"Pittsburgh in 1817"
This window replicates an original sketch by Mrs. E. C. Gibson, member of the Philadelphia Bar, drawn while she was on her wedding journey in 1817. From Stefan Lorant's classic Pittsburgh: The Story of an American City, we learn that in 1816 "Pittsburgh was incorporated as a city, to be governed by a mayor, a select and a common council, a recorder, and 12 aldermen." The city's growth had accelerated during the War of 1812 when, to replace inaccessible European imports, local manufacturers expanded and flourished – from the iron foundries and glasshouses to the boat builders and shoemakers.
In the fall of 1817, during his first year in office, President James Monroe visited the city. He inspected the Allegheny Arsenal in Lawrenceville and several factories and on Sunday attended services at both the Presbyterian Church and the neighboring Episcopal Church. Somehow he missed going further up Sixth Avenue to the corner of Smithfield Street where our congregational forebears of the German Evangelical Protestant Church were at worship and surely would have extended an "extravagant welcome."
Mrs. Gibson's sketch of the young city captures the verdant hillsides, the clear skies, and the as yet unpolluted waters of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers :
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– through you and me!
10/22/07
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