David Cohen grew up playing on a wooden field.

“You had to be sure-footed,” he recalls about pickup games on Shadyside’s Roslyn Place, one of the nation’s few surviving wooden streets.

Cohen often talks up Roslyn while chauffeuring movie actors around town. “Inevitably,” he says, “they want to come see the street.” It also draws many walkers, bicyclists, bachelor and bachelorette parties, photographers, artists and people who make rubbings of its oak blocks.

Many other Greater Pittsburgh streets are paved with bricks or stones of various shapes and shades. These old-time toppings seem to be popular but problematic.

They’re considered handsome reminders of Pittsburgh’s past. They’re expensive but durable. They sprout weeds but seldom potholes. Some may reduce runoff and heat.

But they’re bouncy and clattery. They can be slippery when wet or icy. Though many have concrete bases, they tend to develop ruts over time.

Officials often wonder whether to maintain historic pavers or consign them to history. Jacob Russell, Verona’s borough manager, says, “It’s always an ongoing debate.” 

Here and there

According to a list of Pittsburgh’s nearly 20,000 official street segments, 623 have bricks, 295 quarried stones (often incorrectly called cobblestones, which are long out of use), and 840 concrete, while the rest are asphalt or “unknown.” But be warned: Some entries on the list are outdated, and one’s been wrong all along. It calls Roslyn asphalt.

Then again, Knoxville’s Brick Way is listed correctly. It’s plain asphalt, at least today. Brian Kell, a chronicler of Pittsburgh’s streets, can find no record of previous surfaces on this tiny street, first known from an 1887 plan.

Some streets with brick or stone sections are big and bustling, like downtown’s Grant Street. More seem to be small and quiet, like the Hill District’s Hollace Street. Some are fairly level, like Homewood’s Laxton Street. Others are dizzying, like Oakland’s Joncaire Street and Beechview’s Canton Avenue.

Older pavers seem most common in older neighborhoods, such as Hazelwood, but are rather randomly scattered in them. Squirrel Hill’s Murdoch Road has stone, brick and asphalt segments on different blocks. Middle Street on the North Side has a stone one and a brick one on the same block.

These pavers are also common in older suburbs, such as McKees Rocks, Oakmont and Sewickley. McKeesport once had a Brick Alley, named for its surface, though better known as a red-light district.

Allegheny County also has 26 miles of dirt or gravel roads, historic, but hardly beloved.

Streets through the years

According to several sources, including Robin B. Williams of historicpavement.com, the world’s first roads were unpaved, prone to dust, mud and washouts. American settlers topped “plank roads” with boards and “corduroy roads” with logs. Cobblestones proved tough on wheels. A mix of crushed stones was dubbed macadam for Scottish inventor John McAdam. Tar was added and one of the mixes dubbed tarmac.

Wooden blocks became popular, including an 1850s kind called Nicolson or Nicholson blocks, chunks preserved with creosote. So did granite, limestone or sandstone blocks, variously called sets, setts, blockstones or Belgian blocks. The 1870s brought bricks and asphalt. The 1890s brought concrete.

According to Joel Tarr in “City at the Point,” 19th-century Pittsburgh was quickest to pave the busiest or wealthiest streets, sometimes charging the property owners. Many other streets remained unpaved into the 20th century.

By the mid-1910s, wooden streets were already quaint, the look Roslyn’s developer apparently wanted for this cozy dead end, lined mostly with brick homes. It helped that his son owned a lumberyard, which supplied about 26,000 blocks.

Over the years, the city has replaced many of those blocks with newer ones. To spare them all, it blows and sweeps snow there instead of plowing it.

Williams says that the nation has just a few other wooden streets left, including Cleveland’s Hessler Court, part of Philadelphia’s South Camac Street, and Chicago’s aptly named Wooden Alley.

Beautiful and bumpy

Most locals praise vintage pavers.

“They’re the coolest things,” Kathy Lutz says of Bridgeville’s several brick streets. “They make me feel nestled in here.” They also remind her of a famous Beatles album cover. “We have Abbey Road in the middle of Bridgeville.”

A stone stretch of Bloomfield’s Lima Way is smooth enough for Kelly DiTullio to carry a heaping carton of strawberries home from the neighborhood’s farmers market without spilling any. “It’s charming,” she says, “especially when the greenery starts to grow in between.”

A woman identifying herself just as Kelissa says that her dog, Princess, likes Lima’s stones for relieving herself.

