Lawrenceville Memories

From time to time we get requests from folks asking us to post Lawrenceville memories from other people. This page is dedicated to those who were kind enough to write down their memories and share them with us.

Posted December 31, 2008. The following article was written by Cynthia Maszak Wudarczyk, and first appeared in the December 1991 issue of Historical Happenings.

My memories of Lawrenceville date back to the 1950’s where I resided with my parents in a modest home on Eden Way between 40th and 41st Streets. The surrounding area was a lot different back then. There were homes along Almond Way, the site of the present Gulf Station. There were also homes where the present day Subway parking lot appears. Some of these homes, in fact, still had outhouses in their backyards I have been told.

Neighbors would congregate every summer on their front stoops or porches to share the latest gossip or talk about their kids. Oh, yes, there were kids everywhere then. All ages playing hide and seek, or kick the stick, or various other games. One thing that we would do on occasion in the evenings, would be to peer into the windows of the Washington Vocational School, located on Eden and Almond Ways, and watch the men as they had classes in welding. Our eyes would light up as we saw the sparks flying in each window as we passed.

In summer, the hucksters would be around selling their fruits and vegetables. On occasion, even today, they come around the streets. No longer, however, do we see the horse-drawn wagons coming through the streets with the men atop shouting for rags. I used to be amazed as a little child at how huge the horses seemed to be.

I do remember the trucks that used to come around with the Merry-Go-Round on the back. And, for a fee, you could have a ride upon your very own horse.

School began in the Fall, and I’d pack my schoolbag with paper and pencils and walk the block to Holy Family School, which was then located on the corner of 41st and Foster Streets. I have fond memories of that school and the time I spent there. I remember the cowbell being rung at various times during the day. There was a huge closet (or so it appeared to be huge then) on the first floor where school supplies could be bought or gifts for parents for such occasions as Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, or Christmas. The gift would be little statues or holy objects that we were delighted to give our parents once we could afford to pay the $2.00 or $3.00.

I especially remember the nuns who had 60 or 70 children in a class to discipline and teach and somehow succeeded in doing both. Every so often the nuns would have some of us clean their home, which was located next to the school on 41st Street. How diligent we would be in cleaning as long as they were around. When they weren’t watching, the dust would get swept under the carpet.

I recall vividly how some of the girls in my class would trade holy cards like the boys traded baseball cards. We’d go up to Harenski’s Funeral Parlor on 44th Street, (now Zalewski’s Funeral Home,) say a prayer for the deceased person and be thrilled with the holy picture we’d select, then, we’d go to school the next day and show the other girls our treasures.

I guess my favorite nun was Sister Gacille, who taught me in the 7th grade. She was a soft spoken woman who seemed to fair to all the kids in her class. However, she did get angry with us one time. It was movie day at the school, and we all sat on the wooden chairs lined up on the second floor. We couldn’t wait to see what movie our twenty-five cents had paid for. Well, of course, it was Lent and they were showing the Passion of Christ. We, in the 7th grade, had probably seen the same movie twenty times and made the mistake of applauding when it was over. Sister Gracille’s wrath came down on us that day and we were kept after school as punishment.

I think my best recollection of the old Holy Family School is Christmastime. On the day before Christmas Holiday began, all the classes would congregate on the first floor of the school and sing Polish and English carols as the pastor of Holy Family Church would give out the half- pound boxes of chocolate candy to each and every child from the 1st through 8th grades. It was a prividlege to get the candy and we were so happy with it, we would run right home with our first gift of the season.

But, as all things pass, I was in the 8th grade and going on to St. Augustine High School. The nun who taught me at the time, Sister Marguerite, telephoned my home requesting that I bring a paper and pencil and meet her, another nun, and some other girls at the new school on 44th Street. We all sat on the dirt floor inside the shell of the new school and the Sisters gave us five math problems to work so that the school, in good conscious, could say that they had taught at the facility to avoid taxes.

Fall was also an especially happy time too. It was when the Taffy Apple Man would appear on Butler Street, and all us kids would hurry home to get money to buy our candy apples.

