By Mike Cronin
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Darkness, fire and black smoke, a never-ending rain of soot, the pounding of hundreds of hammers.
A description so dismal it conjures visions of Dante’s “Inferno.”
But those images depict the Pittsburgh of December 1866 that writer James Parton witnessed and conveyed in his story, “Pittsburg,” published in the January 1868 edition of The Atlantic Monthly.
Parton penned his immortal comparison of Pittsburgh as “hell with the lid taken off” in that article, reporting the view of the region’s mills, foundries and factories from a perch atop a hill overlooking the city.
Some have interpreted Parton’s metaphor as a positive: a compliment to the region’s industrial might.
Perhaps, said Arthur Ziegler, president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation in Station Square. “But it doesn’t sound like a place you’d want to move to,” he said.
Wrote Parton of the Pittsburgh he witnessed that day:
“The entire space lying between the hills was filled with blackest smoke, from out of which the hidden chimneys sent forth tongues of flame, while from the depths of the abyss, came up the noise of hundreds of steam-hammers. There would be moments when no flames were visible; but soon the wind would force the smoky curtains aside, and the whole black expanse would be dimly lighted with dull wreaths of fire… if any one would enjoy a spectacle as striking as Niagara, he may do so by simply walking up a long hill to Cliff Street in Pittsburg, and looking over into — hell with the lid taken off.”
Ziegler said the open-hearth steel mills and coke ovens belched smoke and pollution and caused the skies to glow red every night.
“His comment was at least half-negative because he used the word ‘hell,’ not ‘heaven,’” Ziegler said.
But Marilyn Holt, manager of the Pennsylvania Department at the Carnegie Library, said she doesn’t believe Parton meant to be disparaging.
“He was talking about a spectacle that rivals Niagara Falls, an industrial view with a magnificence of its own,” Holt said.
Pittsburghers of that time used to argue if the smoke was good for you. It killed malaria, they said. It saved the eyesight because the near-constant darkness ensured no glare.
Still, for some insight on Parton’s opinion on the scene he made famous, one must read just a few sentences further.
“The first feeling of the stranger is one of compassion for the people who are compelled to live in such an atmosphere.”
Mike Cronin can be reached at mcronin@tribweb.comor 412-320-7884.
