Underground Wiring That Never Happened

Early in the history of telephones, the state of New York very nearly required all telephone and telegraph wiring to be underground. If the rest of the nation had followed, we might have had a much more attractive landscape today.

A bill to compel telegraph and telephone companies in cities to place their wires underground has passed to its third reading in the New York State Senate. It provides that after March, 1885, no wires or poles shall be permitted above ground, and as it is very likely to become a law, the officers of the companies interested will probably be obliged to set themselves at work in earnest to devise some unexceptionable means of laying and using subterranean lines. The Western Union Telegraph Company has taken the lead, and in a few months the two thousand wires which now enter its main building on Broadway will probably all be concealed beneath the surface. One of the principal difficulties in the way of burying electric-wires seems to be the imperfect character of the means of insulation. now in use. At present gutta-percha is the material most available, but this is not very durable, and is, besides, melted by a comparatively slight heat, so that it runs down, and leaves the wires exposed. In the streets of a city so compact and so modern as New York there are many sources of heat, which may injure cables placed near them, and the pipes of the steam-heating companies have occasioned the destruction of many insulated wires buried near by. One of the greatest needs of electrical practice is a better insulating substance than any yet employed, and the discoverer of such a material will reap an ample reward. The telephone lines, owing to the much greater sensitiveness of the instruments used upon them, are generally assumed to need more careful insulation than even those of the telegraph, but a singular story has been reported in one or two of the technical journals, to the effect that a certain “line-man” in a western city, while intoxicated, carried some wires without insulation, simply securing them to the posts by iron staples, and that these wires were found just as serviceable, even in rainy weather, as those running over glass insulators; so that the company who employed this unconscious inventor afterwards built many miles of uninsulated line, and used it with perfect success.

—American Architect and Building News, March 10, 1883.

Frederick Bigger on Housing and City Planning, 1938

These are the ideas that drove planning in our cities through the middle of the twentieth century. Experience would seem to show that they were exactly backwards, but the arguments presented here will help us understand why so much of twentieth-century urban planning was driven by a need to make people do things they did not want to do.

City Planning as a Determinant of the Location and Character of City Housing Projects of All Kinds.

Abstract of an address by Frederick Bigger, A.I.A., Architect and City Planner, Pittsburgh, at the Conference on Planning, Richmond, May 4, 1936.

There are significant differences between housing projects which raise questions of importance to the city planner.

1. In the first category are housing projects designed to be sold off, dwelling by dwelling, to future individual owners, who are unlikely to preserve the wholesome characteristics of the original unified design.

2. In the second category are projects designed as entities, but rented to many individual families either as a long term high class investment, or as a venture of speculation. In this case, the well-being of the occupants will undoubtedly receive greater consideration.

3. In the third category are housing projects of limited dividend corporations or housing authorities, which have social objectives and restrict their rents; in theory, permanent assets in a city plan. These projects need to be safeguarded by separation from neighborhoods affected by commercial manipulation.

There have been too many cases in which lack of barriers brought changes in zoning regulations, and damaging commercial frontages.

4. In the fourth category are similar projects owned by the occupants of the houses, which require similar protection.

The planner must know whether a project is to be split up for sale or held, whether it is to be merely a profit and loss commodity, whether a social objective is contemplated and whether or not it is owned by the occupants of the dwellings.

If one holds a title deed but is obligated by a mortgage on his property, it is necessary to realize that this privilege of complete control over his property is limited.

If a project is not owned by its occupants, the need for better living and the demand for profit are conflicting forces.

The planner is necessarily controlled by the expenses incidental to the basic cost of the project, such as public utilities, landscaping, etc. If the designer is influenced only by the profit motive, he will locate his housing project so that it can be subsidized by the existing community through an earlier provision of utilities and schools, though another location might be better from the standpoint of the city plan.

Housing designed for sale to individual owners, and large-scale housing on a speculative basis, promise no permanence and no stable contribution to improved housing. The other categories offer possibilities of greater stability and continuity of existence. Community planners must therefore favor the latter groups.

A general amount of open space is a basic element in planning a socially desirable housing project in which financial values are to be permanent. The town planner must consider these fundamental points as of greater significance than the more technical aspects of studies of population and economics.

—The Octagon, August, 1936 (PDF).

