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Whatever Happened To 82 Daleview Street?
Take a ride up Breining Street, past Carmalt School.
Not far past the school you pass Groveland on the right. Rather than continue straight
onto Glenbury and down the hill towards Rt 51, you make a left turn onto what appears to
be a side street, but is actually still Breining. You head down the short hill
and around the bend to the right. You are now at the beginning of Briggs Street,
heading towards the intersection with Aaron Street.
Most people wouldn't know it but, as they
passed the jersey barriers that sit at the bend in the road, they had just passed
what was at one time the three-way intersection of Breining and Briggs Streets. For
almost fifty years, you could have made a left turn onto a long forgotten section of
Briggs that took you to the intersection with another long forgotten section of
Brookline real estate, Daleview Street.
Many years ago, this wooded section of
Brookline was slated for residential development. An entire network of roadways was
planned. Four homes were built and additional lots laid out. The winds of change,
however, blew in a different direction. In the years to come, the land that was to
be dotted with roadways and homes became the greenway section of the sixty acre
city park known as Brookline Memorial.
What is now woodland on city maps once
listed roadways with names like Dom Way, Georgette Way, Drew Way, Greyfox Way,
Oakridge Street, Brookdale Street, Palmton Street, Cortina Street and Daleview Street.
Briggs Street actually continued non-stop from Breining all the way to the intersection
of Brookline Boulevard and Birchland Street. The terrain was steep hills with a
stream running east-west through a long and steadily deepening ravine.
These were truly ambitious plans.
Flashback to the early 1940s. Industry in
Pittsburgh was booming and the population was steadily increasing. In an effort to
feed the burgeoning housing market, and with an eye on the impending sale of the
twenty-acre Anderson Farm, developers saw an opportunity to expand into the forty
acre wooded ravine that ran eastwards towards Saw Mill Run. The adjacent twenty
acres of farmland, which occupied the prime space between Breining Street and
Brookline Boulevard, was a key to this plan.
In anticipation of future access, Oakridge,
Daleview and Cortina and Sunbeam Streets and were laid out and paved. Development
began in 1940. This new section of Brookline was refered to on maps as Brookdale.
Access to the Brookdale Plan was provided by a short extension of Briggs Street
on one end, and Sunbeam Street on the other. Daleview Street was located halfway
down the Briggs extension and ran parallel to Oakridge. Making a right turn off
Briggs would lead both streets to an intersection at Cortina, then Sunbeam brought
them back to Briggs a block further down the road. Making a left turn off Briggs
onto either Oakridge or Daleview would lead to a dead end where the land abutted
the Anderson Farm.
The house at 82 Daleview was built by
Elmer J. Hadley in 1941. Elmer was a long-time employee of Duquesne Light Company.
Along with the Hadleys, four other families built homes in the area, three on Oakridge
(Gessip, Pilarksi and Miller households) and another at 95 Daleview.
Shortly after, in May of 1947, plans for
further development ceased when the Anderson Farm was sold to the Brookline Community
Center Association for use as a park. In 1969, the home at 82 Daleview and all
remaining lots along Oakridge and Daleview were acquired by the city of Pittsburgh
as part of a forty acre enlargement of Brookline Memorial Park.
By 1982, only the Hadley house remained standing.
The other properties had long since been vacated and torn down. That was the year that
the home's final resident, Sally Hadley-Aul, moved out and turned the property over to
the city. Mrs. Aul had been living there since 1969 on a special lease agreement. The
house was razed in 1985.
Today, only bits and pieces of asphalt and
concrete remain. The exact location of 82 Daleview Street is difficult to find.
The bulldozer and the plant life have all but erased any signs of
civilization.
Below are two maps, one from 1940 and the
other from 1997. Note the difference in the area that today is labeled Brookline Park.
The photo from yesteryear shows the tentative plans for development of the forty
acres that are now the back woods greenway of the park.
Brookline Map - 1940
Brookline Map - 1997
Final Note: The 1940s maps show the
Pittsburgh Railways right-of-way that east to west through the wooded valley
floor to a connection with the main rail line that ran along Route 51. In 1905
a single track line was laid with a connection to the rails at Saw Mill Run.
The service lasted only a year. The track was abandoned soon afterwards and
the track was looped at the 1400 block of Brookline Boulevard. The Port
Authority retained ownership of the remote right-of-way until 1969 when the
land was acquired by the city of Pittsburgh.
* Thanks to Randy Aul for
providing photos and information on 82 Daleview Street * |
