Lafayette Street in 1939. October 3, 2019

Copyright © 2019                               John F. Oyler 

October 3, 2019

Lafayette Street in 1939

One of my current projects is compiling a history of the neighborhood where I have lived for the past fifty years. It was developed in 1939, and we are having difficulty finding information about its early days. This has prompted me to record my recollections of Lafayette Street, the neighborhood where I grew up eighty years ago.

In 1939 I was eight years old; my brother Joe, two. We had moved into our new house at 1053 Lafayette in 1937; the neighborhood was still a combination of new houses and vacant lots.

Lafayette Street runs, in a general north to south direction, from an acute intersection with Elizabeth Street to an orthogonal one with Winfield, paralleling Bank Street one block to the east. It had just been paved, a welcome contrast to its gravel and “red dog” predecessor. The house on the northeast corner of the Elizabeth Street intersection was occupied by the Chamberlains – I don’t remember anything about them but the name.

Alfred Barzan believes that his father, Sam, built that house as a model home for Arthur Silhol, who was developing Lafayette Street. We are reasonably certain that Mr. Barzan built our house. It had been designed by architect James Wallace, whose sons Jim and Warren were members of our baseball team, the Hilltop Hellcats, years later. Our mortgage was for $5,700.

Leo and Freda Antion lived in the next house. Their son David was two years old in 1939. The lots on the east side of Lafayette were fifty feet wide by one hundred and twenty feet deep, splitting the distance to Bank Street. At that time there was a vacant lot between Antions and Russells; years later it was acquired by the abutting neighbors and split up, giving each of them a lot seventy five feet wide. Mr. Antion was a millworker; I remember that, after the war started, he worked in Dravo’s shipyard on Neville Island, building LST’s.

Holland Russell and his wife lived in the next house. Her son, from an earlier marriage, Frank Johnson lived with them. He was a 1939 graduate of Bridgeville High School who would go into the Army three years later. Mr. Russell was an employee of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, and a devoted gardener doomed to perpetual failure trying to outdo our father.

We were quite pleased with our house, the only one that my parents ever owned. In addition to having individual bedrooms for Joe and me, our father had built an enclosed room in the attic that served as additional play space for us. The vacant lot behind our house and Russells’ provided all manner of potential. We nailed planks across branches of a black cherry tree as the beginning of a crude tree house. We laid out and graded a badminton court. And, of course, our father found a way to have extra garden space.

Mrs. Florence Kinder was our next-door neighbor. She was a nurse at Mayview with two grown children, both of whom served in World War II. Don became a crew member of a B-25 Mitchell bomber; Marian, a WAVE. I remember Don giving me a model of a Lockheed P-38 Lightning when he was home on leave for a visit.

The next two lots were vacant in 1939. Originally they were wild enough that there was a significant sumac thicket at the back. The lot closest to Mrs. Kinder provided our father with still another “guerilla” garden. Eventually we cleaned things up and built a modest “pitch-and-putt” golf course.

Hoppers lived in the next house. Mr. (Bill) Hopper graduated from Bridgeville High School in 1911, served in World War I, and eventually married Flora Hockenberry, who was a teacher in the Bridgeville school system. Mr. Hopper worked in a store selling engineering supplies in Pittsburgh, probably B. K. Elliot. Their sons were Bill (ten years old in 1939) and Don (five). Bill was the “big kid” in the neighborhood at the time and my idol.

DeBlanders lived next door to Hoppers. Dale was four years old; Wayne’s birth was still in the future. Mr. DeBlander worked for Universal Cyclops. Fortunately Dale is alive and well and a treasured member of our Octogenarian Brunch group. We must use him as a resource for further information on the Lafayette Street neighborhood.

The Coxes were next; I remember very little about them except that they had no children. Mrs. (Ann) Cox was the sister of Mrs. Panizza, who lived “catty-corner” across the street.

Then came the Hellers. Mr. (Kellen) Heller managed a dry-cleaning establishment in Mt. Lebanon. They had two children – Nancy (then seven) and Don (four). Don eventually acquired the nickname “Wimpy”, probably from the Popeye character and their joint love of hamburgers.

