Chorus Lines, Cockpits, and Fried Chicken

An enterprising local woman provided airline passengers and workers with fine dining options beginning in the late 1920s. The first airplane meals prepared in Pittsburgh came from Katherine Baker’s kitchen in Pleasant Hills. She was known as "Lady" or even "Ma" Baker —  but she was no plump, flour-dusted grandmother.

Wilbur Wright carried the first airplane passenger 2000 feet across a North Carolina beach in 1908, but paying passengers were still a novelty nearly two decades later. The first documented passenger had flown over Pittsburgh sometime in 1911. By 1928 the Pittsburgh Press was publishing articles like “How to Enjoy Your First Airplane Ride” – an experience so novel that readers needed advice about what to expect. The top tip was this: “Don’t worry. Relax, settle back and enjoy life. If there’s any worrying to be done let the pilot do it.”  

But relaxing wasn’t easy! Not only were the heart-stopping, ear-popping, stomach-dropping sensations of first flight experiences uncomfortable, Pittsburgh's first passengers didn’t even have seats! Perched precariously atop stacks of mail bags in small, open-cockpit biplanes, those who dared could pay to fly to Ohio. But by 1928 travelers could purchase one of four seats in the enclosed cockpit of a high-wing Fairchild monoplane, or join up to 17 other passengers in a noisy Ford Tri-Motor cabin. 

Pittsburghers could travel to Cleveland or Washington or New York, but they would have counted themselves lucky to be offered a cup of coffee before taking off from West Mifflin’s Bettis Field, the first local field to offer commercial flights. Nationally, the rapidly growing airline industry was scrambling to meet passenger expectations for comfort, and facing tough competition for long distance travel from the railroads. Industry leaders recognized that amenities such as beverages and meals would enhance flying experiences and even entice passengers into the airports and skies above. Meals would also have the secondary effect of distracting passengers from the discomforts of flying. But since there were no industry-guided initiatives to guide in-flight dining, a local woman took it upon herself to inaugurate in-flight dining over Pittsburgh skies. 

From chorus line to tea room 

Katherine “Kitty” Baker was born in Ottumwa, Iowa in 1878 to farmer William M. King and wife Sarah Jane “Jennie” Ball, followed by siblings Frederick and Minnie. She would later tell a Pittsburgh Press interviewer that by age 17 she had married in her hometown and was acting in New Orleans stock theater a year later in 1896. Those earliest stories cannot be confirmed, although census data does confirm that the King family moved to New Orleans around 1895.

Kitty claimed to have then studied ballet in New York, where she “got a job in a chorus – pony ballet – and worked at that for a long time.” Pony ballet was an early 1900s fad popularized by a traveling British dance troupe of petite young women, each younger than 19 years, less than 5 feet tall, and weighing under 130 pounds. Their performances, enhanced by whimsical costumes and props, were characterized by synchronized, precision chorus-line movements (some of which seemed to mimic how ponies moved). Pony Ballet-style choreography was all the rage for a few years in comedies and vaudeville. 

A coy Kitty would later chide her Press interviewer:  

“Never mind in what shows!” she held up a stern finger. “You know we women in business have to cheat on our ages, anyway, I don’t intend to have people saying ‘Oh, if she was in that show, she must be - well, let’s see- ’ and then the years pile up.”

Although Kitty obfuscated aspects of her early life, public records confirm her marriage to David F. Baker on 16 April 1904 in Manhattan. Mr. Baker worked as a brokerage office telegraph operator and the couple lived in Jersey City through at least 1910. After her husband died, Kitty took a “nurses training course” and worked at that profession during World War I “…. but I was never sent overseas because I was underweight. Couldn’t seem to put on another ounce.  After the war I stuck at nursing for two years, and got sick of that. I got interested, then, in dietetics, and took some courses.” 

By 1920 Kitty was operating a tea room in Greenwich Village, which she described as “….quite a Bohemian place in the days before Bohemian became ‘arty’.”  Recalling that this was “before the village got ‘phoney’,” her clientele included luminaries of the day like Sinclair Lewis, journalists, and theater celebrities Kitty knew from her chorus girl era. After legal Prohibition took effect in 1920, such tea rooms became enormously popular as people sought alternative gathering spaces to replace bars. Long associated with the temperance movement, and often owned and operated by women, tea rooms had reputations for serving nourishing home-cooked meals and snacks. These alcohol-free establishments were considered decorous places for unaccompanied women to gather – although Village tea rooms were famous (and perhaps notorious) as meeting hubs for intellectuals and artists – and in some, alcohol was often consumed secretly.  

Eventually "Bohemian" life wore thin. Kitty, “pretty sick of that literary and theatrical crowd”, relocated to Pittsburgh by 1924, following her siblings and mother to its southern suburbs. She operated the Green Teapot Inn at 5201 Fifth Avenue in Shadyside and managed another tea room restaurant at the stylish Ruskin Apartment Hotel in Oakland's prestigious Schenley Farms district (now the Ruskin Hall residence of the University of Pittsburgh). 

