We always enjoy turning back the calendar and speculating on life in Bridgeville in the distant past. This time we have chosen a full century and will try to imagine life here in the Fall of 1922. Bridgeville was well in to the Roaring Twenties by then and had finally gotten past the difficult times associated with the Flu Epidemic.
By then our community had celebrated its twenty-first birthday. We were still the younger sister of neighboring Carnegie and Canonsburg, but were maturing rapidly. The population was now slightly more than 3100 and growing consistently. There probably were about as many additional folks in the neighboring townships, people who relied upon Bridgeville as their commercial/cultural center.
Bridgeville was “downtown” for the Thoms Run area, Kirwan Heights, Bower Hill, Beadling, Morgan, and Sygan, as well as for all the people living on subsistence farms in South Fayette, Upper St. Clair, and Collier Townships. Washington Avenue was full of stores to fill any shopper’s needs and there were first run movie theaters (Rankin) on Station Street and (Delphus) on Railroad Street. One wonders if they were equipped with organs to provide music for the silent films.
The Pennsylvania and Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroads provided efficient access to Pittsburgh. In 1922 the Bigi family acquired a franchise to operate buses as far as Dormont, with an extension into the City still in the future. Before the construction of the Liberty and Fort Pitt tunnels and the Liberty Bridge, vehicular access into downtown Pittsburgh required driving up over Mt. Washington via Woodruff and Merrimac Streets, then down the other side via the McArdle Roadway to Arlington Avenue, and finally across the Smithfield Street Bridge. An alternative route was to skirt Mt. Washington via the West End to West Carson Street and cross the river on the Point Bridge. Neither route was particularly attractive.
As always, newspaper clippings provide us with considerable information. C. P. Mayer had unsuccessfully tried to publish a local newspaper before World War I; by 1922 locals had to rely on the Canonsburg “Daily Notes”, the Carnegie “Signal-Item”, and the Pittsburgh newspapers for coverage. Francis Cavanaugh and the “Bridgeville News” were still four years in the future.
On October 21 the Post-Gazette reported a major scandal. In defiance to an order by District Attorney Harry Rowand enforcing the Sunday blue laws, a football team sponsored by the Bridgeville Volunteer Fire Department had hosted a game versus the North Side Heighton Club Juniors on Sunday, October 15. Several well-known Bridgeville citizens were involved in the event. County Detective Robert McMillen testified that he had officially advised the participants prior to the game of the order; the large crowd of spectators had urged the athletes to go on the field.
The manager of the local team was initially believed to be Bridgeville Police Chief William Flood. He somehow managed to wiggle out of this accusation by claiming he had no connection with the team. Alderman M. A. Ray accepted the guilty pleas of the players involved, fining them each four dollars and costs. He advised them that a second offense would generate a minimum fine of twenty-five dollars each.
An interesting social note was an event hosted by Frank Murray on September 2, honoring Civil War veterans at his home. Entertainment was provided by three “old-time” fiddlers and a pianist from the Canonsburg area. One wonders how many vets were still alive.
It is not surprising that C. P. Mayer dominated the news that Fall. He had acquired Dr. Spahr’s farm in Kirwan Heights a few years earlier and established the first commercial airfield “west of the Alleghenies”. An October 17 clipping reported his plans to construct a major (one mile and a quarter) auto board track with a one mile dirt track inside in the “natural amphitheater” between the airfield and Chartiers Creek.
The Historical Society has a copy of the plans for this project, thanks to Lou DeLach. Once it was proposed, Mr. Mayer expanded his goals and announced that this could be the nucleus of a world class sports venue, possibly even the site of some future Olympic Games. Unfortunately even the modest plan never came to fruition, although a quarter mile board track was eventually constructed in South Fayette later in the decade.
By 1922 Baldwin Street was booming, staking its claim to being Bridgeville’s other “main street”. Early in the twentieth century Peter, Michael, and Louis Colussy, skilled carpenters, had come to Bridgeville and gone into business as home builders and general contractors. The firm was largely responsible for the development of the Baldwin Street and McLaughlin Run Road neighborhoods. In 1918 Peter left the business, to build and manage an apartment building at the corner of Baldwin and Railroad Streets. At the same time Michael left to build and operate an ice plant at the other end of Baldwin Street. Louis continued the contracting firm until 1932; his sons diversified into automobile sales with successful Chevrolet and Ford agencies.
An interesting real estate transaction in October reported sale of a property on Chartiers Street by J. H. Lutz to John C. Crum for $3,500. We presume this was for “Crum’s Field” between Elm Street and Spruce Alley, the vacant lot where we tried to “shoehorn in” a ball field between piles of well drilling equipment, in the 1940s.
In 1922 Washington School was home to all twelve grades. Massively overcrowded, the community began to plan construction of a new building, to house Junior and Senior High School classes. The graduating class this year had been the biggest to date, with eighteen members. Included were C. P. Mayer II, Walter McMillen, Paul Rankin, Harry Saperstein, and Karl Weise – a roll call of prominent Bridgeville citizens two decades later.
Although a future slogan, “Build, Boost, and Beautify”, had not yet been coined, that philosophy was appropriate for Bridgeville one hundred years ago.