The face of the Coal hill is very steep, and on the summit, major Kirkpatrick[164] has a farm house and barn, which seem to hang immediately over Pittsburgh, to a traveller approaching from the north {230} eastern avenues. The bird’s eye view from thence of the town and rivers is very striking. Every street, lane, alley, house and object, however minute (if visible to the eye) being delineated under the spectator, as a plan on paper, the inequalities of surface not being discernible, and even Grant’s hill being flattened to a plain on the optick sense.
Continuing to turn to the right from our original centre, the point, we see the Ohio for about two miles, with Elliot’s mills on Saw-mill run below Coal hill on the left, an amphitheatre of lower hills about Chartier creek and M’Kee’s farm to Brunot’s island in front, and Robinson’s point and Smoky island at the mouth of the Allegheny on the right.
The eye still keeping its circuit, looks over a fine level of three thousand acres, once intended as the scite of a town to be called Allegheny, to be the capital of the county, but the situation of Pittsburgh being very properly judged more convenient, it has eventually become the seat of justice of the county, and the most flourishing inland town in the United States. A chain of irregular hills, not so steep, but nearly as high as Coal hill, bounds this level, and completes the Panorama.
The plan of Pittsburgh by being designed to suit both the rivers, is in consequence irregular. The ground plot is a triangle. Some of the streets run parallel to each river, until they meet at the point, and they again are intersected by others at right angles, meeting at acute angles in the centre. At one of those acute angles at a corner of Wood street, is the Episcopal church, an octagonal building of brick not yet finished, and nearly opposite on the other side of the same street is a Presbyterian meeting-house of brick also, well built, neat, and roomy. In a remote street near Grant’s hill, is a small old framed Presbyterian meeting-house, used by a sect a little differing from the other, and the German Lutherans {231} have a small house of worship near it—at the N. E. end of the town is a very good brick meeting-house for a large congregation of Covenanters—and without the town, near Mr. Woods’s handsome seat, a handsome brick church is building for a society of Roman Catholicks. The court-house in the centre of the town is the only publick building which remains to be mentioned.
It is well built of brick, is spacious, and convenient for judiciary purposes, and serves for a place of worship for the Episcopal society until their own church is finished, as also occasionally for itinerant preachers to display their oratory—and the jury room up stairs is sometimes converted into a very good temporary theatre, where private theatricals are practised in the winter by the young gentlemen of the town.
A respectable society of Methodists meet at each others houses, not having yet any house for that express purpose.
From the number of religious houses and sects, it may be presumed that the sabbath is decently observed in Pittsburgh, and that really appears to be the case in a remarkable degree, considering it is so much of a manufacturing town, so recently become such, and inhabited by such a variety of people.
Amusements are also a good deal attended to, particularly concerts and balls in the winters, and there are annual horse races at a course about three miles from town, near the Allegheny beyond Hill’s tavern.[165]
On the whole let a person be of what disposition he will, Pittsburgh will afford him scope for the exercise of it.