The merchants and manufacturers of Pittsburgh had been accumulating money for a decade. In the East money was the medium of exchange, and it was brought to the village by immigrants and travelers, and began to circulate more freely than before. In addition to the money put into circulation by the immigrants, the United States Government had expended nearly eight hundred thousand dollars on the expedition which was sent out to suppress the Whisky Insurrection. At least half of this sum was spent in Pittsburgh and its immediate vicinity, partly for supplies and partly by the men composing the army. The expedition was also the means of advertising the Western country in the East, and created a new interest in the town. A considerable influx of new immigrants resulted. With the growth in population, the number of the mercantile establishments increased. Pittsburgh became more than ever the metropolis of the surrounding country.
Ferries made intercourse with the districts across the rivers from Pittsburgh easy, except perhaps in winter when ice was in the streams. Three ferries were in operation on the Monongahela River. That of Ephraim Jones at the foot of Liberty Street[40] was called the Lower Ferry. A short distance above the mouth of Wood Street was Robert Henderson’s Ferry, formerly conducted by Jacob Bausman. This was known as the Middle Ferry. Isaac Gregg’s Ferry, at this time operated by Samuel Emmett,[41] also called the Upper Ferry, was located a quarter of a mile above the town, at the head of the Sand Bar. Over the Allegheny River, connecting St. Clair Street with the Franklin Road, now Federal Street, was James Robinson’s Ferry. As an inducement to settle on the north side of the Allegheny River, Robinson advertised that “All persons going to and returning from sermon, and all funerals, ferriage free.”[42]
The aspect of the town was changing. It was no longer the village which Lewis Brantz saw on his visit in 1790, when he painted the sketch which is the first pictorial representation of the place extant.[43] In the old Military Plan the ground was compactly built upon. Outside of this plan the houses were sparse and few in number, and cultivated grounds intervened. Thomas Chapman who visited Pittsburgh in 1795, reported that out of the two hundred houses in the village, one hundred and fifty were built of logs.[44] They were mainly of rough-hewn logs, only an occasional house being of sawed logs. The construction of log houses was discontinued, the new houses being generally frame. Houses of brick began to be erected, the brick sold at the dismantling of Fort Pitt supplying the first material for the purpose. The houses built of brick taken from Fort Pitt were characterized by the whiteness of the brick of which they were constructed.[45] Brickyards were established. When Chapman was in Pittsburgh, there were two brickyards in operation in the vicinity of the town.[46] With their advent brick houses increased rapidly.
With the evolution in the construction of the houses, came another advance conducive to both the health and comfort of the occupants. While window glass was being brought from the East, and was subject to the hazard of the long and rough haul over the Alleghany Mountains, the windows in the houses were few, and the panes of small dimensions; six inches in width by eight inches in length was an ordinary size. The interior of the houses was dark, cheerless, and damp. In the spring of 1797, Albert Gallatin, in conjunction with his brother-in-law, James W. Nicholson, and two Germans, Christian Kramer and Baltzer Kramer, who were experienced glass-blowers, began making window glass at a manufactory which they had established on the Monongahela River at New Geneva in Fayette County.[47] The same year that window glass was first produced at New Geneva, Colonel James O’Hara and Major Isaac Craig commenced the construction of a glass manufactory on the south side of the Monongahela River, opposite Pittsburgh, and made their first window glass in 1800. Both manufactories produced window glass larger in size than that brought from the East, O’Hara and Craig’s glass measuring as high as eighteen by twenty-four inches.[48] The price of the Western glass was lower than that brought across the mountains. With cheaper glass, windows became larger and more numerous, and a more cheerful atmosphere prevailed in the houses.
All that remained of Pittsburgh’s former military importance were the dry ditch and old ramparts of Fort Pitt,[49] in the westerly extremity of the town, together with some of the barracks and the stone powder magazine, and Fort Fayette near the northeasterly limits, now used solely as a military storehouse.[50] Not a trace of architectural beauty was evident in the houses. They were built without regularity and were low and plain. In one block were one- and two-story log and frame houses, some with their sides, others with their gable ends, facing the street. In the next square there was a brick building of two or possibly three stories in height; the rest of the area was covered with wooden buildings of every size and description. The Lombardy poplars and weeping willows which grew along the streets[51] softened the aspect of the houses before which they were planted. The scattered houses on the sides of the hills which commanded the town on the east[52] were more attractive.
It was forty years before houses, even on the leading streets, were numbered.[53] The taverns and many of the stores, instead of being known by the number of their location on the street, or by the name of the owner, were recognized by their signs, which contained characteristic pictures or emblems. The signs were selected because associated with them was some well-known sentiment; or the picture represented a popular hero. In the latter category was the “Sign of General Washington,” conducted by Robert Campbell, at the northeast corner of Wood Street and Diamond Alley. Sometimes the signs were of a humorous character, as the “Whale and the Monkey” with the added doggerel:
“Here the weary may rest,
The hungry feed,
And those who thirst,
May quaff the best,”