Pittsburgh Main Thoroughfares and the Down Town District / Improvements Necessary to Meet the City's Present and Future Needs

by Frederick Law Olmsted

It is recommended, therefore, that Forbes Street be made the main artery of this eastbound thoroughfare system, and that it be widened to 100 feet. As in the case of Penn Avenue, the widening should be made on both sides if done by the gradual process; but if done all at one time, it should be made entirely on the south side.

South Hills Artery

Between the Point District and the South Hills there is now urgent need for a thoroughfare connection of adequate capacity and on reasonable gradients. At present the only access for surface traffic—except electric cars—is via the Brownsville Road, or South Eighteenth Street, or the inclines. The two roads are steep, from 7 to 8 per cent, and the inclines are expensive and of very limited capacity. The South Hills country is sparsely developed as yet, but, being comparatively free from smoke and very near to the business district, it offers unusually desirable opportunities for homes, and it must soon be thickly settled. The need for a good thoroughfare to this region will then be of far greater importance even than now.

Only two reasonable ways of securing such a thoroughfare appear. One is by a new slanting road up the hillside south of the river, much longer, and so on an easier gradient, than Brownsville Road; the other is by some high-level bridge and tunnel scheme, such as that proposed by residents of the South Hills.

The opportunities for a hillside road have been studied with some care, but the excessive length required to get a reasonable gradient, and the difficulties and high cost of constructing a wide thoroughfare on the steep hillside, have proved to be serious drawbacks to all possible plans for such a street.

Entrance to a thoroughfare tunnel, Stuttgart

In any thoroughfare scheme to the South Hills, it is reasonably clear that the end to be attained is the most direct access possible on easy gradients to the higher levels of the South Hills country. For it is on the upper levels, the hilltops and the upper slopes, that most of the present development has taken place; and there can be little doubt that in the future, even when building space is at a much higher premium than it is now, the overwhelming majority of the population will be found on the hills rather than in the narrow valleys.

Thoroughfare tunnel at Budapest