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In its water front Pittsburgh has a great public asset which now lies undeveloped both from the point of view of transportation and from that of recreation and civic beauty.

Primitive commercial quay at Pittsburgh—Allegheny River

As a transportation factor, its primary use is for the transshipment of water-born commodities. As discussed elsewhere,[4] the actual amount of river freight is at present relatively small; but it is potentially important, and one of the reasons for its lack of growth is the neglect of Pittsburgh and other river ports to provide for the quick, convenient, and economical handling of river-born traffic at the public wharf.

Berlin water front, both useful and attractive

At river ports throughout the world, the first primitive step, beyond the mere dumping of stuff and passengers on the natural shelving bank or river bed of mud or gravel, is the paving of the slope, as at Pittsburgh, still leaving the goods to be dragged up and down the bank by main force. But among the live modern river cities of Europe, wherever a real water competition with rail service has been desired, even though such competition be limited in its range, the day of the primitive or mud-bank type of shore has long gone by; and the public wharf has been reconstructed into one of the many well-recognized types of commercial embankment providing an up-to-date equipment for handling freight, and decent, attractive conditions for passengers. This development of the public wharf properties in Europe has kept pace with the activities of the railroads, making for the steady and intelligent improvement of terminal facilities. Indeed in many European river ports the improvement of the water terminals has rather forced the pace for the railroads.

Frankfurt's double use of its river front, for business and for pleasure

In contrast to this active aggressive spirit, Pittsburgh, like most American river towns, where she has not actually turned her water front over bodily to the railroads, has left it in a most inefficient primitive condition.

Shaded promenade upon the embankment that protects Lyons from the floods of the Rhone

But the value of Pittsburgh's water front lies not merely in its use as a wharf, however much improved. Another use, shown by the varied experiences of other river cities, is that, in a commercial water front on modern lines, there is generally opportunity for a wide marginal thoroughfare for the relief of traffic congestion in the adjacent streets. Sometimes such a water-front thoroughfare becomes a busy avenue of retail trade and general travel; but more usually its peculiar value lies in diverting some of the main streams of heavy teaming from the older interior streets where the retail trade and office business tend to concentrate, and where the passenger travel is most dense. Especially with an isolated and limited business district like that of Pittsburgh, made up almost wholly of narrow streets and connected with the rest of the city by a series of bridges and of bridge-like gaps in the hills which wall it in, it becomes of the utmost importance to secure the formation of a wide circuit street connecting these outlets together, so that not all the travel is forced to filter slowly through the midst of the business district.

View of the same water front at Lyons, showing the commercial quay

A third undeveloped asset of the Pittsburgh water front is its value for recreation and as an element of civic comeliness and self-respect. One of the deplorable consequences of the short-sighted and wasteful commercialism of the later nineteenth century lay in its disregard of what might have been the esthetic by-products of economic improvement; in the false impression spread abroad that economical and useful things were normally ugly; and in the vicious idea which followed, that beauty and the higher pleasures of civilized life were to be sought only in things otherwise useless. Thus the pursuit of beauty was confounded with extravagance.

Among the most significant illustrations of the fallacy of such ideas are the comeliness and the incidental recreation value which attach to many of the commercial water fronts of European river ports, and it is along such lines that Pittsburgh still has opportunity for redeeming the sordid aspect of its business center.

How Paris appreciates the value of its river frontage

The outlook from The Point, Pittsburgh

Wherever in the world, as an incident of the highways and wharves along its riverbanks, a city has provided opportunity for the people to walk and sit under pleasant conditions where they can watch the water and the life upon it, where they can enjoy the breadth of outlook and the sight of the open sky and the opposite bank and the reflections in the stream, the result has added to the comeliness of the city itself, the health and happiness of the people and their loyalty and local pride. This has been true in the case of a bare, paved promenade, running along like an elevated railroad over the sheds and tracks and derricks of a busy ocean port, as at Antwerp; in the case of a tree-shaded sidewalk along a commercial street with the river quays below it, as at Paris and Lyons and hundreds of lesser cities; and in the case of a broad embankment garden won from the mud-banks by dredging and filling, as at London. Pittsburgh has an unusual opportunity to secure this incidental value for recreation in the treatment of its river front. Immediately across the Monongahela are the high and rugged hillsides of Mt. Washington and Duquesne Heights, and below these are the lesser but still striking hills along the Ohio River from the West End to McKees Rocks. The outlook over the river with its varied activities to these hills immediately beyond, would be notable in any part of the world. Furthermore, the rivers and the hills are the two big fundamental natural elements characteristic of the Pittsburgh District. Thus, any provision close to the heart of the city, whereby the people can have the enjoyment of these mighty landscapes, is of peculiar importance.

