{"id":893,"date":"2014-03-05T11:01:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-05T11:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/?p=893"},"modified":"2015-01-09T15:50:49","modified_gmt":"2015-01-09T20:50:49","slug":"the-allegheny-county-morgue-on-the-move","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/2014\/03\/05\/the-allegheny-county-morgue-on-the-move\/","title":{"rendered":"The Allegheny County Morgue on the move"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\" <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>
\"1928: <\/a>
1928: The morgue at its original Diamond Street location. (Post-Gazette photo) <\/div> <\/div>
\"Aug. <\/a>
Aug. 11, 1929: The morgue in transit across Fourth Avenue. (Photo credit: unknown) <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Aug. <\/a>
Aug. 11, 1929: The morgue in transit across Fourth Avenue. (Photo credit: unknown) <\/div> <\/div>
\"1975: <\/a>
1975: Allegheny County morgue employees Patty Sopkowiak and Floyd Coles with a Jane Doe. (Pittsburgh Press photo) <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Dec. <\/a>
Dec. 28, 1960: The Pittsburgh Press caption on this, sparing no heavy-handedness, read: Drink and drive and you could end up here in the morgue. (Alan Reiland\/Pittsburgh Press) <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

A few months before the October 1929 stock market crash<\/a>, the Allegheny County Morgue finished rolling.<\/p>\n

The 450 tons of steel, stone and lumber needed to be moved from Forbes Avenue (then called Diamond Street) to Fourth Avenue. It was much cheaper that way, the county said, than to build a new morgue.<\/p>\n

And inside the morgue that summer, work continued as usual.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople were killing and dying every day,\u201d one of the men involved in the undertaking (no pun intended) told the Post-Gazette in 1987<\/a>. \u201cThe coroner\u2019s functions couldn\u2019t be stopped.\u201d<\/p>\n

One hundred years before that story, there was no county morgue system here. Local undertakers raced to recover reported dead bodies and the accompanying $12 in fees from the county (about $300 today).<\/p>\n

In this story, Heber McDowell played an important role.<\/p>\n

McDowell<\/a> was coroner from 1887 to 1899. During his tenure, he helped draft and push through legislation to help counties statewide fund and standardize morgue duties.<\/p>\n

At the time, Philadelphia had the only morgue in the state. In 1893, McDowell\u2019s effort passed, and Allegheny County began to subsist in a makeshift facility on Eighth Avenue.<\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t good enough for McDowell in a time when taller building construction and steel mill work were not safe\u00a0at all. \u201cWith progress, you always have fatalities,\u201d he told The Pittsburgh Press in 1929, on the occasion of the morgue\u2019s move.<\/p>\n

The new morgue took two years to build and was completed on April Fool\u2019s Day in 1903. Less than 25 years later, 60 men and two teams of horses moved it 235 feet to its current resting place.<\/p>\n

The entire operation took about three months.<\/p>\n

View this story on our map of \u201cThe Digs.\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few months before the October 1929 stock market crash, the Allegheny County Morgue finished rolling.<\/p>\n

Look at the picturesThe Allegheny County Morgue on the move<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[948],"tags":[958,1110,991,1245,1036],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/tumblr_n1mmbfBkM41rr5swxo7_r1_1280.jpg?fit=1274%2C1230&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":410,"url":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/2014\/07\/30\/one-murder-one-body-two-identities\/","url_meta":{"origin":893,"position":0},"title":"One murder, one body, two identities","date":"July 30, 2014","format":"gallery","excerpt":"August 1947:\u00a0Family members were attending a wake for 14-year-old Betty Jane Yokobet when reporters burst in and told them there had been a terrible mistake. The body lying on a cold slab at the Allegheny County Morgue was not their beloved Betty Jane, but a 22-year-old woman named Julia Fesko.\u2026","rel":"","context":"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/tumblr_n9hbpb1MFP1rr5swxo4_1280.jpg?fit=1080%2C623&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1401,"url":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/2013\/09\/13\/the-pittsburgh-views-of-john-c-bragdon\/","url_meta":{"origin":893,"position":1},"title":"The Pittsburgh views of John C. Bragdon","date":"September 13, 2013","format":"gallery","excerpt":"Our limited knowledge of Pittsburgh\u2019s history leads us to believe the pictures were made sometime around 1900.","rel":"","context":"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/tumblr_mszbyuKelC1rr5swxo3_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C794&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":191,"url":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/2014\/10\/06\/views-of-pittsburghs-government-buildings-not-often-seen\/","url_meta":{"origin":893,"position":2},"title":"Views of Pittsburgh\u2019s government buildings not often seen","date":"October 6, 2014","format":"gallery","excerpt":"Questioned at first, Allegheny County's administration building and its neighbor, the City-County Building, are landmarks today.","rel":"","context":"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/tumblr_ncf5p5VIQ61rr5swxo4_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C831&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1379,"url":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/2013\/09\/20\/the-allegheny-county-courthouse-turns-125\/","url_meta":{"origin":893,"position":3},"title":"The Allegheny County Courthouse turns 125","date":"September 20, 2013","format":"gallery","excerpt":"The imposing stone courthouse and jail Henry Hobson Richardson designed for Allegheny County is considered one of the architect\u2019s most inspired buildings.","rel":"","context":"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/tumblr_mtdoovNtUW1rr5swxo5_r1_1280.jpg?fit=851%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1276,"url":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/2013\/10\/23\/david-lawrence-pittsburgh-visionary-political-genius-and-leader\/","url_meta":{"origin":893,"position":4},"title":"David Lawrence, Pittsburgh visionary, political genius and leader","date":"October 23, 2013","format":"gallery","excerpt":"Lawrence was born in 1889, in Pittsburgh, only 75 feet from where the old Block house stood.","rel":"","context":"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/tumblr_mv3i2vw7W51rr5swxo1_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C970&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9780,"url":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/2020\/03\/19\/records-reveal-1918-influenzas-devastating-impact-on-a-tiny-pittsburgh-community\/","url_meta":{"origin":893,"position":5},"title":"Records reveal 1918 influenza’s devastating impact on a tiny Pittsburgh community","date":"March 19, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Few noticed as the pandemic struck a cultural oasis not far from the city's centers of power.","rel":"","context":"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/SamsonRecord01-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C755&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=893"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4030,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893\/revisions\/4030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}