These establishments brought her into contact with Pittsburgh's East End high society. Moving about the wealthier neighborhoods also brought her unwelcome attention when she was named in a story about a drunken city police officer who verbally abused and physically assaulted several women shoppers. On Christmas day 1924, while Kitty's car waited outside a Shadyside "chain store" on Filbert and Walnut streets as she shopped, her "negro chauffeur" was targeted with racist epithets by an officer. Kitty took no guff from racist, abusive drunks with badges: the papers noted that "Mrs. Baker reprimanded the officer" on the street and agreed to testify against him. 

The Ruskin properties underwent bankruptcy reorganization in 1934, which may have prompted Kitty to seek employment elsewhere. A September 1934 Pittsburgh Press want-ad, though not identified as having been placed by Kitty, highlights the lengths to which a well-trained and experienced hostess would go to seek work during the lean years of the Depression:

Kitty found her next position out of the city in the South Hills, opening another tea room that same year at the historic Pleasant Hill Inn (which was also described as the Pleasant Hills Inn, Farm, or Tavern). 

This was a former stagecoach tavern situated at the prominent intersection of Saw Mill Run Boulevard and Clairton Road. Dusty liquor licenses and bills dating to 1830 that Kitty found in an attic trunk prompted another Press story – ironic but welcome publicity for her liquor-free establishment.  

From tea rooms to cockpits and cabins

Within a year Kitty was capitalizing on the inn’s proximity to two other important landmarks: the regional airports in West Mifflin. Established in 1925, Bettis Field occupied the high, flat land at the intersection of Lebanon Church Road and Pittsburgh-McKeesport Blvd. It served as Pittsburgh’s main airfield until Allegheny County Airport (AGC) opened a mile away in 1931. Both airports operated simultaneously for another 18 years until the Bettis site was purchased for an atomic research facility in 1949 (which still operates today). In their heyday, both airfields teemed with hungry pilots, workers, and travelers – which suited Kitty Baker just fine.

With her restaurant situated just west of two airfields, Kitty was soon catering meals to both sites and feeding and housing workers who showed up at her door calling her either “Ma” or “Lady” Baker. “Now I seem bound by the sky,” she told the Press in a May 1935 article, and described herself as thoroughly immersed in aviation:

 “I know all the pilots, am used to their shop talk, and am just as fussy about weather conditions as they are. I have to be, you know. If the weather is bad, and they’re staying over, I’ll have to prepare lots more food. I know every ship that flies over the field…You can tell them by the noise the motors make when you get to know them as well as I do.” 

Such intimacy with aviation was good for business, but Kitty’s affection for her “boys” was genuine. She got to know pilots from across the nation who flew through Pittsburgh. The paper commented that the “coziness of her farm house tavern or flavor of her cooking has made Mrs. Baker a second “mother” to the pilots." But the dangers of early aviation were also part of that connection. “‘Ma’ Baker left her kitchen in Pleasant Hills Farm yesterday to fly with one of her boys,” read a photo caption in April 1935 as Kitty boarded a TWA flight for Kansas City. Two weeks later she mourned that flight's pilot, Harvey Bolton, who perished in a crash that killed four others, including a New Mexico senator. Kitty even helped in an emergency by transporting rescuers to a TWA crash site in Uniontown in 1936; she had been waiting at the airport with lunches for the pilots who ultimately perished in the crash.

When Central Airline launched five “luxury service” round trips per day in July 1935 between Washington and Detroit, with stops in Pittsburgh and Cleveland, it was Kitty who supplied the luxuries aboard the new Stinson plane. She provided a full course, white-tablecloth luncheon on the christening flight, which was piloted by noted Pittsburgh pilot Trow Sebree and famed McKeesport aviatrix Helen Richey. As the first woman hired as a pilot on a commercial airliner. Richey partook of this “luncheon in the clouds” photo op, but her career with Central was brief. She quit a month later, realizing that she’d been hired for a job that was more of a stunt hire than industry commitment to equal opportunities. Squab on toast couldn’t compensate for Richey only getting scheduled for 11 flights in eight months.    

 

But Kitty kept on cooking, providing more than 60 high quality boxed lunches each day for coast-to-coast passengers. Studies have since shown that altitude and pressurization have impacts on taste and smell, but Kitty discovered the effects on food breakdown and flavor perception via trial and error, as she told the Press in 1937:  

Fowl – chicken, squab, duck – are ideal foods, but fish is absolutely “out.” Most fruit juices and prepared fresh fruit add taste to the lunch, but bananas are ruled against – unless you want the entire lunch box to have a banana flavor...

Salads, coleslaw especially, are seldom used, because of souring when packed with other foods. Pickles and olives may be used if correctly packed in individual containers.  

The cheese list is also limited, Mrs. Baker says. A mild cream cheese has proved a favorite. On the ground man may like a pungent bite with their favorite lager, but in the air they prefer a more dainty morsel.

Kitty even sent homemade ice cream aloft for short flights. Steady business from locals and those in the aviation community kept her tea room solvent, and in June 1936 Kitty even assumed management of the restaurant at Allegheny County Airport, a move which gave her “far famed corn fritters, spiced fruit and pecan pie a new locale.”  But this was a short-lived experiment for Kitty. The world was fundamentally accelerating in this aviation age and convenience and profit were being prioritized. Because airports were expensive to run, income from high turnover/low overhead concessions like casual restaurants and coffee shops provided important revenue. Concession contacts were hotly contested as lucrative business opportunities, and Kitty was soon pushed out as restaurant manager.