Locals see benefits even in these pavers’ bounces. Drivers slow down, and bystanders hear them coming.

In Mt. Lebanon Magazine last year, Abigail Schade Gary wrote about that suburb’s many brick pavers, “The charm! The distinction that signifies Mt. Lebanon!” Not quite as enthusiastically, she recalled sliding backward down them in her family’s station wagon. She liked them for sledding but not roller-skating. “Even if you could manage to stay on your feet over the bumpy surface, the unevenness made your teeth chatter.”

A few locals would update some retro roads. “Most of them are in such a state that they need to be paved over,” says Mt. Lebanon’s Greg Carvlin.

Cara Zlatos recently hit the bricks of Aspinwall’s Delafield Avenue after an appendectomy at UPMC St. Margaret. She says, “Every bump seemed to find its way straight to my sore abdomen.”

Melissa Lang O’Malley, Aspinwall’s borough manager, says that Delafield’s much-needed repairs will resume this summer.

Bicycles bounce too. According to Julie Walsh, spokeswoman for BikePGH, most riders prefer modern pavement for routine rides, but some choose brick or stone at times for fun, especially in challenging events like the Pittsburgh Roubaix and the Pittsburgh Dirty Dozen.

Bicyclist Henry Snyder of Squirrel Hill says that historic pavers “give you a little chance to experience what the Tour de France guys do in Paris. You don’t want to do it too long because it sends vibrations down your arm. For a block or two, it’s great.”

Saving surfaces

A 2018 Pittsburgh ordinance calls for preserving historic pavement where safe, unless 75 percent of the street’s property owners petition for asphalt. Eric Setzler, chief engineer of the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, says that it costs $30 per square yard to resurface asphalt, versus $170 for brick or $200 for stone. But brick and stone can last for decades, especially on streets with light traffic.

“There are streets that are probably over 100 years old that have had minimal maintenance,” he says. “They will have some dips and bumps, but they are still in service. … The cost can even out a little.”

Aspinwall’s Lang O’Malley says that recent brick repairs cost about $12 per square foot versus barely $2 for asphalt, but might prove better investments over 30 to 50 years. Besides, “While modern infrastructure needs sometimes require difficult decisions, preserving that historic character where possible remains an important part of maintaining Aspinwall’s identity.”

In a 2016 study of Mt. Lebanon’s brick streets, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation said, “Though costly to install, these streets maintain a good structural condition for decades and add beauty and history to the area.”

In 2020, a Carnegie Mellon University team estimated that Mt. Lebanon would save about $200,000 over 50 years by maintaining a stretch of brick 700 feet long instead of asphalting it. Ninety-six percent of residents surveyed said the bricks added character, and 82 percent would pay to restore them.

Safety matters, though. A steep brick stretch of that suburb’s Spruceton Avenue was asphalted after an official did a 360 on ice there.

Verona, on the other hand, simply closes a steep stone section of South Avenue during wintry weather.

PennDOT maintains just 0.2 miles of bricks or stones on state roads in Allegheny County: stretches of Chestnut Street in Coraopolis, Broadway in Stowe Township and Linden Avenue in East Pittsburgh. “Generally,” says PennDOT Press Secretary Alexis Campbell, “we end up paving them with asphalt.” 

Old pavers are often buried under asphalt but reappear in potholes. Others are removed and sometimes relocated. A few are part of the landscape of the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. Some that PennDOT removed from Castle Shannon Boulevard in Mt. Lebanon are parts of that suburb’s other streets.

Magic and texture

In the 2010s, resident Ned Schano led a campaign that won city landmark designations for Roslyn and specifically its wood. “Every day,” says Schano, “I make sure to step on the wood when I go outside. It has some magical powers.”

Cohen feels like Roslyn’s wood is ingrained in him. “It’s been a great texture for my whole life. To see it’s still here when so many other things have gone away, it’s amazing.”

The Pittsburgh Public Schools board of education has been under intense scrutiny since its “Future Ready Plan” was first introduced — and then eventually approved — in late May. But a group of parents has filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania Human Rights Commission in an effort to prevent it from being carried out.

Advancement Project, a national civil rights organization, along with 412 Justice and the Education Rights Network, have filed a complaint against the school board on behalf of five PPS students, claiming the plan, which will close or repurpose several district buildings across the city, violates those students’ civil rights.

Those students represented in the complaint attend Miller Pre K-5 in the Hill District, Manchester Pre K-8 on the North Side and Woolslair Pre K-5 in Bloomfield, all of which would close under the plan, with the students relocating. 