Mt. Washington hillside from the Monongahela water front

It does not diminish the essential grandeur of the situation that the river swarms with barges and steamers; that it is spanned by busy bridges; that the flat lands along the rivers are crowded with railroads, buildings and smoking factories; and that the hillsides are crowned with houses. It is a spacious and impressive landscape in any case. But for the people to get the good of it two things are needful. A locally agreeable place must be provided from which the scene can be enjoyed; and the landscape must be treated with the respect which it deserves, by the elimination of certain features which are merely indicative of neglect, waste, and abuse, and which have no economic justification. Especially is it desirable that the precipitous hillside rising to Mt. Washington, now largely an unfruitful waste, a place of raw gulleys and slides mingled with some painful advertising signs, should be treated with respect as a vital part of the great landscape of the city. It should be protected from defacement and its earthy portions should be reclothed with the beauty of foliage.

The accompanying illustrations are suggestive of the sort of thing which might be done by Pittsburgh with its remaining public water front, and in time, let us hope, with portions of the water front which have passed into private hands. But the actual details of the treatment to be adopted can be properly worked out only in connection with the comprehensive plans for flood protection with which the Flood Commission is now grappling.

Water front and hillside at Lyons

The great majority of river cities which have undertaken modern improvements on their water fronts have had to deal with more or less serious flood problems, and the complex and varying conditions of each river have had an important influence on the design of the embankment. The technical problems involved in the control of rivers are among the most complex and baffling with which the engineering profession has to deal, and any attempt to forestall the investigations of the Flood Commission, by definite plans for permanent improvements on the water front, would be folly. Nevertheless, the experience of hundreds of cities and the work of thousands of engineers have developed certain types of treatment, one or more of which, with suitable local modifications, will pretty surely appear in the final solution of the Pittsburgh problem. Subject, therefore, to the conclusions of the Flood Commission, a satisfactory development of the Pittsburgh wharf may be expected to include the following features.

First, there should be an amply wide water-front street, presumably formed by extending Water Street and Duquesne Way over the upper part of the present sloping bank. Second, the outer sidewalk of this street should become at most points a tree-shaded promenade, of such width and with such equipment of benches and other features for public recreation as the circumstances permit, so arranged that the people using it will neither be in the way of the transportation activities nor be annoyed or endangered by them, and so designed that the people can enjoy to the full the natural beauty of the river valley and the always interesting activities of which it is the stage. Third, there should be next the water a commercial quay, substantially level, of adequate but not unnecessary width, and accessible from the streets by inclined roads of reasonable gradient, parallel with the river, in place of the present excessive slopes.

In the first typical section here given is shown one such arrangement. Here, the level of the promenade is such that its solid parapet rises above the maximum flood level. This is of a type adopted for rivers that are subject to occasional excessive floods, as at Pittsburgh. It assumes the embankment to be made water-tight; the sewers and drains to be provided with proper back-pressure gates, and the openings from the streets, through the promenade and its parapet to the commercial quay, to be arranged for prompt damming on the rise of the water above the danger level. Thus would the entire business district be protected from floods, not only on the surface but also in the basements. The quay shown on this section is supposed to be at a level just above ordinary navigable stages, and to be equipped with power cranes for direct loading and unloading between steamers or barges, tied up at the quay, and wagons upon it. Provision could also be made for a freight track running in alongside the cranes for transfer between cars and vessels (if thought desirable), in addition to the facilities provided on railroad property. Alongside the quay, floating landing-stages for packets and so forth, reached by gang-planks or bridges, would be provided as at present, but in a more decent and commodious style.