The “Bud” Sims family had the next house, beyond which was a large vacant lot extending to Winfield and over to Bank Street. Mr. Sims was a steel-worker. An interesting feature of this lot was a scattering of very large rocks which the kids quickly labelled “Keys’ Rocks” as a dimunitive of McKees Rocks. The Sims family had two children, Buddy (then one) and Sandra (later to be born).

Returning to the north end of Lafayette Street, the first house on the west side belonged to Dr. Peter Castelli (Bridgeville High School 1926) and his wife Rosalie. Mrs. Castelli was a Silhol; it was rumored that their large house had been a wedding gift from her father, Arthur Silhol. Dr. Castelli played a prominent role in the establishment of St. Clair Hospital years later.

My recollection of the Castellis is of a big party at their house with a loudspeaker playing music and the popular song “Rosalie” being repeated frequently. This song was featured in the movie “Rosalie” in 1937, where it was sung by Nelson Eddy. A version by Sammy Kaye was number thirty-five on the 1937 Billboard chart (“Sing, Sing, Sing” was first); that is probably the record they were playing.

Because of the sharp angle between Elizabeth and Lafayette Streets, the Castelli lot was a large triangle extending well beyond our house. The vacant lot next to it provided a natural shortcut for us going to the high school years later, via Fryers’ sidewalk and the (Eagle Way) alley running down to Gregg Avenue. It eventually was acquired by the owners on both sides.

The next house was the property of the Beall family. Bud Beall was a 1930 graduate of Bridgeville High School at which time he was known as Alpheus Beall. He married Elizabeth (Lib) Strain (Class of 1933); later on they had three children – Mary Jane, David and Virginia. When the War came Bud went into the service; my mother was very supportive of Lib while he was away. Bud worked for the Vanadium Corporation of America; he found me a summer job there in 1952. 

Two vacant lots separated Bealls’ from the Jones family. Amos and Thelma Jones had two sons, Amos Junior (then six) and Gary (two). Mr. Jones was a refrigeration repairman and a night watchman at one of the coal mines and a favorite of the neighborhood kids because he carried a firearm. Their house was directly across the street from DeBlanders.

Next came a vacant lot and then Panizzas. Mr. (Joe) Panizza owned the Bridgeville Bottling Works; he gave me a summer job in 1947. They had two children – Genevieve (then three) and Bob (not yet born). 

Their next-door neighbors were the Capozzolis, John and Eleanor. In 1939 Mary Ann Capozzoli was one year old; Elaine, Louise, and John Junior were still off in the future. Mr. Capozzoli managed Reliable Savings and Loan; my parents had known him since 1934 when he was responsible for renting them “the stone bungalow” (823 Bank Street). The neighborhood kids were delighted to learn that his nickname in high school (1925) had been “Speedo”, completely out of character with the careful way he drove his car on our street when we were playing in it. 

The house on the southwest corner of Lafayette and Winfield belonged to the Gallaghers. Mr. (Doyce) Gallagher was another Bridgeville High School graduate (1914). Their daughters were Lois (then nine) and Carol (four). At some point Carol was stricken with polio, probably the only victim we knew.

To an eight-year-old, Lafayette Street was an attractive oasis in a world that was still difficult to comprehend. We were pioneers, establishing homesteads in a previously unpopulated area. Vacant lots were slowly being replaced by new houses every year.

To the north our buffer was “Bank Property”, the well-established neighborhoods on Gregg Avenue, Chestnut Street, and Elm Street. We were grown-up enough to be able to handle the twice daily round trips through it to Washington Grade School, but still very apprehensive of wandering off from the designated route.

To the east, across Bank Street, was another pioneering settlement along Sarah Street. They were our defense against the “Bell Town” and “Goose Town” barbarians who lived on McLaughlin Run Road, much as “Greenwood” protected us from the ruffians on Baldwin Street.

The Weise family, symbols of affluence and stability, dominated the block south of us, in sharp contrast with the Godwins and Lesnetts who lived on the other side on them and earned their livelihood scratching in the earth as farmers.

And, finally, to the west Chartiers Street and the steep drop down to the Chartiers Creek valley was a gateway to a natural wonderland – woods and meadows and the Blue Ponds and the Swinging Bridge and Mayview Cave. We were indeed on the Frontier!

This has been an enjoyable trip backward eight decades. I believe I will recruit Dale DeBlander and my brother to be guest columnists some future week and provide their recollections of our neighborhood a few years later.