PART III: Surveys and a City Plan
Pittsburgh: Main Thoroughfares and The Down Town District
Frederick Law Olmsted report to The Pittsburgh Civic Commission, 1910
page 94
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the errors were never compensated, so that today, measurements in different parts of the city have to be made with special tapes of particular degrees of inaccuracy in order to conform to the records; with the fact that independent bench marks are used in different parts of the city and that discrepancies of several feet, and sometimes of unknown amount, in elevation occur in the records of adjacent or intersecting streets; with the fact that an extraordinarily large proportion of the streets are not marked by any permanent monuments, and that there is no adequate system for protecting the monuments that do exist, so that the City often has no sure recourse against abutting owners who have encroached upon a street; and finally, that no general official surveys whatever exist of the complicated topography of the undeveloped areas. And yet through these undeveloped areas, streets and sewers and other public works are almost daily being extended without knowledge of what lies beyond, although from the back regions soon to be developed, somehow, sometime, outlets must be provided.
The city charter places upon the Bureau of Surveys the onerous and important duty of reporting favorably or unfavorably to Councils upon the plan of every new street proposed to be laid out by any one whomsoever within the city; yet the Bureau, presumably through lack of funds, has never had the data in hand upon which alone such a report could be intelligently based.
No criticism of the present Bureau, or indeed of its predecessors, is intended in these remarks. The blame falls upon the whole system of penny-wise, pound-foolish, hand-to-mouth procedure in regard to city surveys that has been characteristic of a large proportion of American cities in the past, and of Pittsburgh with the rest. It is earnestly recommended that Pittsburgh should take example from the cities of Europe and from such American cities as New York, Baltimore and Washington. And because its peculiar topography is bound to make the evil results of unprogressive medieval methods more serious than in other cities, it should take the pains to surpass, rather than to lag far behind, in this respect.
Objects to be Secured
In outline the objects to be secured are these: (a) An accurate framework of reference points needs to be established, including: 1. The gradual systematic setting of permanent street monuments throughout
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