In looking over Butler Street, Heckler’s Drug Store, today the site of a parking lot, comes to memory. As a child, I was afflicted with polio and medical bills soared. Mr. Heckler would give us medicine on credit, which we would pay at a later time. My mother would always instruct us to be sure to get any prescriptions filled at his store. We followed her advice until Mr. Heckler finally closed the doors for good.

Keystone’s was another place that comes to mind. This store was located at the site of the present day Amato’s Pizza. It was a delight to my sister and me as we’d get off the 94 Butler Street bus after shopping Downtown with my mom. Our treat for the evening was to enter the little store, which had booths and table top juke boxes, and get our favorite flavor of ice cream.

And whose memory could forget the famous Arsenal Theater, site of the present day Pittsburgh National parking lot, where you could spend all day watching your favorite movie over and over and over again. Saturdays and seventeen cartoons were a thrill. Kids would be lined up from the theater door, around the corner, and down 41st Street to the end of the bank’s wall. We would buy our popcorn and candy at Authenreith’s, where Starr’s is now, and proceed to get in line. Fire Codes must not have been enforced in the 1950’s because, after getting into the show, there would be no seats available and you would invariably be sitting on the steps in the balcony with a bunch of other kids. Arsenal Theater was also one of the few places that had air-conditioning in the summer. My father, who suffered from hay fever, would go there on hot summer days or evenings. He would inevitably fall asleep. My mother would take us to the show and know exactly where he was located. There he would be, head tilted back, mouth open, snoring, and contented.

Memories are something to treasure. They can go back 100 years or just to yesterday. But, they’re our and they’re lost in time, if no one hears or listens or writes about them.

Posted December 21, 2008.

My Mother and Father were children of immigrants who came to the United States in the late 1800’s. They grew up in the Lawrenceville section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and lived their early lives only a few city blocks from each other. They attended the same grade school, attended the same church, and had mutual friends.

My Father, Thomas Bryant Morris [Sr.] was born on November 8 1907 in the family home at 5137 Holmes St. He was the fifth of nine surviving children of Joshua and Sarah [Bryant] Morris. My Dad went to work in the print room of Westinghouse Electric, Nuttall Division, which was just below Butler St. at the bottom of McCandless Avenue, when he was fourteen years old.

My Mother, Martha Elizabeth Schneider was born on Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17 1908. She was the second daughter born to John and Susan [Hemmrich] Schneider.

The family lived in a house that her Father built at 5316 Keystone St. Martha went to Pittsburgh Business School, and after she graduated, she worked at Westinghouse where she did keypunching in the payroll department.

The country was slowly coming out of the Great Depression when my parents were married by Reverend J. H. Ferguson in the Methodist Church on Holmes St. in 1935. [Reverend Ferguson later performed the marriage ceremony for my wife and me in 1964.]

After my parents married, they lived for a while on Duquesne Heights and then moved to a small cabin off Middle Rd. until they bought our house at 5273 Duncan St.

The neighborhood of Lawrenceville where I grew up extended from Stanton Avenue [51st St] along Butler St. to the 62nd St. Bridge. The high wall of the Allegheny Cemetery along Stanton Ave. seemed to be a good dividing line of neighborhoods.

At the end of the cemetery wall on Stanton Avenue, there was a fence which ended at the property of a golf course. My Dad would take me for walks into the cemetery from that point down to a pretty tree shaded area with a small brook running through it. The golf course was later closed and homes were built at the site, and the area became known as Stanton Heights.

Butler St. from Stanton Ave. to 55th St. was a busy commercial area with banks, butcher shops, bakeries, candy and toy stores, and a tiny movie theater called the Dome.

Friday nights at the Dome usually had a double feature movie, a serial feature, a couple of cartoons, a newsreel, and sometimes a Three Stooges or a Joe McDokes “Behind the 8 ball” short.

Kens’ candy store was close to the Dome, and Dad would give me fifteen cents to get into the movie and also buy candy. I’d come out of Kens with a small brown bag of penny candy, and it was only eight or ten cents to get into the movie. Kens’ also stocked model airplane kits, comic books, and puzzles.

Hymie Harris’s store on the corner of 52nd and Butler was about the size of Kens’, and he sold tobacco of all kinds, men’s magazines and newspapers.