The Pleasant Hill Inn was sold in 1937. Kitty continued to provide meals at Bettis Airfield into the 1940s, first at the terminal’s former equipment building and then at a private home across the road, which Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics temporarily took over as a wartime dormitory. But as airplanes got bigger and flights became more numerous, Kitty's in-flight catering business of home-cooked boxed meals was unable to keep pace with demand. In 1940 TWA announced the installation of a $5000 “passenger kitchen” to prepare special airline foods in the Fliers's Club building opposite AGC, which was renovated to house flight crews during stopovers. Facilities there provided more than 300 hot meals for passengers per day that could be reheated in small convection ovens aboard plane galleys.

High volume and impersonal service were not Kitty’s style. By the early 1940s, Kitty had moved to Canonsburg in Washington County to open a new tea room she called Baker Farm. The Pittsburgh aviation crowd followed the charismatic, petite woman they called “Ma Baker” or “Lady Baker” and she  provided  luncheons, dinners and parties until she passed away at the age of 71 in 1950. 

This busy little woman once claimed that she couldn't "stand monotony." Indeed, she went from Iowa farm fields to Broadway chorus lines, served as a wartime nurse, and spent much of her adult life managing multiple successful catering and restaurant careers. Her love of variety and her joy at trying new things inspired her to set standards for in-flight dining that today's highly salted and preservative-laden prepackaged airline meals fall far short of.  

Addendum

Pleasant Hill Inn (aka as Pleasant Hills Inn, Farm, or Tavern) stood on 376 acres of land granted to John Reed in 1796. He sold it to his brother-in-law William Walker, who built the house in 1799. The Walker family operated a stagecoach stop there until 1849. Before Kitty Baker took over, the YWCA used the land for weekend retreats during World War I. The Walker estate was sold in 1937, and Kitty expanded her catering operations to the two local airports. It was subsequently used during WWII as a fresh air retreat for working women. The house was finally demolished in 1959. Today the site near a busy suburban cloverleaf is the location of a U-Haul business in West Mifflin. 

May Day: A Story about Work, Worry, and Profanity

When I was young and (mostly) unencumbered with Stuff, moving day meant buying pizza and beer for my friends to thank them for helping me roll my mattress and boxes down the stairs. It was a small price to pay for dealing with the nuisances of moving.

Thankfully I've not had to move house in over twenty years, but every May Day I think about the horrors of doing so. That's because as far back as American colonial times, May 1 was the traditional date when yearly rentals expired. 

For generations in this nation's crowded urban centers, May Day meant Moving Day.

It was...kind of chaotic

Moving Day (in Little Old New York), c. 1827, unknown artist
Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

In New York, the state legislature mandated that all housing contracts were valid until the first of May. But lest you think this May Day Moving Day was only a Manhattan phenomenon, rest assured that even without a legislative mandate, it happened in Pittsburgh, too. 

Well, eventually it did. 

Throughout much of the 19th century, rental leases in the Pittsburgh region actually ran through April 1. According to a Pittsburgh Press article in 1888, that April date had been "adapted to the agriculturists, who thus may be on their new farms in time for spring work."

So while Manhattan played musical apartments on May 1, for a long time Pittsburgh flipped on April 1 because that's what made sense for regional farmers. 

Still, regardless of the date, an entire city moving en masse was utter chaos. The Pittsburgh Press described moving day in 1888: "Everywhere to-day could be seen loads of household goods with their suggestions of work, worry and profanity; cold meals and refractory stovepipes; reckless draymen; and, in some cases, defrauded landlords."

Cartoon, Harper's Weekly, 1869

Work, worry, and profanity? Yes, that sums up the tedium of moving, then and now! 

Even Pittsburgh's snobby society newspaper The Bulletin sympathized in 1890. Its wealthy readers could relate to upheaval and worries about moving one's Stuff, though not so much with anxieties about homelessness that many Pittsburghers experienced when searching for affordable housing. 

The Bulletin, 29 March 1890

Moving was even more fun when it rained, like it did in 1903. A Pittsburgh Gazette account captured the sights and sounds of that delightful day:

MOVING IN THE RAIN WAS HARD ON BOTH TEMPERS AND FURNITURE

Wet and bedraggled, cold and hungry, with aching bones and tempers on edge, several hundred families that claim Pittsburgh as their home, last night pulled out enough damp bedding to make an excuse for a couch and covers and lay down to dreams of warm, dry, cozy homes. They had moved, in spite of the weather, for it was a case of must.

Long after the tired movers had retired, the steaming teams of the transfer companies could be seen plodding along with empty cans and wagons which had been to some distant street. Their covers had availed little to keep out the furious storm of rain, and the heavy blankets that were used for wrappers were plastered with mud. All in all, yesterday was the nastiest moving day that Pittsburgh had seen for many a year.

