Dates visited: August 4 - 11, 2022
By Marty
The final leg of our travels has been more city oriented than our first couple of years on the road. It has been quite interesting to explore the older cities of the eastern U.S. Our latest destination was Pittsburgh, PA. We did a lot of exploring in and around Pittsburgh, so I hope you'll forgive the number of photos. I cut out as many as I could!
Our first excursion took us to to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia, about two hours south of our KOA park.
The Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum
The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, constructed between 1858 and 1881, is the largest hand-cut stone masonry building in North America. It is purportedly the second largest such building in the world, after the Kremlin. The original hospital, designed to house 250 patients, opened in 1864 and reached a peak of 2,400 patients in the 1950's in overcrowded and poor conditions. During this time rooms and corridors were crammed with as many beds as they could hold and in some instances the same beds were used by multiple patients, sleeping in shifts.
The facility name was changed to the West Virginia Hospital for the Insane
after the admission of West Virginia as a U.S. state in 1863. In 1913 the name
was changed to Weston State Hospital.
Construction of the building began in 1860, when Weston was still part of the state of Virginia. Union troops camped on its grounds in 1862, and the facility changed states and countries in 1863 after a large chunk of Virginia seceded from the Confederacy to become the new Union state of West Virginia. The building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1990.
The facility housed patients until 1994 when it was shuttered, sitting vacant until 2007 when it was purchased by a W. Virginia business man with the intention of preserving and restoring it.
One of the wards has been restored. The other 23 wards are largely untouched.
The facility was designed following the Kirkbride plan. Dr. James Kirkbride was an early advocate in the U.S. of "moral treatment" of persons deemed insane. Kirkbride pioneered the construction of asylums designed to promote healing and recovery, emphasizing the restorative properties of natural sunlight and beautifully landscaped grounds. In 1840 the U.S. had just 18 asylums. By 1880 there were 149, most of them built with state funds according to the Kirkbride plan.
Essential to the realization of Kirkbride's vision was moving patients from
overcrowded city jails and almshouses, where patients were often chained
to walls in cold dark cells, to a rural environment with grounds that
were "tastefully ornamented" and buildings arranged "en echelon"
resembling a shallow V if viewed from above. This design called for
long, rambling wings, that provided therapeutic sunlight and air to
comfortable living quarters so that the building itself promoted a
curative effect, or as Kirkbride put it, "a special apparatus for
lunacy." These facilities were designed to be entirely self-sufficient
providing the patients with a variety of outlets for stimulating mental
and physical activities.
The 20th century brought changes in
treatment philosophy, deinstitutionalization, and more community based
treatment. The theory of "building as cure" was largely discredited. The
expense of maintaining these facilities, combined with physical
deterioration, has forced them to be mostly abandoned and many
demolished. Today there are 100 abandoned asylums in the U.S.
Below is a fascinating article on Kirkbride and the evolution of facilities to treat the insane in the U.S. As a bonus it also includes a trailer for the film that swept the "Big Five" Academy awards in 1975: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".
Asylums and the Kirkbride Plan
One of 23 unrestored wards
We sidestepped pools of water in the unrestored medical wing. We speculated that W. Virginia may be a little more relaxed than some States (like CA) when it comes worrying about safety hazards and potential liability issues. That said, we did have to sign a waiver to tour the facility!
A two hour bike tour of downtown Pittsburgh was quite informative
- "Heinz 57" was a marketing strategy. At the time the branding was introduced the company made over 60 products. Heinz combined his favorite number (5) with his wife's favorite number (7) to come up with a number that had a nice ring to it.
- The first electronic sign in New York City, a 43 foot pickle, was put up by Heinz.
- Heinz pioneered clear glass bottling for his products because he wanted customers to be able to see the purity and quality of his products.
Who do you think this football fan roots for?
About the black and gold:
Pittsburgh has three professional sports teams: the Steelers, Pirates, and Penguins (football, baseball, and hockey). The colors for all three teams are black and gold. I'm not aware of another US city where all of their pro sports teams wear the same colors.
