several ruins there of what appeared to be substantial structures long since abandoned. We never considered this area to be part of the “Hill”. It never occurred to us that the Hill was actually an just an extension of the earlier village of Montrose that ran along River Road and, slowly with time, crept up the hill one house at a time, until it exploded with new construction in the post-World War II era.. No great battles ever took place on the Hill. Washington never camped out on the overlook in the bend of the Allegheny River. The Hill itself was essentially farm and grazing land that transitioned into a suburb after the Second World War. However, that does not mean that there is no history associated with the Hill and the surrounding area. Due to the nature of the community during most of its history {farms and houses}, we must consider the adjoining areas of Powers Run, the Allegheny County Workhouse {RIDC}, the village of Montrose {River Road}, the village of Hoboken {Blawnox} and probably the area as far as Ross Farms (Delafield Estate, Aspinwall} as the region that impacted the people of Montrose Hill on a daily basis and as essential to understanding the history of the Hill. Therefore, this is the region that I will cover in this work. I have one last remark. This is not intended to be a comprehensive history. Instead, it is meant to bring together, in what is hopefully a readable and entertaining form, various items related to the region around Montrose of which I have researched over the last few decades. Dan Nowak January 17, 2012 Copyright 2012, Daniel C. Nowak, Jr. Introduction A Note on Sources and Future Additions An excellent history of O’Hara Township was published in 2008 entitled "Portrait of an American Community". The book is now available at the Township office. Books are also available at the Heinz History Center Bookstore located at 1212 Smallman Street, Pittsburgh This author strongly suggests that the reader first read the O’Hara history book before tackling this work. As I mentioned, this work is an attempt to compile all the information that I have been able to collect over a three decade period so that others interested in the local history of south-east O’Hara Township can enjoy it. It should be considered as a compliment and supplement to the O’Hara Township history book. As concerns the source of the information, the work has two basic parts. The information on the nineteenth century came from three sources. The first is the United States Census records for 1870. The author searched the records available at the Carnegie Library main branch in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, printed each page and then retyped the entries into a Word document. The second source is a series of maps that the author collected through the years. Unfortunately, the exact sources for each map has been lost through the years, but they include the Library of Congress, The Carnegie Library main branch and the map collection of the University of Pittsburgh’s “Historic Pittsburgh” project, available on the Internet by searching “Historic Pittsburgh”. Since I am unsure of the origins and copyright owners of these maps, I sketched only the small section related to this work and made no attempt to include any portions of the original. The third source for the nineteenth century information was a series of subject searches of the texts available on the University of Pittsburgh’s “Historic Pittsburgh” website. Regarding the twentieth century, I also used several sources, including the 1900, 1910 and 1920 United States censuses, and maps from the same sources listed above and additional subject searches of the “Historic Pittsburgh” site specifically and the Internet in general. Additionally, and this is the most important original material contribution to history that this work is making, are a series of oral history interviews that the author conducted between 1986 and 2005. To repeat, this is not a complete work and the author welcomes the efforts of any persons of a kindred spirit that would like to expand on this work, such as additional research involving sources that the author did not explore {legal records, special library collections, etc.} and additional interviews of people who have personal experiences related to Montrose Hill. But, for now, what follows it the best that I have to share. Dan Nowak January 17, 2012 Copyright 2012, Daniel C. Nowak, Jr. Introduction GENERAL NOTATIONS NOTE: A copyright is claimed on this work. Free use of any of the material is granted for leisure or scholarly endeavor. Use of the material for any “for profit” endeavor requires the written permission of the copyright holder. NOTES on the use of (parenthesis) and {brackets} in this work: 1. Brackets indicate additional items of clarification by the author {also known as the editor, interviewer, transcriber or researcher as best applies}. 2. Parentheses within a quoted section of another work are part of the original text. 3. Parenthesis occurring within the subject response in one of the oral history sections represent the transcribers best guess of a section of audio that is not clear. Copyright 2012, Daniel C. Nowak, Jr. A Sketch of a 2012 Map Showing the Area Covered by this Study Allegheny Valley Fox Express- Chapel way Road OAKMONT Field Club Rd.