Tube City Almanac

August 19, 2013

McKeesport from the Air, 1949

Category: History || By


Apropos of nothing, I had occasion recently to examine some U.S. Army Air Service aerial photos of the McKeesport area, circa April 1949. You know, like you do. (Click any photo to make it larger.)

First, it's the "old" Dravosburg Bridge, which connected lower 10th Ward with Dravosburg's Ravine Street, along with the "new" Dravosburg "high-level" bridge, which is under construction. The "new" bridge wasn't yet named for state Senator William D. Mansfield, who died in 1952.


Next, we have Bettis Field, the airport at the top of Dravosburg Hill that opened in 1924. Note that the two runways are marked with "X's," signifying to pilots that they're out of service. Just a few months before this photo was taken, the airport had been sold to Westinghouse Electric Corp., which was about to turn the land into Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory.


For all of you Port Vue Bulldogs, this is Coronado and New York avenues in that borough, with the houses still under construction. The McKeesport suburbs were booming after World War II, and new homes were being built in Port Vue, White Oak, West Mifflin and elsewhere to answer a severe housing shortage.


Finally, here's Our Fair City's "point" (the present-day area of McKee's Point Marina), showing the old Third Avenue Suspension Bridge and parts of the former First Ward neighborhood, which is now mostly covered by railroad tracks and a storage yard for U.S. Steel's pipe mill.

The Municipal Authority of the City of McKeesport had just been established in 1949, and construction of McKeesport's sewage treatment plant (to the upper left of the photo) was still 10 years away.

(All photos courtesy U.S. Geological Survey.)






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