Turns out that the City of Pittsburgh has their 1984 maps available on their GIS site. So, the answer to the questions posed on the phone call today are pretty easy to figure out.
Today:
I tried to keep the picture window I clipped from both images the same distance so the scale is the same…I used Martindale street in the upper left (you can see it make that right turn) as the one corner and where 7th Street hits Fort Duquesne on the other side of the Allegheny as the other. Turns out my use of Martindale was pretty prescient…
1984:
You can see the small lots on Alcor more towards the General Robinson intersection..
And here are two zoomed in versions; again, I used the same start and end points, the intersection of General Robinson at the Main PNC Gate in the upper left and where 6th Street hits the Allegheny on the bottom right.
Today:
1984:
definitely in the park…maybe more in the stands than left field, but, hey, left field sounds better.
Daniel Webster Elementary:
This was a little tougher….but…
Anyway, the University of Pittsburgh library has a map that was updated from 1923 to 1961 online.
You can see Alcor down there on the bottom right. DW is right below the map guide in the upper left.
Here is DW zoomed in and centered….head east on Martindale to see the intersection with Merchant to compare below. Or look at the train tracks.
My civil engineering guess is the school bit the dust when the the freeway went in. Not sure how much of that was coincident with Three Rivers (and don’t have the interest to go try and find out!)
Okay, I decided to see if I could figure it out (I couldn’t). I found this (so that effort was worth it).
104 Alcor Street, circa 1939.
