displayed by D. McLane[54] when he conducted the tavern on Water Street, afterward known as the “Sign of the Green Tree.” The sign was hung either on the front of the house, or on a board attached to a wooden or iron arm projecting from the building, or from a post standing before it. The last was the manner in which most of the tavern signs were displayed. This continued until 1816, when all projecting or hanging signs were prohibited, except to taverns where stabling and other accommodations for travelers could be obtained. Only taverns located at street corners were thereafter permitted to have signposts.[55]
Not a street was paved, not even the footwalks, except for such irregular slabs of stone, or brick, or planks as had been laid down by the owners of adjoining houses. Major Thomas S. Forman who passed through Pittsburgh in December, 1789, related that the town was the muddiest place he was ever in.[56] In 1800, there was little improvement. Samuel Jones was the first Register and Recorder of Allegheny County, and held those offices almost continuously well into the nineteenth century. He resided in Pittsburgh during the entire period, and his opportunities for observation were unexcelled. His picture of the borough in 1800 is far from attractive. “The streets,” he wrote, were “filled with hogs, dogs, drays, and noisy children.”[57] At night the streets were unlighted. “A solitary lamp twinkled here and there, over the door of a tavern, or on a signpost, whenever the moon was in its first or last quarter. The rest of the town was involved in primeval darkness.”
REFERENCES
Chapter II
[29] Laura G. Sanford. The History of Erie County, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1862, p. 60.
[30] Judge J. W. F. White. Allegheny County, its Early History and Subsequent Development, Pittsburgh, Pa., 1888, pp. 70–71.
[31] Pittsburgh Gazette, December 14, 1793.
[32] Act of April, 22, 1794; Act of September 12, 1782.
[33] Pittsburgh Gazette, November 2, 1793.
[34] Pittsburgh Gazette, November 23, 1793.
[35] Pittsburgh Gazette, May 31, 1794.