From daylight till late in the evening a constant string of mishaps was reported. Wagons stuck in the mud or turned over; people who had ordered vans and wagons without covers and were furious in consequence; angry women whose health or disposition forbade them going out in the rain, screamed warning orders to the "hustlers" from upstairs windows; drivers who were told the family at the other end of the route would be out of the house found them still in possession and had to deposit the newcomer's goods on the porch or in a shed.

The telephones in the transfer offices fairly buzzed with indignant inquiries or angry complaints. Nobody knew or cared what part of the general inconvenience the other fellow was sharing. It was enough for him that his goods were not being moved in the manner and condition that he had expected.

Logistics could be tricky. Accompanying the article above, this Pittsburgh Gazette cartoon illustrated how renters were required to vacate by March 31, never mind that they were unable to move into their new digs until the next day, April 1. With Pittsburgh's late March and early April weather being unpredictable and often inhospitable, folks looked toward the May Day Moving Day of other cities with longing, thinking a month might make a comfortable difference.

Pittsburgh Gazette, 31 March 1903

Eventually Pittsburgh residents would transition from an April 1 to May Day moving day like all other cities, but that took a while. Even though Pittsburgh's late 19th century urban economy was indisputably dominated by industry, not agriculture, old traditions died hard. 

The city's last official communal April moving day was in 1906. The Pittsburgh Post marked the occasion with some photos and an accompanying article:

Pity the poor housewife.

And the tired husband, think of him with a sympathetic feeling. For this is the day after moving-day when the troubles and the tribulations of domestic life are multiplied by the arduous work of unpacking household goods and getting things in shape. "Moving Day" passed off without incident, beyond the usual confusion and trying times for the unfortunates who were obliged to pack up and hike to other quarters.

Moving day began as early as 4 o'clock yesterday morning with the rumblings of the great vans heavily loaded with all sorts of furniture, to say nothing of the pet dog or bird perched on the topmost point, could plainly be heard. Anxious people awaited at the house for the arrival of the goods, and it was not the most kindly words uttered by many over the tardiness of the wagons in reaching their destination.

But it was moving day, and for this a great deal had to be tolerated.

The streets presented interesting sights all through the day and night. In the downtown section the moving vans were quite conspicuous and people out for an afternoon stroll found much delight watching the household goods from some family in Allegheny being carted to East Liberty or some other distant point.

Vehicles of every possible description were pressed into service yesterday. It was a funny assortment. Even the dilapidated team of Uncle Remus found its way into the great parade of moving vehicles. Ideal weather also helped.

The transfer companies reaped a rich harvest yesterday. Each load brought $15 and in some cases an even higher price was asked. Less trouble is expected next year, for Moving Day will be changed to May 1, which is shown by the fact that nearly all the leases this year have been signed for 13 months. the big job will be spread over a larger period of time and the work will be made much easier for everybody.

There was much doing in the skyscrapers yesterday. Hundreds of firms changed locations, and the directory man will be busier than ever when he starts.

 

 

 

Images and story from Pittsburgh Post, 3 April 1906

 

A Moving Day excuse at least got you off the hook for doing your civic duty, since judges often made concessions for jurors who had to move house. But Moving Day made no concession for the Lord's Day -- or rather, it was the other way around. When May Day fell on a frigid, rainy Sunday in 1921, the Pittsburgh Post explained that

 

In many cases the loads were discharged into bare houses and apartments that, because of the day being a Sunday, were without heat, and sometimes without light. The new tenants who had forgotten Saturday to fix things up with the light and gas people, as a rule, found that they faced a cold night in their new homes.

 

Despite lousy weather and Sabbath-observing utility hook-up snafus, the papers reported a record number of moves in 1921 in the East End, Oakland and Wilkinsburg.

 

A decade later, this excerpt from a below-the-fold front-page column by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette staff writer James R. George entitled "World Just One Big Checkerboard Today" poked fun at the 1930 moving chaos.

Moving Day, or Nervous Breakdown day, as it was called in the old Ptoemai chronology, began early this morning and lasts until about sundown, or approximately too long.

The day will be observed in Pittsburgh with appropriate celebrations, including the smashing of 2,789 vases which somebody gave Junior to carry to the new place. There will also be the partial electrocution of 648 little darlings who will rub the loose wires for the electric refrigerator together to see them spark. Having things like this happen is sometimes loosely described as the joy of parenthood.

In addition, approximately 7,000 members of the so-called gentle sex will look out the window and inform their husbands, "Good heavens, Sam, those ones moving next door have nine kids, and I don't think she's washed their faces since Easter."

There are not as many people moving in Pittsburgh this Moving Day as last Moving Day, because most of them have moved already. Moving companies have been hauling them for less money the last couple of weeks so there wouldn't be a big rush today. This way they managed to have a big rush every day for two weeks.

By the 1940s, motivation and ability to move on May 1 were on the wane. This was partly due to wartime Federal regulations that froze rents and thereby reduced the economic necessity of moving house. But the very act of moving was also more difficult during the war years due to a depleted male labor force. After all, most hottt, brawny moving men were away fighting overseas.  