“This is part of what we’ve seen across the country, this national school closure crisis,” said Adaku Onyeka-Crawford, a staff attorney and director of education justice for Advancement Project. “We’ve seen it play out in urban, suburban and rural communities, affecting Black and brown children, and it has come to Pittsburgh.”

The complaint is calling for an investigation into the plan and for the district and school board to act in good faith during that investigation. They hope it will lead to a preliminary injunction, allowing the commission to get a court order for the district to stop the implementation of the plan. 

One of the main claims in the complaint is that the school board “based school closure decisions on utilization (enrollment divided by building capacity), despite being notified that doing so would disproportionately close schools in Black neighborhoods. Black students make up 62% of students that will lose their schools, but only 49% of students district-wide.”

“Utilization has no ties to education quality at all,” said Onyeka-Crawford. “In fact, smaller class sizes are tied to better outcomes for students. Community members had flagged that relying on this metric would disproportionately harm Black students.”

Onyeka-Crawford said alternatives were presented to the school board, some that have had success in other cities, but the district went forward with their own plan instead.

“We need to ask: who is Pittsburgh Public Schools and the board accountable to?” she said. “It’s the parents and families, and if this is what parents and families are asking for, it’s up to them to be accountable to those communities, and give parents and students the education and resources that they need.”

KDKA reached out to the district, but it said it will not comment on pending litigation.

It’s going to be another hot week in the Pittsburgh area with high temperatures back into the 90s. 

Any Alert Days Ahead? I have us hitting 90 degrees starting on Tuesday through Friday, so that stretch of 4 days are First Alert Weather Days. A severe storm setup looks to be in place for Saturday, so we may also see a FAWD issued for Saturday.

Aware: So far this year, we have seen five 90° days. Tuesday may be our 6th of the year. 

Heat index values today are expected to be in the mid-90s, near 100 degrees.

The hottest days of the week will be on Wednesday & Thursday. I have both days seeing highs at 92°. 

Rain chances start to tick back up on Friday, late in the afternoon.  I have Friday highs still hitting 90, with highs in just the mid-80s on Saturday and Sunday.

There still remains a concern for severe weather on Saturday, with all the ingredients in place.  Right now, the chance looks low due to morning rain keeping instability numbers low. 

Congress again considering making Daylight Saving Time year-round

I am not surprised that the U.S. Congress is taking up making Daylight Saving Time standard year-round again. The Sunshine Protection Act is the latest attempt by Congress to solve the issue of time and daylight. It’s a plan that you may not realize has been attempted before, and people disliked it so much that it didn’t even last a year.

Let’s start with a brief history of changes to the clock and what we will call Daylight Saving Time. Before World War 1, there was very little in the way of guidelines for states to follow when it came to time. WWI changed things, as the government dictated that Daylight Saving Time be in effect until the war was over in the hopes of conserving energy. Farmers were glad after the war to see the changes come to an end because the later sunrise in the winter meant less time to get out in the fields and get produce to market. Overall, the move to permanent DST was seen as unpopular.

The next big push for DST came during World War 2, and again, the reason for the change was the conservation of energy. Franklin Roosevelt, the president, called year-round DST ‘war-time.’ Once again, after the war, states were allowed to do their own thing. There remained no real federal policy on DST through 1966. That all changed in 1966 with the passing of the Uniform Time Act, signed into law by Lyndon Johnson. This put into effect a mix of daylight saving time and standard time, similar to what we have today; standard time lasted around 3 months longer than what we have today. 

Our next energy crisis came in 1967 with the worldwide oil embargo by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Nations (OAPEC). Our Congress decided to try out a year-round DST across the country. They put the trial period beginning at the start of 1974 and going through the spring of 1975. What could go wrong, right? Well, everything. The public hated the changes, and even worse, nearly 10 kids were killed in early morning hours that first winter period due to low visibility. A program that was supposed to last just two winter seasons was cancelled before we even got to the second winter. 

It appears to be a big push again to get Congress to push for permanent Daylight Saving Time hours. I hope they are considering the impact on everyone. For Pittsburgh, that would mean sunrise on some days in the winter around 9 a.m. Sunsets during that time would still be before 6 p.m. The issue is that during the wintertime, Pittsburgh only has around nine and a half hours of ‘daylight.’ We have to figure out the best way to align our clocks to that time. I think what we are doing right now is pretty close to perfect. What do you think?