Category: East Carnegie

East Carnegie n@

https://www.strava.com/activities/5057190809
Route of RATS #00388 in East Carnegie

On this sunny, cold, Good Friday, I ventured out to East Carnegie again. As before, I parked in the Borough of Carnegie as it is less isolated. At any rate, you know you’re approaching East Carnegie when you pass the longstanding puddle under the overpasses. From there, a company town emerges. Union Electric Steel, with its long blue building dominates the west side of town. A surprising number of streets and alleys crisscross this flat area. The flat yards are a decent size, often with garages in the back, some more useful than others.

  • Approaching East Carnegie
  • Union Electric Steel Towers over Houses
  • Typical Garage
  • Woodkirk Street

The “1929 Zanfino” building caught my eye. It looks like an old apartment building which has been a little remuddled. Not far away, Ogden Street goes up a little hill and steps finish off the sidewalk.

  • 1929 Zanfino
  • Odgen Street Steps

Crossing Bell Avenue leads to a number of distributors and services; auto-detailing, welding supplies, electric supplies and pallets, apparently. This truck wheel assemblage is heavy duty, but hasn’t gone anywhere in a long time.

  • Old Truck
  • Pallets R Us

Bell leads into Idlewild Road, far in miles and spirit from Idlewild Park, home of the Splash Zone and Storybook Forest. Everything is spread out with ample room for the Pittsburgh Paintball Park and a pipe cleaning business with its fleet of heavy-duty trucks. Saxman Street shortly becomes a path through the woods.

  • Trail with concrete curbs
  • Pittsburgh Paintball

After a half mile or so, Idlewild Road intersects Morange Road near a West Busway stop just on the border of Pittsburgh and Crafton. Returning along Morange Road to Noblestown Road, I passed Bishop Canevin High School and Chartiers Cemetery.

  • Crafton Houses
  • Chartiers Cemetery

And that’s that, seven miles in East Carnegie, pretty much finishing up this neighborhood.

Alleys in Mount Washington and Streets in East Carnegie

This blog will cover two runs I did earlier in December. RATS #00335 covered yet more little streets in Mount Washington. It seems that every time I look at my maps, I discover another missed street there. The second, RATS #00336, was a foray into East Carnegie, a small (Western) neighborhood jutting into Carnegie, a borough separate from Pittsburgh.

RATS #00335 – Niggly Alleys in Mount Washington

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RATS #00335 in Mount Washington

By this point, if you’ve read anything about Pittsburgh or followed this blog at all, you’ll know that Mount Washington has iconic views of Pittsburgh, overlooking the Point, where the Ohio is formed at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. Inevitably, I got a couple of such views.

  • Broad View of the Mon, Uptown (left) and South Side (right)
  • Monongahela Incline

However, I really planned this run to cover Beam Way, Laura Way (aka Thorpe Way on Google Maps) and Dill Way. I also had my eye on Volk Street, but I was unsure about it since it was marked as a “private drive”. Sometimes, a “private drive” is gated and guarded against the common folk. Perhaps that was their vision, but going up Volk’s street steps, I gather that maybe the rest of Mount Washington should be guarded from Volk Street. Laura Way is more of a service driveway between a couple of eateries.

  • Volk Street Steps
  • Laura Way
  • Nicely Renovated Mount Washington House

That is it. Any run in December is a good run. And, it looks like I just have one more super-niggly alley to do in Mount Washington before finishing that whole damn area.

RATS #00336 – East Carnegie

https://www.strava.com/activities/4439460584
RATS #00336 – East Carnegie

East Carnegie is a small neighborhood in the western fringe of Pittsburgh; beyond Westwood and beyond Oakwood. It is generally bounded by Noblestown Road, Chartiers Cemetery and Chartiers Creek. This was my first foray into East Carnegie and I actually parked in Carnegie’s business district to trot over.

I’m always happy to see the “Welcome to Pittsburgh” signs on a run. However, East Carnegie is rather dominated by warehouses and mills along Chartiers Creek, and there’s not too much to see there. It was one of the flattest areas I’ve seen around here.

  • Come on In!
  • Steel Mill
  • Someone Lost a Mitten
  • And, of course, there are steps: Pringle Avenue

In Pittsburgh, ‘flat and near creeks‘ often spells “F L O O D I N G”. A cursory search revealed a few instances of flash flooding in East Carnegie, but not too much in the last decade. Mine run-off, seems to be a more persistent problem. This small creek, “Whiskey Run” is on the border with Carnegie and has the tell-tale orange look of an iron-laden stream. It doesn’t seem to impact Chartiers Creek much, but it does flow there.

  • Whiskey Run
  • Pedestrian Bridge Over Chartiers Creek

In spite of the quiet and out-of-the-way nature of this neighborhood, while I was running, a car went off the road on Idlewood Road, so I avoided that area. I’ll be back, to get, all those, niggly streets.