Past vs Present

Dusty old maps and faded pictures show Railroad Street to be as blandly functional as its name suggests. For decades it provided a bumpy ride past warehouses, factories and foundries that lined up along train tracks in the Strip District. Change has arrived quickly and dramatically. Luxury apartments and modern office buildings now stand where laborers once manufactured items such as high-pressure valves and cork products. These past and present photographs reveal how much we’ve changed, in how we live and how we work.

Railroad Street, looking west toward 26th Street

April 4, 1940

When the Pittsburgh Valve Foundry and Construction Co. centralized its operations at this Railroad Street facility in 1901, the firm employed 600 workers and had just sent a crew to Monterey, Mexico, to assemble the pipe fittings for a steel mill under construction there. The company was still humming in 1920 when it celebrated the opening of a new pipe-fitting shop with a “house warming” event. Hundreds of employees and their families flocked to the plant to enjoy music, dancing, children’s games and “moving pictures.”

The good times wouldn’t last.

Disaster struck on a cold, windy night, Jan. 8, 1944, when fire swept through the property, which had by then been seized for nonpayment of taxes. Several buildings collapsed, but little else was lost -- a few trucks and old tires, some scrap metal and rags. Today a modern steel and glass office building rises on the site. It’s part of Oxford Development’s 3 Crossings project. Among its tenants are Argo AI, a self-driving car startup with a $1 billion partnership with Ford. (Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System)

Northwest corner of Railroad and 21st streets

Jan. 25, 1938

Kroger opened a bakery here in 1936 that included the latest in mixing, slicing and wrapping technology. Bakers created “Clock Bread,” so named because the company timed the loaves from the moment they left the ovens until they arrived on store shelves. The company said it was “impossible to buy stale bread in any Kroger store” in the Pittsburgh area, reported the Sun-Telegraph.

Today an apartment complex called Edge 1909 lights up the corner. (Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System)

Railroad Street, looking east toward 24th Street

April 4, 1940

A portion of the Armstrong Cork Factory fills the left side of this picture. The plant, which employed 1,200 people in the 1930s, closed in 1974. In the following years, the building became a dilapidated and crumbling urban canvas for graffiti artists. Several homeless people found shelter there. Since then, it’s been renovated into luxury apartments.

Beyond the Armstrong factory rises the six-story Crane Building, constructed in the early 1920s to store plumbing supplies. Today the Crane Building is an office building. Tenants include Health Net and EFI. (Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System)

View of 24th Street, looking south toward Railroad Street

April 4, 1940

The new development on the left is Lot 24, an apartment complex that derives its name from the surface parking lot that once occupied the intersection’s southeast corner. At left is the Cork Factory parking garage. (Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System)

View of 27th Street, looking north toward Railroad Street

April 4, 1940

This once bleak-looking intersection now marks the northeastern portion of a 300-unit luxury apartment building called Yards at 3 Crossings. (Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System)

Railroad Street, looking east between 26th and 27th streets

April 4, 1940

On the left are buildings of the Pittsburgh Valve Foundry and Construction Co. A line of Pennsylvania Railroad cars stretches in the distance. Today, Yards at 3 Crossings and a parking garage dominate the scene. (Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System)