The first July meeting of the Bridgeville High School Brunch Club was a red-letter event, enhanced by the arrival of John Rosa for the summer. John, whom we fellow members of the Class of 1949 knew as “Yunner”, moved to Arizona fifty years ago, but comes back for an extended visit each year and is welcomed with open arms.
John has always been a popular, outgoing guy and probably has more close friends in the Bridgeville area than any pair of us combined. He was a key member of the Baldwin Street clique in our class, a clique that also included Don Toney and Ray Fagan. Consequently, the conversation focused on the good old days on Baldwin Street and the tragedy of its recent decline.
The discussion heated up when Tom Grossi reported that Don Toney’s boyhood home at 619 Baldwin Street has just been demolished as part of the Borough’s campaign against blight. I have been aware of the program but had no idea this house would be included. For me it has always been a symbol of the story of the penniless immigrant achieving the Great American Dream.
Murray Toney emigrated to this area in 1910 with absolutely no resources. He immediately began selling dry goods door to door in the Carnegie/Bridgeville area. By 1914 he had built his business sufficiently to open a family clothing store in Bridgeville. His tales of his career as a peddler were classic. Most of his customers were residents of the “mine patch towns up Millers Run”. Sales were done on credit; the coal miners lived from payday to payday. Initially his accounting system was to scribble debts on the fences in front of his customers’ homes; one can imagine his dismay one month when the company chose to paint all the fences in town!
Eventually the Toney family acquired the property at 619 Baldwin Street, a handsome two and a half story brick house that was big enough to provide a home for the family, one store front for Tom Toney’s barber shop, one store front for Murray Toney’s clothing store, and several apartments for renters. The apartments were in a first-floor extension in the back, in the third-floor attic, and occasionally in the basement. Don remembers a tenant floating on a mattress in the basement apartment during the big flood in 1940.
Murray Toney operated his store until he retired in 1955 at the age of seventy-five. He was a major figure in the Syrian/American community, helping many other immigrants get their start in the New World. He was a founder of the St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church in Bridgeville as well as being involved in acquiring the property in South Fayette where the new church was recently constructed. He died in 1991 at the age of 110, leaving a remarkable legacy.
Outlined in brick on the front of the house was the date 1916; presumably that is the year it was built. The contrast between the permanence of this house and the fragility of the door to door dry goods peddler who ultimately lived there exemplifies everything that was positive about our society a century ago. Seeing it disappear is almost sacrilegious.
The anti-blight campaign is funded by a $1,236,200 grant from FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), an agency within the Department of Homeland Security with the primary responsibility of providing emergency assistance to communities affected by natural disasters. A secondary responsibility is to minimize the impact of flooding by insurance (the National Flood Insurance Program) or by funding the removal of structures that are in recognized flood plains.
A flood plain is defined as an area that has a one percent probability of being flooded in any given year. The FEMA flood plain map for Bridgeville indicates that all the houses on Baldwin Street and McLaughlin Run Road are in this category. Anyone familiar with this area is well acquainted with the problem of flooding from McLaughlin Run. The earliest recorded flood was in late July,1874, when a downpour produced ten fatalities. The replacement of farms and woodlots by non-permeable buildings and streets, without adequate detention capability, has aggravated the problem significantly.
We have had Senior Design Project teams at Pitt study McLaughlin Run on two separate occasions. They easily confirmed that the existing channel was inadequate to transfer storm-water runoff from the FEMA design storm without flooding. Their recommendations included installation of detention ponds upstream (in Upper St. Clair Township), installing trash racks to limit debris transport, adding retaining walls to increase the stream bed cross section, and replacing the Bower Hill Road and Commercial Street bridges.
Part of this has occurred. McLaughlin Park has been converted into a small detention pond and trash racks put in place. There are plans to add retaining walls and to replace the bridges. The net effect of all these improvements is a minor reduction in the flood plain area; most of the properties are still included. It is not clear how the seven properties that have been condemned and demolished were selected; perhaps they have already suffered extensive damage from flooding. At any rate, their removal has produced seven interesting vacant lots.
FEMA requires these properties be used as “green space”, but doesn’t precisely define the term. In general, it implies vegetation – grass and trees – and precludes parking lots and new buildings. It certainly would be nice if the borough created seven well-manicured parklets and were able to maintain them. I suspect the neighborhood could use a playground, but is that green space? What about an urban garden? A century ago there would have been no shortage of folks eager to put out a garden on available space.
Perhaps these questions are premature. After all, the Borough is deep into the process of producing a Comprehensive Plan. Surely the long-term future of the Baldwin Street neighborhood will be an important component in it.