Building Wilmerding

The town of Wilmerding in the Turtle Creek valley outside Pittsburgh was designed as an ideal industrial town for the employees of Westinghouse. Here is a note on its progress from the Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, April 17, 1889.

At Wilmerding, near Wall’s station on the Pennsylvania Railroad, work is being pushed rapidly on the Westinghouse air brake shops, previously reported; and plans are ready for the new hotel and club house; also for a number of dwellings. Plot 21, in the plan, is reserved for a park, which will be laid out in drives and a pavilion, band-stand, etc., etc., erected. Plot 22 will be the site for the club-house and hotel, before reported. On plot, No, 5, near the works, Mr. T. W. Welsh, superintendent of the Air Brake Works, will erect a magnificent residence. Plot 26 will be covered with a handsome school house, supplied with every modern convenience and improvement. On plot 4 the Pennsylvania Railroad will erect a large depot and waiting-rooms. Of the 1200 workmen, now employed, fully one-fourth have bought lots from the Improvement Company, and will erect dwellings in the near future, and as many of the employees, are unable to secure lots, the original limit will probably be extended to include the Turtle Creek side. Six hundred and twenty-five feet of frontage on the Monongahela river, near Port Perry, have been bought by the company, in order to supply the new city with water, to be pumped into a reservoir 260 feet above the river, and then piped to Wilmerding. Every dwelling in the city will be furnished with the Westinghouse incandescent light, natural gas, and water. About $4,000,000 will be expended within the limits of 600 acres. It is also stated that a syndicate has been formed to erect a large glass works on the opposite side of Turtle Creek, and that two of the largest glass works in Pittsburg are negotiating for sites on which to erect buildings for their works. This deal has not progressed sufficiently to give names. Mr. Charles Payne is President of the Wilmerding Improvement Company.

Thoughts on African Colonization by the Colored Citizens of Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh, (Pa.,) Sept. 1, 1831.

At a large and respectable meeting of the colored citizens of Pittsburgh, convened at the African Methodist Episcopal church, for the purpose of expressing their views in relation to the American Colonization Society, Mr. J. B. Vashon was called to the chair, and Mr. R. Bryan appointed secretary. The object of the meeting was then stated at considerable length, and in an appropriate manner, by the chairman. The following resolutions were then unanimously adopted:

* * *

Resolved, That we, the colored people of Pittsburgh and citizens of these United States, view the country in which we live as our only true and proper home. We are just as much natives here as the members of the Colonization Society. Here we were born—here bred—here are our earliest and most pleasant associations—here all that binds man to earth, and makes life valuable. And we do consider every colored man who allows himself to be colonized in Africa, or elsewhere, a traitor to our cause.

Resolved, That we are freemen, that we are brethren, that we are countrymen and fellow-citizens, and as fully entitled to the free exercise of the elective franchise as any men who breathe; and that we demand an equal share of protection from our federal government with any class of citizens in the community. We now inform the Colonization Society, that should our reason forsake us, then we may desire to remove. We will apprise them of this change in due season.

——Quoted in Thoughts on African Colonization by William Lloyd Garrison, 1832.

The Rise and Fall of A. P. Shumaker

In the early 1900s, the automobile suddenly leapt from rare rich man’s toy to ubiquitous rich man’s accessory. It had not yet reached the masses in 1905, but the automobile business was already making fortunes, and dozens or hundreds of firms went into the car-making business.

In Pittsburgh, Alvin P. Shumaker was one of the first to make his fortune selling cars. He secured the agencies for a number of brands, including Packard and Searchmont, and he was manager of the American Motor Company, which opened an office in one of Pittsburgh’s towering skyscrapers, the Park Building, and planned a big garage downtown where the rich could leave their cars for the day.

In 1905, we read that he was building a house:

PITTSBURGH, PA—Architect Titus De Bobula, Farmers’ Bank building, has completed plans for a brick and stone dwelling and garage, to be erected in the East End, for A. P. Shumaker, Park building. Cost, $25,000.

—The American Architect and Building News, April 8, 1905.

This was the eye-catching fact that led to an hour’s research into the Shumaker story. Titus de Bobula was the extravagantly eccentric modernist genius who would later give up architecture to become, in succession, a wastrel playboy, failed would-be Nazi dictator of Hungary, and an arms dealer. His surviving works are few. Was there an unidentified De Bobula house still standing somewhere in Pittsburgh? It would have been a fine house: $25,000 would have built a mansion fit for a rich family, at a time when $4,000 would build a good-sized house, with servants’ rooms, for the upper middle classes.

