Area Rug Cleaning South Side Flats, Pittsburgh PA
In 1811, Dr. Nathaniel Bedford laid out a town on the flats, naming it Birmingham in tribute to his native city. Bedford had come to Pittsburgh around 1770 and was the first practicing physician in the district known as Allegheny County. He named the streets after his Ormsby’s children; names which the South Side streets still bear—Mary, Jane, Sarah, Sidney. Carson St. was named after a sea captain who lived in Philadelphia and was a friend of Dr. Bedford. In the early days it was part of the Washington Pike, the main road to Washington, Pennsylvania.
The nearby municipality of Mount Oliver would be named for John Ormsby’s son Oliver Ormsby. The two areas were once connected by a coal incline run by the Keeling Coal Company, now the site of South Side Park. Birmingham quickly became a sizable industrial center because of the easy access to river and rail transport. The region would first become a center of glass production, followed by a concentration of iron and steel manufacturing. In 1850, Benjamin Franklin Jones invested in a South Side iron works. During the depression of 1873, he formed a partnership with a banker, James H. Laughlin. The firm of Jones and Laughlin Steel Company would eventually become the South Side’s largest employer. By 1910, it would employ over 15,000 workers. The expansion of the plant in 1950 would require the demolition of residential homes between 31st and 33rd streets.
The majority of workers who had settled in the area were immigrants of Eastern Europe. They found home throughout the Flats and Slopes of South Side and had brought much of their culture and traditions to the area. Many of the Eastern European churches, clubs and bars are still present in the South Side.
AArea Rug Cleaning South Side Flats, Pittsburgh PA