Post-WWII leases were more flexible, given the staggered return of so many soldiers seeking housing. But the May Day Moving Day custom still held sway for some years to come. Although Bell Telephone reported between 11,000 to 12,000 phone number transfer requests for May 1 in the early 1950s,  Pittsburgh's tradition of May Day Moving Day mass migration ceased by the end of that decade.

But the work, worry, and profanity associated with moving? That never ends. 

A version of this article appeared on my Facebook page in May 2018.

Forgotten History: Dooker's Hollow

Dooker’s Hollow is an old section of North Braddock that was recently buried under debris when the bridge above was demolished in February 2021. It was the final indignity for a neighborhood that’s languished for decades and can boast few architectural witnesses to a colorful past.

Dooker's Hollow below the former bridge, ArcGIS StoryMap image

It wasn't always like this. Braddock was once bucolic farmland outside of Pittsburgh. Sure, matters got a bit messy in July 1755 at the Battle of the Monongahela, when British forces under General Edward Braddock were defeated by the French and their Native allies. But things were fairly quiet for decades after, until larger scale coal mining and railroads came to town.

Braddock's Field, Paul Weber, 1855. Fort Ligonier collection.

The area was still sparsely populated and undeveloped when Andrew Carnegie broke ground for his Edgar Thomson Steel Works in 1873. That soon changed.

1875 view of Edgar Thomson works showing undeveloped surrounding area.
Allegheny Conference on Community Development Photographs
Detre Library & Archives, Heinz History Center

According to Victoria Vargo, Executive Director of the Braddock Carnegie Library Association, Dooker’s Hollow was named for a woman called Granny Dooker who once lived in a log cabin at the turn of the road from Braddock Avenue. While Granny Dooker’s origin story seems to be lost, the development of Dooker’s Hollow is inextricably linked to the rise of steel production in Braddock in the 1880s. Newspaper mentions and documentation of its main drag, Louis Street, on local maps pin the area's origins to the late 19^th century.  

Braddock grew as the mills did, stretching along the Monongahela riverbank, framed by railroad tracks, bordered by guardian hills, and straddling fresh water runs that were soon anything but fresh. Dooker’s Hollow flourished within a half mile from the Edgar Thomson plant, in the area that officially became the borough of North Braddock in 1897. It was a case study of a neighborhood whose immigrant residents traded poverty-stricken rural living for slightly less impoverished lives of industrial discipline governed by factory whistles. 

Thomas Bell described the area in his 1941 novel Out of This Furnace:

....Dooker's Hollow, an abysmal gorge in the hills to the east of Braddock, up near the foundries--its sewerlike entrance a black tunnel under the Pennsylvania tracks, its single street lined with shabby houses, and bare hills lifting steeply on either side, and, stalking from one height to another... 

That "black tunnel under the Pennsylvania tracks" is still the entrance to Dooker's Hollow.

The Hollow was frequently flooded when it rained, and occasionally homes along Louis Street were completely washed away. 

A 1911 report from the office of the Pennsylvania health commissioner described sanitation in the area:

The narrow valley known as Dooker Hollow is in the extreme eastern end of the borough. It starts at the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks about one eighth of a mile east of Bessemer Station and extends northeast for a distance of nearly half a mile to a point where it divides, one small branch continuing on in the same direction for a short distance, and the other or main hollow swinging at right angles and running for about ¾ of a mile turning near its upper end to the north. The first collection of houses in Dooker Hollow is near the Pennsylvania Railroad, 45 in number, frame two-story inhabited by foreigners. General sanitary conditions are bad. All have privies and use as a rule the Pennsylvania Water Company water, though some wells are in use. At the forks in the hollow is located another small collection of dwellings frame but in slightly better sanitary condition than the ones farther down the hollow. Up the main valley for about ¼ of mile are 15 to 18 two-story frame houses lining the roadway and extending up over the hillside. There are sewers in this district, so privies are prevalent. One other settlement exists up Dooker's Hollow, this consisting of about 20 frame 2½-story dwellings near the head of the hollow. There are no sewers in this settlement. The second and third settlements mentioned all extend up over the hillside…. A small run flows down Dooker Hollow emptying into the borough sewer at the first cluster of houses above the railroad. A number of privies are placed near this stream, which also receives garbage at various points.

The “foreigners” who inhabited these houses were primarily Eastern European immigrants for whom necessity dictated living in the shadow of the Edgar Thomson Works. The 1910 census named over 400 residents of what newspapers termed the “thickly settled” Hollow. Many of the two-story frame houses with sub-par sanitation were home to both sprawling families as well as multiple male boarders. Most Dooker’s Hollow men worked as laborers at Edgar Thomson. Others did unspecified factory labor; there was a brick and tile works near-by, for example. A few worked for the railroads.  

Dooker's Hollow homes shown below the bridge on 1926 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Pennsylvania State University Libraries

The rest of Allegheny County, if it knew this mill neighborhood at all, would have connected it with stories of beatings, burglaries, and bloody encounters. There’s no romanticizing the sheer amount of murder, mayhem, and madness documented in the Hollow by Pittsburgh’s newspapers. Men had deadly knife fights, women and girls were assaulted, kids played on and fell off the bridge, people drowned in the swollen steam, and careening trolleys and cars plunged over low bridge guardrails to land in the Hollow below. Life could be irredeemably hard. There were likely many other events that didn't merit a mention, that never came to the attention of authorities.