But it looks as though this house was never built. By the end of the year, Shumaker was dead—run over by a train in Union Station in Pittsburgh.

That is where the story becomes interesting. The coroner’s jury returned a verdict of suicide. The story was that Shumaker had found his wife with another man, and—according to one witness, a waiter—had run out declaring, “I’ll end it all!” Throwing oneself in front of a train was a popular if messy form of suicide in those days.

But there were life-insurance policies—four of them, each worth $10,000. When the insurance companies refused to pay, the widow sued. The various legal proceedings kept the insurance trade journals interesting for months. The insurance companies alleged not only that Shumaker committed suicide, but also that he had made false statements in taking out the policies in the first place. His wife was not his wife, at least not at the time, and he was not a man of “correct and temperate habits.”

Claiming that their policies on the life of Alvin P. Shumaker of Pittsburg are voided in that he committed suicide and was not accidentally killed, as shown by the verdict of the coroner’s jury, four accident companies, each having $10,000 insurance on the life of the deceased, are contesting the payment of the amounts to the widow. Mr. Shumaker was killed by a train in the Union Depot at Pittsburgh on the night of December 12, 1905. He had accident policies for $10,000 each in the Preferred Accident, the Fidelity and Casualty, the Travelers of Hartford and the Central Accident of Pittsburgh. The bill of particulars filed by the Fidelity and Casualty in the case alleges that a breach of warranty was made by Shumaker in the statement that “the beneficiary is Ella H. Shumaker, relationship, wife,” when the plaintiff in the present action was not at that time the lawful wife of the assured. The lawyers for the insurance company contend, too, that the policies were procured by perjury and fraud. Shumaker, when he took out the policies, declared that he was a man of correct and temperate habits. The lawyers of the companies will try to prove that he was ever of “extravagant, reckless, dissolute and intemperate habits,” and that policies issued on such a man’s false statements should not be valid. The outcome of the suit is awaited with interest.

—The Weekly Underwriter, May 11, 1907.

Much of the case hung on the testimony of that one witness, the waiter who claimed to have heard Shumaker say “I’ll end it all.” He was summoned to give his testimony—and then he disappeared.

With the waiter missing, there was no testimony. Three of the insurance companies, unwilling to face a long and expensive trial, settled for less than the total, but still a substantial amount. The waiter was later found and arrested, but the settlement had already been made.

THE SHUMAKER CASE.

Three of the companies carrying accident insurance on A. P. Shumaker, of Pittsburg, who was killed by a train on the night of December 12, 1905, have settled on a basis of sixty per cent. Rumors have, however, been current that these companies confessed judgment in order to prevent a scandal in high life, and on account of these Judge Buffington of the United States Circuit Court has made a demand on the attorneys of the defendant companies for the exact terms of settlement. The defense of the companies was suicide and untruthful statements in the warranties. The disappearance of W. Willis Burnett, a waiter, the principal witness, caused the settlement. He has since been arrested in Cincinnati and returned to Pittsburg, where he is held under charges of contempt. Kimball C. Atwood, of the Preferred Accident, explained the reason for settlement by his company as follows:

“We settled the claim against us for 60 per cent of the full amount alleged to be due, but not because somebody indemnified us. The chief witness, the waiter who heard Shumaker say, ‘I’ll end it all,’ as he left the place where he is said to have found his wife with another man, was spirited away. All the companies spent considerable money in trying to locate this man, but he escaped. The last place in which we found any trace of him was Los Angeles. While we are all assured that it was a case of suicide, and therefore a vitiating of the policies, I came to the conclusion that it would be very difficult to prove our side, as well as very costly. For that reason, and for no other, the Preferred decided to settle on a 60 per cent basis. I have no doubt that the other companies felt as I did, and that they also confessed judgment for the same reason. We are not blackmailers. and to accept indemnity from any person to pay a claim would, in my opinion, amount to blackmailing.”

—The Indicator, June 3, 1907.

So that is the story of the car dealer who would have had a remarkably interesting mansion in the East End of Pittsburgh if he had lived long enough. It sounds as though he and the equally extravagant Titus de Bobula would have understood each other perfectly, and we can only regret that we do not have the house De Bobula designed.