Year in Review:
There’s always Room at the Allegheny Inn: Annual Holiday Fundraiser Page 17
January 2017 Est. 1985
The Northside Chronicle
A Northside renaissance By Neil Strebig Situated on Foreland Street amidst the heart of Deutschtown, one can tell there’s something different about Allegheny City Brewing. It isn’t your typical microbrewery. Perhaps it is the proximity of fermenting tanks of delicious habanero stouts and grapefruit IPAs to bar stools, tables and chairs made from recycled material used to make those very same stools or maybe it’s the fact that the brewery feels more like a living room filled with friends than a business occupied by patrons. “I think people really want See NS, Page 14
A Look Back at 2016 Northside Page 21
Volume 33 Issue I
Exploring Spring Garden, past & present By Alyse Horn Spring Garden is one of the oldest intact neighborhoods on the Northside, and it is nestled in the valley between Spring Hill and Troy Hill. Back when the neighborhood was developing its community, it was home to meat packing plants and from that business stemmed others, such as candle-making factories, soap factories and tanneries. Before it was home to manufacturing, local historian John Canning said it was a suburb of Allegheny City before it was annexed by the City of Pittsburgh. He believes the neighborhood got its name from “the first mayor of Allegheny City who owned a tract of land out there and called it Spring
Garden. It may have been called that before, but that is what he called his property,” Canning said. Now underneath the road, there is a creek than runs straight through the middle of the Spring Garden Valley called Butchers Run. Canning said there is also a stream under the road of East Street Valley called Saw Mill Run, and the two used to connect below East Ohio Street and run into the Allegheny River. Most of the earliest settlers were German speaking, but Canning said that wasn’t always the case. The the 1830s, it was a family from Switzerland who owned most of the land in the lower part of valley. Pittsburgh resident Jonathon Denson documented many of Spring Garden’s historical homes
in 2012, and said “it has a large collection of surviving wood frame homes from the Antebellum period, which were once representative of a Pittsburgh vernacular architecture, but now are uncommon.” “It’s a remarkable neighborhood that has gone through a number of different stages in history,” Canning said. Today, some may or may not know that the neighborhood is still home a number of businesses that continue to add to the character of the community. Some include Chris Candies, Artcraft Wood Production, Mr. Renovation, Kasunick Welding & Fabrication, Branded Solutions, Cabinet Sales Plus, John Carey Auto See Spring Garden, Page 13