The Allegheny Valley Bank was on Butler St in the vicinity of The Dome. My Grandfather Schneider, and later my parents, did all of their banking business there.

Our family doctor, Dr. Noden, had his practice just across the street from the bank. The building he was in was of an entirely different style compared to others in the block. It had a brick front with windows that were too high to be able to see in or out.

We also had the Model movie theater on Butler St at about 46th St. across from Lawrence Park, and the Arsenal Theater at 41st and Butler. The Model was the first theater to close down, and it was probably due to the Arsenal getting most of the local business. The Arsenal was a big theater, and it was more expensive, twenty five to thirty cents admission. The Arsenal Theater employed ticket takers in uniform and ushers to seat you. We always liked to sit in the balcony; first row if we got there in time. On Friday nights we would get a Bingo card and at intermission a rotating barrel would be rolled out on the stage, and a few games of Bingo would be called.

A few times during the year we would be treated to “Seventeen Cartoons”, a double feature, a short, newsreel, and perhaps a serial episode of Flash Gordon starring Buster Crabbe. The show would start at eight or nine in the morning, and more than once my Mom would have to come to the theater and get me out of there around four in the afternoon.

Lawerence Park had a great field for baseball, football and in the late Forty’s soccer was played on Sunday afternoons. A small but very nice swimming pool was also in the park. When we were in that area, we always stopped at Yosts’ store for his “pepper upper”, a fizzy drink made with cherry syrup and soda water.

The Boys Club was on Butler Street at about 45th St., and I spent many nights in the gym, building models, or swimming in the indoor pool. A man named Dewey Devers was in charge of swimming at the club. He was a big man and a Martial Arts expert. Dewey kept everyone on their best behavior with a small but firm pinch on their shoulder.

There were many bars along Butler St, and most had their steady patrons. One bar in particular, Neids on the corner of 55th St and Butler is still there. I remember this bar in particular from my early days when Dad would take me for a walk, and he would stop there and get fish sandwiches for himself and Mom. It was a smoky place, and had the brass spittoons by the foot rail.

At 49th St. and Butler was the Zivics Bar. The Zivic family had five sons and all were boxers. The most famous was Fritzie Zivic, the “Croat Comet” who won the World Welterweight Title in 1940.

The neighborhood just wouldn’t be right without a bakery. I probably don’t have the spelling correct, but the Teresciewicz bakery on Butler between McCandless and 52nd had some of the best homemade bread and pastries I have ever tasted. My friend and I would sometimes leave the Dome with some extra change in our pockets and pool it together to buy pastry. If we came up a bit short with the money, the woman would look at us, wink, and say “that’s OK”.

There was a fire station on the corner of Butler St. and McCandless Ave. across from the O’Neill Ford dealer. The station had an old, late 1920’s or early 1930’s ladder truck still in use. If memory serves me correctly, the wheels had large wooden spokes, and the hood was two-piece which folded open from both sides. Later, when I went to Arsenal Junior High School at 40th and Butler Streets, we were allowed inside the fire house on cold winter mornings while we waited for the street car [trolley]. We were able to watch progress on a Thoroughfare Market being built across the street from the fire station.

McConnell’s gas station, which was next to the fire station, was also a good sized toy store. I remember especially at Christmas time the store was full of all kinds of toys, bicycles, Lionel trains, Christmas tree ornaments and lights. I particularly liked looking at the shelves full of Lionel trains in those Lionel blue and orange boxes. My Dad bought me my first BB gun there; a Daisy Red Ryder, the same model that is talked about in the movie, “A Christmas Story”. So much of that movie represents Lawrenceville in the 1940’s.

“Charley the Greeks” was a candy and soda fountain store at 52nd and Butler St. They made the most delicious sodas and sundaes, but their specialty was homemade chocolate candy. The butter creams were a favorite. The booths at Charley’s were the high back type and the coin box for the juke box was on the wall in each booth.

At the corner of 53rd and Butler was Nadolnys Pharmacy. I liked to go in there with my Mom. The store was so clean and bright and the big shelves with the sliding glass doors had all sizes of glass jars with the medicines in them. Mr. Nadolny always wore his white lab coat and would talk with my Mom and ask how our family was doing. He knew all the families in our general neighborhood.