But at least this black cat and stray dog got off easy in 1910:

Pittsburgh Post, 12 September 1910

A long wooden bridge maintained by the Pittsburgh Railways Company spanned the hollow in 1892, used by people, horses, carriages, streetcars, and motor vehicles. 

But bridges don't last forever.

Dooker's Hollow wooden bridge, Pittsburgh Press, 14 April 1939

 

Dooker's Hollow wooden bridge, Pittsburgh Press, 3 August 1939

After years of worry about its precarious, unsafe conditions, the wooden bridge was finally replaced in 1940 with a $500,000 modern four-lane structure built fifty yards away. Perhaps the spirit of Granny Dooker was behind the new construction. At the very least, there was one stalwart female bridge advocate:

This is a tale of determination--of an elderly woman who knew what she wanted and got it.

The woman--it might be well to let her remain unidentified in these paragraphs--is not only elderly but deaf. She carries a big old-fashioned ear trumpet. 

Regularly, over a period of years, she appeared before the County Commissioners and other local governing bodies. During lulls in the proceedings she would shout,"How about Dooker's Hollow Bridge?" then clap her trumpet to her ear to hear any reply the officials might make.

It seemed that she owned some property near the old wooden bridge linking East Pittsburgh and North Braddock, and thought a new bridge over the ravine would increase its value.

Well, a fine new bridge was started a few months ago. The steel superstructure will meet across the ravine soon, and officials are thinking of having some sort of ceremony to mark the event. 

The one-woman campaign didn't cause the bridge to be built. The old wooden structure just got too old to be used much longer. But she got what she wanted, and her campaign is worth mentioning.          ~Gilbert Love, Pittsburgh Press, 10 November 1940

The old wooden "bridge of sighs" over Dooker's Hollow was demolished in 1941 once its replacement was dedicated. Eighty years later, it was that 635 foot long, arched cantilever truss bridge's turn to be blown to smithereens. It all came down when explosives were detonated on 13 February 2021:

 Video of Dooker's Hollow bridge explosion from ArcGIS StoryMap

The roadbed had been dismantled, so it was only 500 tons of steel that dropped onto the former Louis Street -- long since renamed O’Connell Boulevard during the WWI years. 

And there wasn't much left in Dooker's Hollow for the steel skeleton to land on.

Dooker's Hollow, January 2021, from North Braddock Network Facebook Page

Although there are undeniably impressive differences of scale, this actually wasn’t the first time the street in Dooker’s Hollow was pelted with debris from on high. The infrastructure that so optimistically bridged the Hollow's past to a more promising future in 1940 was almost immediately designated a vantage point for the hurling of trash, eggs, tires, bricks and stones.

Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, 5 December 1945

You scored big if your load landed on the rooftop of a house 175 feet below. Who could resist the challenge?

Hollow residents repeatedly begged for mercy -- or at the very least for a high fence to stop the bombardment. They sent a petition to Allegheny County in 1955, and again in 1962. That's when the Pittsburgh Press got cute with its headline for an article about the 22 residents who'd once again petitioned the county to erect a high fence along the bridge to stem target practice. 

Pittsburgh Press, 23 May 1962

Allegheny County Public Works director Levi Bird Duff habitually scoffed at the utility of such a safety screen. He opined that no fence would be high enough “to keep a strong-armed youngster from lobbing a stone over the railing.” Duff punted responsibility for catching the “rocktossers” to North Braddock police and, well, you can guess how much of a priority that was. Dooker’s Hollow continued to be pelted from above, although eventually at some point a safety fence was erected on the bridge.

While they dodged debris from above and were immortalized in local crime reports, Dooker’s Hollow families lived and loved and persevered and used their windshield wipers to clear away mill dirt from their cars. If you grew up there, you made memories like kids everywhere did. You embraced adventures, you played hide-and-seek and kickball in the street, you climbed trees and built forts in the woods. You weren't supposed to drink water from the creek, but who was going to tell if you all dared each other to do it? The streetcars passing overhead on the bridge blew fine dust into the Hollow that glittered in the sun like diamonds, but housewives weren't pleased when such industrial fairy dust drifted through their open windows. 

Dooker's Hollow 1950s postcard image

Mill town neighborhoods like Dooker’s Hollow flourished into the mid-1970s. They spectacularly collapsed in the 1980s, devastated by complicated economic and industrial forces that left them ghost towns. The lone road into Dooker’s Hollow heaved with polluted groundwater and became riddled with potholes perilous enough to test your car’s suspension every few feet. Houses fell to neglect, abandon, and eventual residential demolition. There were a few proud, colorful, isolated survivors toward the far end of the street, but others were held together by little more than frameworks of memories. 

Dooker's Hollow home, 2018, Jack Erdie

Dooker's Hollow, 2017, Patrick McArdle

Dooker's Hollow, 2018, Jack Erdie

Once the old bridge scrap gets removed from Dooker’s Hollow, construction crews will start spending the allocated $9.95 million to build a new structure overhead to reconnect North Braddock and East Pittsburgh. 

