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“One day, when the nineteenth century was drawing to a close, my father pinned a celluloid button on my jacket. He told me that the words on it were, 'Boost McKeesport — The Tube City!' But because I was a small boy, I was ignorant of those merits of our town which my father, a founder of its booster club, was prepared to communicate to any listener. —Excerpt from Voices Offstage (1968) by Marc Connelly, |
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Postcard view of the People’s Union Bank building, circa 1908 (tinted by the author) |
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By Jason Togyer
FROM THE 1880s until the 1950s, McKeesport was the bustling center of industry for a large chunk of Allegheny County. It was home to the second-busiest commercial district in the region; U.S. Steel's National Tube division; the G.C. Murphy chain of five-and-ten cent stores; Potter-McCune, a grocery wholesaler; Firth Sterling, a speciality steel maker; and a variety of other companies.
Its population was just 55,000, but it was surrounded by small bedroom communities like Dravosburg, Versailles, White Oak, Liberty Borough, and Port Vue that were almost entirely dependent on the city for employment and consumer needs.
Everyone came downtown eventually. The combination of several factories working around-the-clock, two busy railroads, and residential areas shoulder-to-shoulder with shops and restaurants kept the city alive day and night. One salesman staying at the Penn-McKee Hotel wrote home excitedly that he had "never been in a small town like this! You can look out the window at 3 a.m. and still see people on the sidewalks!"
In 1960, downtown McKeesport's central business district boasted three movie theatres, three hotels, 72 churches representing 26 denominations, two radio stations, The Daily News, and stores with annual retail sales in excess of $101 million, all crammed into 52-acres.
By the early '60s, though, a series of small shopping centers had been built on the periphery of the city — Southland on Route 51 in West Mifflin, Miracle Mile in Monroeville, Great Valley on Route 30 — and retail trade had declined by 30 percent. And the enemy was getting closer.
The Eastland Mall, just five minutes from downtown McKeesport, had opened in 1963 and 1964, J.C. Penney was leaving for it, and the city's merchants were threatening a boycott of the Greater McKeesport Chamber of Commerce if it accepted memberships from any Eastland tenants. (They formed their own Downtown Merchants Association in protest. The Greater McKeesport C of C promptly changed its name to the Mon-Yough Chamber of Commerce and let the Eastland businesses in anyway.)
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IT WAS CLEAR something needed to be done. Nothing set municipal hearts aflutter in those New Frontier days like a good committee, and in Pittsburgh, the Southwestern Pennsylvania Regional Planning Commission (whose driving force, Richard King Mellon, is generally considered the father of the "Pittsburgh Renaissance") was in full bloom.
Under the watchful eyes of the SPRPC, McKeesport formed a redevelopment authority and set about devising a "master plan" for rebuilding the town. "The declining position of the downtown and its serious implications on the stability of the entire City has been increasingly recognized," this august group wrote in 1964. "The surveys and analysis disclosed that much of the 200-acre central area was so seriously deteriorated and so environmentally deficient that the only alternative is major clearance and redevelopment." They produced a "master plan" for McKeesport that proposed, among other things, the creation of a downtown pedestrian mall, improved traffic circulation, and more greenspace.
When I was taking civil engineering classes (a misguided plan that ended only in frustration -- and with me switching my major to journalism) one of my professors told my class the most important part of any master plan is the introduction and the conclusion. "Politicians aren't going to read the stuff in the middle anyway," he said. "They'll read the beginning and skip to the end."
It's evident that McKeesport's political leaders didn't even do that much. Their approach to implementing the master plan was scattershot for a variety of reasons; objections from the business community, a lack of funding, general interia, and political infighting being key factors. For that matter, the plan itself was far from perfect, full of contradictions and overly-optimistic projections.
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McKEESPORT'S BUSINESS DISTRICT continued stumbling along aimlessly until 1976, when a disastrous fire in the west end damaged several blocks. Many of the displaced firms relocated, but for the first time in the city's history, there were vacant lots in the heart of downtown that didn't get snapped up. When McKeesport received two body-blows in quick succession — the closing of the National Works and the purchase of the Murphy company by Connecticut-based Ames Department Stores — downtown collapsed.
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