We had many neighborhood corner stores for every day items such as bread, milk, soups, lunch meat and pop. I can remember buying 25 cents worth of chipped ham for my lunchtime sandwiches. All the corner stores had the penny chewing gum machines which had two cent and five cent “winner” gumballs, and the coke machine that you would open the top, put in a nickel, and slide the glass bottle along some rails and pull it up through the release.

We had Gaspers store at Duncan and McCandless, Zelchs at Duncan and 54th St., a store at Mc Candless and Wickliff St, and one at the top of McCandless and Stanton Ave. I really liked to go into the store at Keystone and 54th St.; it was an A&P store where you could grind your own “8 O’Clock” coffee. The A&P also had dill pickles in the wooden pickle barrels. There was also a store at the corner of Carnegie and 54th St.

On the corner of 52nd St and Holmes St. was Tony the shoemaker. Tony would let us come into his store and sit on the benches with the high footrests and he would talk with us while he worked at replacing a heel or sole on a pair of shoes. Many of us would have Tony put cleats on our shoes to keep them from wearing out too soon.

Dave Litmans was another of the corner stores and his store was also a meat market and butcher shop.

Along Butler St. beyond 57th St was a long row of garages, better known as the “40 Garages”. There really were 40 of them and my Grandfather at one time rented one of them. A little further along Butler St was the streetcar turnaround loop where one of two streetcars went from there to downtown Pittsburgh. I remember that the two streetcars that traveled Butler St were the number 94 and 95. One of these turned at the loop, and one went on to Aspinwall by way of the rickety old 62nd St. Bridge. You could actually see the river between the boards as you drove or walked across that bridge.

From Butler Street down to the river all along the banks was where the manufacturing companies were built. Heppenstalls, Westinghouse, the Waverly Oil tanks, United Engineering, Kress, and Blaw Knox Steel were just some of the names. My future Father-in-Law worked for Union Steel Castings just beyond the trolley loop. I probably sold him a newspaper when I was young, as I had a Press paper route which included the shop there. Many of our family earned their livings at these companies. Along both sides of the river were railroad tracks to bring in coal for the steel plants, and take out finished steel and castings of all sizes and shapes.

When I was very young my Dad took me for a walk down to the bank of the river to show me where people were living on what were known as “shanty boats”.

Warm weather in Pittsburgh would find us playing “hide and seek”, “kick the stick”, basketball in the Duncan St. playground, and baseball in the McCleary School field.

If you hit a ball over the fence in the school field, it was a home run, and during most summers, a few windows were broken at the school. As we got a bit older, and the domed roof was removed from McCleary, a home run was a ball landing on the roof. One of my friends could hit a ball over the school and onto McCandless Ave. before we moved to a bigger field at the new Sunnyside School.

My Mother would pile many of us in our 1940 Ford, and take us to Highland Park or for a real treat, North Park to swim, and the oldest would be responsible to see that we were out of the pool and ready to be picked up.

Sometimes, a few of us would get up early on a Saturday morning and ride our bikes across the 62nd street bridge and go swimming in the brook at Locust Grove behind what is now the K-Mart on Rt. 8 in Etna. From there we would ride down E. Ohio St. to the 40th St. Bridge, cross the river, and back home along Butler St.

We were never allowed into the Allegheny Cemetery, although it would have been so nice to ride through on those peaceful roadways.

Winter days after a good snowfall would find 53rd St. packed with kids on sleds. We would belly-flop onto the sled at the top of 53rd St at Wickliff and fly down the hill to a stop below Carnegie St. We always had someone on their way back up to give us the all clear as we approached the cross streets. Sometimes we would have two or three sleds tied together, or someone lying on the back of the “driver”.

Lawrenceville in the 40’s and early 50’s was a great place to grow up. Most families knew each other from childhood or worked side by side in the factories and offices there in Lawrenceville.

We couldn’t get away with much mischief because if we did anything wrong, someone would always see us and tell our parents, and then………………….

I dedicate these thoughts and memories in honor of my Mother, Martha [Schneider] Morris who took the flood pictures, and my Father, T. Bryant Morris, who was taken much too early from this life.

Thomas Bryant Morris, Jr.
St. George, Utah