RAILROAD STREET: Pittsburgh’s Past vs. Present
In the 1930s and 1940s, Railroad Street lived up to its name. Today it has a much different look.
Dusty old maps and faded pictures show Railroad Street to be as blandly functional as its name suggests. For decades it provided a bumpy ride past warehouses, factories and foundries that lined up along train tracks in the Strip District. Change has arrived quickly and dramatically. Luxury apartments and modern office buildings now stand where laborers once manufactured items such as high-pressure valves and cork products. These past and present photographs reveal how much we’ve changed, in how we live and how we work.
Top: Railroad Street, looking west toward 26th Street, April 4, 1940. When Pittsburgh Valve Foundry and Construction Co. centralized its operations at this Railroad Street facility in 1901, the firm employed 600 workers and had just sent a crew to Monterey, Mexico, to assemble pipe fittings for a steel mill under construction there.
The company was still humming in 1920 when it celebrated the opening of a new pipe-fitting shop with a “house warming” event. Hundreds of employees and their families flocked to the plant to enjoy music, dancing, children’s games and “moving pictures.” The good times wouldn’t last. Disaster struck on a cold, windy night, Jan. 8, 1944, when fire swept through the property, which had by then been seized for nonpayment of taxes. Several buildings collapsed, but little else was lost — a few trucks and old tires, some scrap metal and rags.
Today a modern steel and glass office building rises on the site as part of Oxford Development’s 3 Crossings project. Among its tenants are Argo AI, a self-driving car startup with a $1 billion partnership with Ford.
Above: Railroad Street, looking east toward 24th Street, on April 4, 1940. A portion of the Armstrong Cork Factory fills the left side of this picture. The plant, which employed 1,200 people in the 1930s, closed in 1974. In the following years, the building became a dilapidated and crumbling urban canvas for graffiti artists. Several homeless people found shelter there. Since then, it’s been renovated into luxury apartments.
Beyond the Armstrong factory rises the six-story Crane Building, constructed in the early 1920s to store plumbing supplies. Today the Crane Building is an office building. Tenants include Health Net and EFI.
Right: Railroad Street, looking east between 26th and 27th streets, on April 4, 1940. On the left are buildings of Pittsburgh Valve Foundry and Construction Co. A line of Pennsylvania Railroad cars stretches in the distance.
Today, The Yards at 3 Crossings and a parking garage dominate the scene.