There’s no money allocated for Dooker’s Hollow itself. So long as the bridge above bears its name, Dooker’s Hollow will live on as a geographical entity, if not as a living neighborhood. Even if the new bridge gets renamed, former residents still have tales to tell about life in the Hollow. They need to be recorded, because this neighborhood will live on only so long as there are people to talk about it. Once they're gone, Dooker's Hollow will join the scrap heap of forgotten history

Dooker's Hollow, 2018, Jack Erdie

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Grimesy: Adventures in 19th Century Pittsburgh Policing

From associating with Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales to rugged street orphans, one city cop did it all in the 19th century.

1883 image of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert & wife Alexandra

When Queen Victoria died at the age of 81 on 22 January 1901, newspapers around the world paid tribute and speculated about what kind of King her son Edward would be. The Pittsburgh papers overflowed with praise for the late Queen, but expressed cautious regard for her son. After all, Edward -- fka Bertie, aka the Playboy Prince -- had pretty much spent his adult life waiting for a job and passing the time as a serial adulterer.

His wife and mother of his legitimate children, the Danish-born Alexandra, soothed over the scandals with her beauty, grace and long-suffering patience…or at least that’s how this bit about Edward in the Pittsburg Post could be interpreted:

At one time it was known that he was not an ideal family man. But as he gradually approached the age of 60, people began to realize that he was settling down. His earlier indiscretions were condoned. And as he always appeared in public with the Princess of Wales, it was realized that the proprieties were observed, at least in a formal way. Perhaps it was felt that the Prince of Wales had only followed precedent in “living his own life.” …The court under his rule will be as sedate as it was under his mother. Queen Alexandra is as strict in the matter of propriety as was the late sovereign.

Pittsburgh Post front page the day after Queen Victoria's death

Having reassured readers that the new Queen would maintain social order by imposing discretion upon the new King, the Post got down to the serious business of making a Pittsburgh connection to royalty. The paper printed reminisces of city policeman Charles Augustus Grimes, “….one of Pittsburgh’s most popular officers, (who) was at one time a member of the queen’s bodyguard.“

Officer Grimes, circa 1890s

Grimes was born in 1843 to Peter Grimes and wife Alice McBride in County Tyrone, Ireland. He “….entered the British army as a private in the First Life Guards, a cavalry regiment familiarly known as the “Queen’s Own.” Early in his training, Grimes rode alongside the teenage Prince of Wales, who was receiving military instruction. The Prince was an esteemed horseman as a young man, and Grimes noted that he'd been “….worsted in a personal encounter with the prince while going through an exercise at the riding academy.” Grimes bore no grudges, however, indicating that the Prince was a friendly enough fellow.

Pittsburg Post headline
23 January 1901

Grimes had high praise for the late Queen, whom he’d last seen in 1861 before he bought out the terms of his service to immigrate to the United States.

1861 photo of Queen Victoria by JJE Mayall

She was small and dark and did not weigh more thn 125 pounds. She had rather an olive complexion and her eyes were bright and smiling. Her appearance at all times was as one of the plainest of women…When I was a member of her bodyguard I rode within speaking distance of her on many occasions. I had plenty of opportunities to observe the noble qualities she possessed, and for them she was beloved not only as a queen, but as a woman by every one who saw her. She was always pleasant, smiling at every one and seemed to take pains to make everything as pleasant as she could. Her manners were altogether different from those of the dukes, lord and ladies of the royal court. The latter always wore a look of condescension whenever they were obliged to come into court with anyone beneath them in social station, and acted as though they were superior beings. But the queen was a woman first and a queen afterward.

Grimes’ appraisal of the late Queen has the ring of truth. He was indeed a member of the Queen’s Life Guard and, judging by his subsequent career in Pittsburgh, a colorful character who didn’t suffer fools gladly.

Grimes married Margaret Mary Duane, a woman 9 years his junior. She, too, was of Irish descent but was born in Toronto, Canada. They initially raised their two sons, Charles and Peter, in the First Ward of Pittsburgh (what we know today as the Point), eventually moving to Boyd Street (today part of the campus of Duquesne University).

Grimes worked off and on as a carpenter and cabinet builder. Listed in his obituary were accomplishments like the installation of the “first Westinghouse air brake ever installed on what was then known as the Brewery switch, now Sixteenth street” as well as construction of the Mercy Hospital surgical annex (ironically the wing he later died in). He also worked at building the Organ Brewery at Stevenson and Forbes in the Lower Hill, and the first passenger coach of the P&LE railroad line. Grimes also had at least one patent to his name, for a device that prevented streetcar tracks from being blocked by hoses during firefighting.

Aside from being a handy guy with a hammer, Grimes was also a respected police officer. He joined the Pittsburgh police force in 1870, rising to the level of lieutenant. A staunch Republican, Grimes would quit the force and remain off for years at a time following various mayoral elections because he refused to serve under Democratic administrations.

Grimes' regular beat in the 1890s was outside the old Post Office near the corner of Fifth and Smithfield, but he later moved to work a post on Sixth Avenue in a section that’s since lost its prominence with the construction of the BNY Mellon complex.

