History and Famous Residents
In 1828, the borough of Allegheny, Pennsylvania, was incorporated where the North Side now stands. It had a population of 1,000. In 1880, Allegheny was incorporated as a city. The City of Allegheny was annexed by Pittsburgh in 1907, and became known as the North Side.
Historians claim that the Felix Brunot mansion on Stockton Avenue (Allegheny Center) was once a station on the Underground Railroad, where fugitive slaves from the South stopped for food and shelter. The Allegheny regional branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, located at 5 Allegheny Square (Allegheny Center), was the first tax-supported library in the United States. It is now closed to the public following a lightning strike. A new library opened nearby at 1230 Federal Street. Charles Taze Russell organized what are now known as Jehovah's Witnesses at a house in the old city of Allegheny.
Mary Cassatt was born on Rebecca Street in 1844. Today, Rebecca Street has become Reedsdale Street (in the North Shore neighborhood). If the house had not been torn down for Highway Route 65, it would be facing Heinz Field, the home of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. lived at 1318 Arch Street (Central Northside) when he invented the Ferris Wheel for the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in an attempt to create something as impressive as the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France.
The first World Series was played at Exposition Park by the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston Americans (now known as the Boston Red Sox) in 1903.
Gus & Yia-Yia's Iceball Stand, selling fresh popcorn, peanuts, and old-fashioned iceballs (similar to snow cones) hand-scraped from a block of ice, has been in West Park since 1934. The "orange concession stand with a brightly-colored umbrella" is something of an unofficial Pittsburgh landmark during the summer months.
Read more about this topic: North Side (Pittsburgh)
Famous quotes containing the words history, famous and/or residents:
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Did you ever stop to think why cops are always famous for being dumb? Simple. Because they don’t have to be anything else.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1985)
“In most nineteenth-century cities, both large and small, more than 50 percent—and often up to 75 percent—of the residents in any given year were no longer there ten years later. People born in the twentieth century are much more likely to live near their birthplace than were people born in the nineteenth century.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)