For a place that covers less than half a square mile, Aspinwall is jam-packed with history.
On Sunday afternoon, Terry Nelson Taylor, the community’s resident historian, compressed more than a century of Aspinwall’s stories into a two-hour paid walking tour through the leafy borough.
After meeting on Brilliant Avenue in front of the Aspinwall Beans ‘N’ Cream coffee shop, it became clear why Taylor chose her rendezvous point. On the corner was tiny Loop Street, a bustling transportation hub back in the borough’s earliest days.
“The reason why this town flourished has all to do with transportation,” Taylor told her eight listeners.
Horses and their carriages would loop around there, heading back to Downtown Pittsburgh, Taylor said. Streetcars would do the same. Two rail lines crossed through the borough nearby, and a rail station stood on the corner.
Aspinwall, founded in 1892, was built after a group of businessmen bought 155 acres of prime real estate from Annie Aspinwall, widow of steamship line owner George Aspinwall. By then, she had no need to retain any of her land along the Allegheny River.
The men formed the Aspinwall Land Co., which marketed the lots, Taylor explained.
The area, with its abundant trees and access to the river and transportation, attracted wealthier, successful families, including the Puenings of Germany, whose daughter, Kitty, would go on to marry J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist that led the American effort to develop the atomic bomb. A relative of H.J. Heinz built there, as did architect Pierre Liesch, whose decorative motifs still grace the facades of several borough homes.
Aspinwall had inherited the land from her grandfather, James Ross (think Ross Street), a Pennsylvania politician whose term in the Senate straddled the 18th and 19th centuries.
Ross had obtained his bounty, 3,000 acres in all, from his friend, pioneer settler James O’Hara, according to the Heinz History Center.
Also a beneficiary was Annie Aspinwall’s niece, Mary Delafield, who had her own chunk of land. That property was added to the borough in 1905, according to Taylor.
The website Historic Pittsburgh has a map from 1880 showing Aspinwall Land Co.’s Plan of Lots at the West Pennsylvania Railroad’s Aspinwall Station. Dubbed “part of the well-known Ross estate, the lots were offered to sale at “favorable terms.”
Meandering along the flat streets, Taylor led her listeners back in time, pointing out historic homes and describing their prominent occupants.
A 1907 home at 2nd Street and Brilliant Avenue, for instance, belonged to an H.J. Heinz chemist, Edward Duckwall, who had a “secret” laboratory in his house.
The old Aspinwall Bank building on Brilliant has a marker for the 1936 St. Patrick’s Day flood.
And a house built on five lots by a Heinz relative boasts a huge stained glass window.
Taylor, who in 1992 wrote a history book, “Aspinwall: The Town That Pride Built,” is also a student of architecture.
She fondly pointed out all sorts of gingerbread and special features adorning Aspinwall’s housing stock, from split Roman brick to the decorative Scottish thistle, oak leaf and fleur-de-lis stucco on what Taylor dubbed the “Henry House.”
Houses built by Liesch, the architect, featured ornamental ceramic tiles atop porch columns.
“It’s something a little different,” Taylor said.
Taylor guided her brood through two “secret” gardens. One, with a coral display and a miniature windmill on 3rd Street, originally belonged to the Sauerisen family, founders in 1899 of a cement company that now makes protective linings, coatings and ceramics.
Another house on Eastern Avenue featured a third-floor Juliet balcony as a highlight.
“I may learn something about my own house,” called homeowner Carolyn Haas as Taylor approached.
Taylor ended the tour at her own home, painted a distinctive blue, which has a turret that she described as one of a kind and shaped like a Hershey’s Kiss.
Offering her guests white wine, grapes, chocolate and cheese, she regaled them with more tales of Aspinwall and the history of her abode.
The group said they appreciated learning more about the tiny borough. Debbie Kahn of Glenshaw, who was joined by her Irish setter, Colin, said her grandparents had lived in Aspinwall.
“There were a couple of things I had no idea,” she said, including one of Taylor’s tidbits – that Aspinwall was once home to a silent movie studio.
Mara Berztiss and Mary Jane Jacques were two of three senior citizens and friends from O’Hara who take a weekly walk. Usually they enjoy their excursions on Monday, but the tour was a pleasant exception.
Rounding out the group were Doug and Susan Zaenger of O’Hara, who are doing some work on their house and appreciated the inspiration from the tour.
And the final participant was Hannah Zhang, a retired research scientist from China by way of Texas, who moved to Aspinwall two years ago for its beauty, calm and access to the outdoors.
“That’s really cool,” Zhang said of Taylor’s history lesson. “I always walk in the neighborhood after dinner, and I always wondered about these houses and gardens.”
Taylor has one more walking tour for the season, scheduled for Sept. 17.
Categories: Fox Chapel Herald | Lifestyles | Valley News Dispatch
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