Typical section for the water front. The parapet along the promenade would be above extreme flood height; the commercial quay would be at a lower level, flooded at very high water, but above all ordinary river stages.

Alternative section for the water front, suggesting a floating commercial quay that would rise and fall with the river. Large cranes could transfer freight directly from the boats to trucks at the street level. At certain places roadways would cut through the promenade to provide access to ramps leading down to the quays and to provide places for freight trucks to stand while being loaded and unloaded.

This section is of a type tested by practical experience and is clearly a great improvement upon the present primitive conditions. But it is open to two objections: first, that the quay is flooded at intervals, although so designed as to suffer no injury and to be put out of commission only when the river is practically closed to navigation by the height of the flood; and, second, that at low water, that is to say "pool full," it is not at the most convenient height.

An alternative section is therefore suggested, which has less precedent behind it, but which might prove better adapted to the Pittsburgh conditions. In this the fixed level of the commercial quay is replaced by a continuous landing stage formed of long floats or barges, of permanent construction, moored against the wall and free to rise and fall with the changing level of the river. The approaches to the floating quay for wagons would be, as in the case of the fixed quay, by descending inclines parallel with the river just outside the main wall; but in this case the roadway would be formed by a line of barges which would rest on a fixed incline during low water. The rising water would lift the barges off the incline successively, beginning with the lowest, so that at all stages of the water they would maintain an uninterrupted roadway to the quay on a proper gradient. Successful precedents for such use of permanent floating quays, and of alternately floating and grounded driveways to the landing stage, are to be found in Italy and in the recent harbor developments at Manaos, Brazil.

A great advantage of the floating quay is that in this type of construction the bed of the river may be excavated to its full depth back to the face of the flood wall itself, and that the space necessary for the commercial quay is secured on the floating structure outside of this line without materially reducing the prism, or section, of the flood discharge. It would therefore be possible, with this design, to secure more ample width for street, for promenade, and for commercial quay, and at the same time have more space in the river for the passage of the floods.

Whatever may prove to be the best details of the river-front treatment, it is clear that it can and should provide an ample thoroughfare, a clean, pleasant, tree-shaded promenade, and a convenient, up-to-date wharf with easy access to and from the streets. There is no serious difficulty in providing for such an improvement from the junction of the two bridges at The Point to Ninth Street, on the Allegheny, and to Smithfield Street, on the Monongahela.

East of Smithfield Street the passenger station of the Baltimore & Ohio now blocks the way. But it is not unreasonable to expect that the main Baltimore & Ohio station will, before long, be moved to some point in Junction Hollow in order to avoid the long delay, to all through trains, caused by the run down to Smithfield Street and back again. The suburban business of the Baltimore & Ohio could then be turned in, parallel with the Panhandle tracks, to a new joint suburban station in connection with the important future center of traffic near the junction of Forbes and Diamond Streets with Sixth Avenue and the proposed South Hill bridge.

When the Baltimore & Ohio passenger station is removed from Smithfield Street it would be possible to continue the new water-front street and promenade east of Smithfield on a viaduct just outside of the present Water Street; this viaduct would rise over the Baltimore & Ohio freight yard and the grade entrances thereto at Grant and Ross Streets, and so connect along the line of the Panhandle (Try Street) with the proposed Second Avenue bridge over the railroad, and thence with Forbes Street and Sixth Avenue.

Any better connection than now exists from Ninth Street and Duquesne Way to Liberty Avenue would be so costly as to seem hardly worth while, although it would be a much-desired link in the circuit thoroughfare.

It is probably impossible for Pittsburghers, who are familiar with the present neglected aspect of the water front and are not familiar with the finer European quays, to form any conception of how fine a situation will be created for public or private buildings, especially on the southern water front when thus improved. If it were not so much to one side of the main streams of passenger travel, the river frontage between Smithfield and Ferry Streets would offer a most admirable site for public buildings in the down town district.