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"SOLITUDE" and the NETHER DEPTHS: the PITTSBURGH ESTATE of GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE and ITS GAS WELL James D

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"SOLITUDE" AND THE NETHER DEPTHS: THE PITTSBURGH ESTATE OF GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE AND ITS GAS WELL James D. Van Trump that aggressive Victorian villa, that ice cream castle, Solitude,has left little more than the vague outline of its foundations in the sod of a city park, but it was for many years the Pitts- burgh home, as well as a symbol of the genius of George Westing- house. Architecturally it was no more interesting than many another mid-Victorian mansion, nor was it outstanding among that extensive company of large houses which sprang up along the railroad lines of eastern America. Its very name, so representative of sentimental house nomenclature of the time, was a misnomer, since it stood only a few yards from the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, one of the great "highways" to the west. As a near neighbor of the Homewood Station, some six miles from the center of the city, its situation was then suburban although it lay within the city limits. From it Westinghouse could move quickly to his downtown office or to the great manufacturing plants at East Pittsburgh, but since his extraordinary ability was confined to neither place, his home figured largely in his career. Solitude was itself a workshop and the inventor conducted there one of his most daring and spectacular experiments, one which helped to make Pittsburgh the great industrial center which it be- came. The natural gas well which he drilled on his estate combines with the house, the factories, and the great depths beneath the earth's surface to form a composite picture which is highly characteristic of the age of Westinghouse. The student of the past can,—with a little effort, call up the vision of Solitude as it once was a little remote, stiff, prim, like an old picture post card or a "view" on a souvenir mug. Although Mr. Van Trump, a member of the Society, is currently engaged in bibliographical work at the Hunt Botanical Library. For many years he has been interested in the history of local houses and estates and he has written several articles in which they figure. He has in preparation a book of his pieces on Pittsburgh architecture. —Ed. 156 JAMES D. VAN TRUMP JUNE there were truck gardens across the railroad and other property nearby, the home estate consisted of a plot about ten acres in extent, landscaped after the Romantic fashion with "specimen" trees, wind- ing drives and shrubberies. In one corner of the lot near the Lang Avenue bridge rose the mansarded bulk of the house, three stories high, with its Italian tower, and toward the rear of the property was a stable of one story, also capped by a mansard. Between the two, off to one side, was a greenhouse, that inevitable footnote to lux- urious Victorian domesticity; in the garden were resplendent flower beds, and on either side of the stable —driveway two young Ginkgo trees. The house was far from—palatial this sort of thing had been more lavishly done elsewhere and it looked provincial, harshly respectable, a little dull. If it had not belonged to Westinghouse, the place would have been no more important than twenty other Pittsburgh houses of the same period. The estate has since metamorphosed into a public park named for its former owner, but, except for the disappearance of the house, the transition from the domestic to the municipal tone was easily made, since the place was an important one in the city and often in the public eye. The shrubberies have gone and many of the original trees. Children and dogs phay among the ghosts of flower beds, while teen-agers and workmen, talking of love or pay-envelopes, pace the gravel drives which knew, once-on-a-day, the carriages of the great. A housewife with a picnic basket sits in the very middle of the former drawing room, oblivious of the phantom architecture all about her. Solitude, now more than ever a misnomer, has quite vanished into the Victorian past ... the picture post card fades from the memory and the gas-well derrick which once roared like a geyser is nowhere to be found. Underneath its modern activity, the park is a place of shadows. The writer has wandered in that park at all times and all sea- sons; he has wordlessly enquired of the shadows of trees, the serpentine paths and, in a corner, a forgotten block of stone. In a marvelous spring dusk he has stood under the shadow of the great Empress tree (vanished now also) and he has felt that if he were only to turn his head or glance lightly from the corner of his eye, he might see behind him the awkward tower with its patriotic flag pole rising against the luminous west. On a summer morning he has walked the length of the long grape arbor, which once ran west- depths 1959 "solitude" and the nether 157 ward from the house, watching, in the wonderful flecked light, the silver underleaf and curling tendrils—of the multiplied vines. Were the ghosts of important personages a president, a great scientist, or a prince —strolling there? In the autumn, when the Ginkgo trees had turned like the towers of Troy to pyres of yellow fire, he has almost glimpsed the tall figure of Westinghouse with his fine American face walking toward the workroom in the stable. And at any season he might, in passing over the great sweep of lawn to the south, encounter the rough spot in the turf where the gas well had been. Often in this place he has felt separated only by the thinnest line from greatness and the steel and plush splendors of Pittsburgh's industrial past. But splendor at Solitude had always a muted quality, although the place was an active "social" center and, when it was en fete, the scene of considerable pomp and circumstance. Pomp requires wealth, a commodity which Westinghouse was able to supply, al- though he seemed —to regard his money merely as a by-product of his mission in life the conception and marketing of his inventions. There is no doubt that he was a great man, possibly the greatest who ever lived in Pittsburgh, and certainly a greater than the busi- ness or financial "wizards" who manipulated other men's ideas. He was sharp enough to manipulate his own ideas during most of his career and astute enough to be able to find assistants who could help him. No ivory-tower theorist, he was eminently interested (like his friend, Lord Kelvin) in the application of pure science to everyday life. He was at once a dreamer and a very practical man, a sound solid American of his place and time who could make those dreams come true. Perhaps he might better be called an "inspired" mechanic of almost divine proportions, a Messiah of the mechanistic 19th century. What was in his mind and what emerged from his hand has turned miraculously into many devices which have helped transform the world. Westinghouse was not a Pittsburgher by birth and it is inter- esting to speculate what sort of person he might have become had he been born here or had he been exposed to the spirit of the city in his formative years. His—story, like many American success stories, begins in a small town— in this particular case Central Bridge, New York, near Albany where he was born in 1846. He was of American parentage, but his father's ancestry was German and his 158 JAMES D. VAN TRUMP JUNE mother's Dutch. The elder Westinghouse was much interested in machinery and, when George was ten, the family moved to Sche- nectady where his father became a manufacturer of agricultural machines. George inherited his father's love of mechanical work and during his school years spent much of his spare time in the paternal machine shop. Here he learned how to use tools, but he also studied mathematics and engineering; while he was still in his teens he designed and built a rotary engine. He served in the Civil War, first as a cavalryman and then as a naval engineer, which would argue a certain versatility even in active life. Two years at Schenectady's Union College convinced him that he had little incli- nation toward the life of a scholar. Shortly afterward, he invented a device for replacing on the tracks de-railed railroad cars, and he not only constructed it but traveled about trying to sell it, thus early developing a practical capacity for handling and financing his inventions which made him outstanding in his time. He possessed phenomenal energy and an extraordinary capacity for dealing with diverse problems in rapid succession. Even in his twenties, he showed the remarkable qualities that were to make him a great man. He first conceived the idea of the air brake in 1867 after he had read an account of the use of compressed air in the boring of the Mont Cenis tunnel in Switzerland. In the same year he moved to Pittsburgh with his bride, Margaret Erskine Walker, whom he had married in Brooklyn. After he arrived in Pittsburgh, he met another young man, Ralph Baggely, who helped him build the new brake. In spite of many difficulties, Westinghouse finally arranged in 1868 for a test to be made on a train provided by the Panhandle Railroad at Pittsburgh. On the day of the trial, the train left the Union Station, passed through the Grant Street tunnel and ran toward a grade crossing between the tunnel and the river.
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