This morning’s run was a rambling tour of the intersection of Shadyside, East Liberty, Point Breeze and North Homewood. Starting on the East side of Shadyside, we rambled through the flat and quiet morning streets. I had a vague notion of running Meade St completely. I thought it would be a nice 5-6 mile route without too much traffic or too many hills.
The first interesting turn was onto Carron Way. Originally reading it “Carrion”, I half expected to see a murder of crows in the alley or a wake of vultures congregating beside a carcass. But the alley was nothing like that. Instead, wavy paving bricks collected puddles bordered by grass. Carron Way wraps around the back of the Hunt Armory. Its heavy green exit doors were covered with graffiti. While the armory has been unused for some time, I do remember seeing the occasional Army Reserve tank in there from time to time. Now there are plans afoot to redevelop it into an ice rink.
Then we ran down Meade St, which has the curious feature that one part of it ends in an old style cul-de-sac, but there is a sidewalk which continues past the shrubbery to another section. That took us to North Lexington Ave near Construction Junction. From there we went back on Thomas Blvd. Thomas Blvd lives up to its “Boulevard” designation, as it has a tree-lined grassy median for several blocks.
It looked like the mileage would be short, so we circumnavigated Westinghouse Park. A historic landmark sign alerted me to the uniqueness of the park. The history of Westinghouse Park is surprising, including the fact the George Westinghouse drilled for natural gas there! I don’t think it is zoned for that anymore. Apparently Westinghouse used to live there and entertain guests, one of which was Nikolai Tesla, whose namesake street I traversed just a few weeks ago.
From there, we wandered through the little streets which make up that corner of Point Breeze, circled Mellon Park and eventually went down the flat section of South Negley Ave, to push the mileage to just past 6.