On our bike tour I asked why many of the Pittsburgh bridges are painted gold. Our tour guide, Kane, informed us that the Pittsburgh colors are drawn from the family coat of arms of William Pitt, the Earl of Chatham, who is the city's namesake.
We pedaled past this demo site near the Strip District. It was Sunday so the equipment was at rest; it would have been interesting to see the demo in progress.
We drove east for an hour on US Highway 30 to Latrobe (yes, the Arnold Palmer home town Latrobe) to check out the Lincoln Highway museum.
The Lincoln Highway was the first transcontinental road for automobiles in the U.S., dedicated in 1913. It winds it's way over 3,000 miles between New York City and San Francisco.
From Wikipedia: The Lincoln Highway was gradually replaced with numbered designations after the establishment of the U.S. Numbered Highway System in 1926, with most of the route becoming U.S. Route 30 from Pennsylvania to Wyoming. After the Interstate Highway System was formed in the 1950s, the former alignments of the Lincoln Highway were largely superseded by Interstate 80 as the primary coast-to-coast route from the New York City area to San Francisco.
The section of the Lincoln Highway that passes through Nevada is now Highway 50, on which I pedaled on my 2019 cross country trip. I remember stopping at a roadside historical marker to read about the Lincoln Highway.
For more on the history of the Lincoln Highway this is a good, and not too long, article:
Lincoln Highway - A brief history
The museum includes a roadside diner from the 1920's. During this era a prefabricated diner like this could be purchased at a cost of $11,730! The museum acquired the diner in dire condition and spent $500,000 restoring it!
I neglected to grab a photo of the diner exterior. Here is a one minute video of the main exhibit room which includes the diner exterior:
An hour east of Pittsburgh, in Indiana, is the home town of Jimmy Stewart and a museum that celebrates that beloved actor.
Wait, Indiana isn't east of Pittsburgh, is it? In fact it is: the Pennsylvania town of Indiana is where Jimmy Stewart was born and raised.
We spent more time than budgeted at the Lincoln Highway museum so we had to get through Jimmy's museum in about 90 minutes. We were a little rushed but still felt that we got the full experience.
To get to Mt. Washington we took the Duquesne Incline.
Why is it called Mt. Washington? Because George Washington, a 21 year old Major in the British Colonial Army, was sent to this area by the Governor of Virginia in 1753 to meet with the French to persuade them to abandon their quest to settle what was then known as the Ohio Country.
Washington identified the point of land at the confluence of the two rivers as a prime location for a fort and settlement. A short time later the French and Indian War began (it would last from 1754-1763). During the course of that war, in 1758, the British would take control of this point, burn the French Fort Duquesne, and build Fort Pitt in its place. Thus was Pittsburgh created.
The Mt. Washington neighborhood was settled in the mid 1800's by Germans, followed by English, Irish, and Italian immigrants who worked in the coal mines and factories along the Monongahela River below.
Accessing the steep hill discouraged people from living atop Mt. Washington initially, but in the 1870's funicular railways (inclines) were introduced to transport workers to their homes on Mt. Washington. At one time there were 18 inclines operating along the river. Today there are two, used by locals and tourists alike.
We took a self guided tour of the inner workings of the Incline
Pittsburgh is a beautiful city, especially from this vantage point
Acrisure Stadium, home of the NFL Pittsburgh Steelers. I have to say that I liked the name better when it was Heinz Field.
Stealing this cone never entered our mind, even before we were put on notice...
And what a museum it was! Proclaimed to be the worlds largest bicycle museum with over 6,000 bicycles, from vintage to new, under one roof!
Schwinn Krate models by the dozen. That's a lot of banana seats!
Helium filled mylar bags floating around the room
Like this:
I was wondering why we didn't see the Tomato Soup cans, Andy's best known work (to me at least). I inquired and learned that his original work, a set of 32 different Tomato Soup cans, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. MoMA paid $15M for the set in 1996.
Creepy...
The Andy Warhol Bridge over the Allegheny River
On e again, I wish I had traveled with you on my previous trips to Pittsburgh. You guys always find interesting nooks and crannies!
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