Color postcard image, Pittsburgh Post Office, early 1900s

During the 1890s, newspapers described Grimes as “big”, “handsome”, “good-looking”, “popular” and "as good-natured and accommodating as he is big and brawny." He was fondly referred to in Pittsburgh as "Grimesey".

Anecdotes about Officer Charley Grimes, culled from newspaper reports of Yinzer high crimes and misdemeanors, testify to his popularity. The papers couldn't get enough of Grimes' adventures chasing Dahntahn hoodlums, drunks and pickpockets. But there was also the occasional feel-good story about him that made the news, like the time he rescued a blind pedestrian from being struck by a streetcar.

Grimes was a hands-on kind of cop...sometimes to his detriment.

In January 1876, whilst giving chase to a villain named Little, Grimes “ran against a post….and broke one of his ribs.” A few months later in May, Grimes had one of his hands broken by a “fractious prisoner” he’d arrested for creating a disturbance on Penn Avenue. And then in September, Grimes was beaten by the ringleader of a “party of roughs” that he’d been attempting to subdue. A decade later, Grimes was the hero when he subdued and arrested “….a big powerful stranger, who was crazy drunk…so dangerously promiscuous in his ferocious attentions that the shop was shut down until after his arrest.”

But Grimes had his share of run-ins with his peers and higher-ups, too. In November 1890, he was given a five day suspension and charged with insubordination against Captain Henry Unterbaum following a turf battle about who had jurisdiction over the closing hours of a social club where Grimes was on duty. Grimes publicly announced that he’d “get even” and took a train to Philadelphia to find documents proving that Unterbaum was not a US citizen. He must not have found what he wanted, but all was apparently forgiven since he was back at work a month later (As for Unterbaum, he retired in 1896 from the force after 14 years of service).

And in May 1891, Grimes prevailed in a street fight with an ex-Pinkerton detective whom he’d refused to loan money to. Grimes might have met his match in this “…little scrap between two very large men… (but) the result was that Officer Grimes landed his man in the central station.”

Newsies (including a girl), c. early 1900s

Kingsley Association Records
Historic Pittsburgh Image Collection

Grimes was well-known for "looking after" young boys on the street who worked around town as shoeshines, bootblacks, news and messenger boys. His street work with them was as much that of modern youth resource officer as it was law enforcement heavy. Grimes regularly loaned money to these boys, and kept tallies of debts owed on a telegraph poll along his beat. Grimes claimed he was never shorted, because he boys always paid him back that same day.

However, the unsupervised youth eventually banded together to form rival gangs.

Officer Charley Grimes was one of the few adults respected by these tough street boys. Presumably in an effort to constructively organize them, Grimes helped some of them organize a bootblack union. He even handed out membership badges at their meeting in September 1891, and was met with such boyish enthusiasm that  “…the expressions were forcible and unfit for publication.” That meeting was deemed a success after Grimes read out rules to the assembled 284 boys. They left jubilant, beat up their vice-president on the way out, then taunted their rivals by “serenading” the Pittsburgh Newsboys' Home.

Pittsburgh Newsboys Home.
At the time of Grimes' orphan turf battle, the newsboys lived on the 3rd floor of a building on Old Avenue, behind the county jail.
This facility was constructed in 1899 at the corner of Forbes, Shinghiss & Sixth Avenues with generous support from the public,
Pittsburgh Press, Mary Schenley, and Christopher Magee.

Image: Collections of the Pennsylvania Department, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh

But Thomas Druitt, headmaster of the Pittsburgh Newsboys Home, took offense to Grimes’ youth management tactics. An official complaint was lodged with the police claiming that Grimes was neglecting his official duties. It also cited “….conduct unbecoming an officer, and abusive words and threats” that Grimes allegedly uttered to the bootblack union lads to keep them in line.

Our man Grimes took offense when the police superintendent, siding with Druitt, told Grimes to resign or be fired.

So Grimes quit.

But such was his popularity and effectiveness that he was back on the job six weeks later, laughing it all off as a misunderstanding.

Lieutenant Charles A. Grimes, Pittsburgh Police Officer circa 1870-1910

Upon retiring in 1906, and until his death in 1913, Grimes worked as a “special policeman” or security guard for the Grand and Harris theaters.

In 1913, Charley Grimes fell down the stairs in his Boyd Street home and was admitted to Mercy Hospital with fractured ribs and an aggravated hernia. He passed away there at the age of 69 on 20 March 1913. As was customary at the time, he was laid out at a family home, clad in his treasured police uniform. Pittsburgh paid its respects to Grimesy at the Locust Street home of his younger son Peter. A member of the Church of the Epiphany in the Lower Hill, Grimes was buried in St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery in Lawrenceville (Section H Lot 165). His wife Margaret lived with her adult son Charles and his family until her death,  aged 72, of stomach cancer in 1924.

Peter became a typographer. Eldest son Charles Grimes, Jr, followed in his father's footsteps as a popular Pittsburgh city policeman, but presumably never had brushes with British royalty.

A version of this story appeared on my Facebook page The Historical Dilettante in January 2019.