Skip to content
  • About
  • Events
  • Old Crime
  • N'At
  • People
  • Places
  • Sports
  • Yinz
  • About
  • Events
  • Old Crime
  • N'At
  • People
  • Places
  • Sports
  • Yinz
March 28, 2014 / Pittsburgh n'at

The artistry of Pittsburgh’s potholes

Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Big hair, knee socks and a pothole. Yup, this is Pittsburgh. (Pittsburgh Press photo)
Big hair, knee socks and a pothole. Yup, this is Pittsburgh. (Pittsburgh Press photo)
A five-hubcapper on the Liberty Bridge. (Pittsburgh Press photo)
A five-hubcapper on the Liberty Bridge. (Pittsburgh Press photo)
We do not know what is going on in this picture, but it does contain a pothole. (Pittsburgh Press photo)
We do not know what is going on in this picture, but it does contain a pothole. (Pittsburgh Press photo)
Knee deep in potholes in front of the Duquesne Club in the late 1960s. (Pittsburgh Press photo)
Knee deep in potholes in front of the Duquesne Club in the late 1960s. (Pittsburgh Press photo)
A young girl discovered potholes made excellent “wading ponds” on Babcock Boulevard in Pine Township. (Pittsburgh Press photo)
A young girl discovered potholes made excellent “wading ponds” on Babcock Boulevard in Pine Township. (Pittsburgh Press photo)

We at the Digs see a number of similarities between our city’s potholes and those freaky crop circles found in the English countryside. Both materialize somewhat mysteriously and have brought great fame to specific geographical regions. And each pothole, like every crop circle, possesses unmistakable artistic merit. You just have to squint to see it.

A few weeks ago, while driving along Fort Pitt Boulevard, we squinted at the monster pothole at the Market Street intersection and discovered that it resembled, in both shape and size, a barnacle-encrusted humpback whale. Our vehicle then fell into the hole and everything went dark until we emerged on the North Side.

That particular pothole has since been filled with several tons of asphalt and so now it resembles a Vermont-sized liver spot.

Back at the PG archives, we checked our clipping files and found 21 folders labeled “Potholes.” While this isn’t a record (the Steelers clippings consume more than 200 folders), it certainly qualifies as an obsession. Pittsburgh newspaper reporters love writing about roads resembling swiss cheese.

The first file we opened dated from the mid 1970s. This was our city’s “Golden Age” of potholes. Some were so large a reader suggested building bridges over them. In 1972, one article noted, the 3700 block of Bigelow Boulevard was declared a “disaster area.”

Then, in 1976 came an age of enlightenment, at least for one Pittsburgh Press writer. “It’s pothole blossom time!” he cheered.

Newspapers soon developed a pothole rating system. On Ohio River Boulevard, a reporter spotted a “six-hubcapper,” which meant that six lost hubcaps littered the immediate area. Roads at the time were choked with Chevy Vegas and Ford Pintos and AMC Gremlins, cars so loosely bolted together that they geysered auto parts when encountering even the shallowest of potholes.

Late in the decade, a mean-spirited and maniacal pothole on William Penn Highway in Monroeville flattened the tire of a Pittsburgh optometrist. He pulled into a nearby gas station and found five other motorists waiting to get their tires repaired. Enraged, the optometrist formed an organization called Pothole Victims of Pennsylvania. Potholes would finally face justice.

And in February 1977, experts discovered a possibly bottomless pothole on Friendship Avenue. “Granddaddy,” it was labeled. In an effort to determine the hole’s depth, Scientists dropped a Dodge Omni into the abyss. Eerily, the vehicle was never heard to hit bottom. Perhaps the hole was a window into another universe.

You might also want to see...

Topics related to this:Monroeville oddities Pittsburgh traditions transportation

Steve Mellon

Steve, a writer and photographer at the Post-Gazette, has lived and worked in Pittsburgh so long that some of his images appear on "The Digs."

Old Pittsburgh photos and stories | The Digs

Browse by topic

  • Events (150)
  • Greatest Sports Photos (5)
  • Old crime (37)
  • People (107)
  • Pittsburgh n'at (138)
  • Places and landmarks (120)
  • Sports (102)
  • World (3)
  • Yinz (18)

Follow The Digs

RSS feed RSS - Posts

Find old photos

Most read this week

  • The complex and tough Dante “Tex” Gill
  • Mac Miller made it famous, but 'Blue Slide Park' has a long history
  • Pittsburgh’s Liberty Avenue
  • The life and death of Pittsburgh's political brawler
  • Isaly's in Oakland and the secret to Skyscraper Ice Cream Cone

Archives

Tags

"wow" photographs 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s baseball bridges Civic Arena Downtown Pittsburgh football Forbes Field historic moments holidays industry music and musicians North Side Oakland oddities Photographer Darrell Sapp Photographer Harry Coughanour Photographer Morris Berman Pittsburghers you know Pittsburghers you might not know Pittsburgh Pirates Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Pittsburgh skyline Pittsburgh Steelers Pittsburgh traditions Pittsburgh women politicians pollution and smog rivers stage and film street scenes The Pittsburgh Press Things that are gone Three Rivers Stadium tragedies transportation University of Pittsburgh urban development weather and seasons

Tracks WordPress Theme by Compete Themes.

 

Loading Comments...