Hazel Dell End of the Bridge 1920′s
This picture is part of a collection once owned by Harry W. Horton, Assistant Borough Engineer under Alex Main from 1920-1925. Most of the pictures show Ellwood City in an important stage of its development as it was getting more of the town out of the mud in the years following World War I.
This picture is the North end of original Fifth Street Bridge looking West down Wampum Avenue. The house on the right as you are looking at the picture with the clothes hanging out back was once the home of Ellwood City Ledger’s Louise Carroll. Her mother rented the house in the 1940′s when it was owned by Madison Maine.
We have not had a lot of luck uncovering the business that was inside the building on the left at the very end of the bridge. Further down Wampum Avenue across from the house on the right, Morini’s built their neighborhood store. Some of the homes still remained from this picture into the 1940′s as Mrs. Carroll remembers that one of the small houses was still standing and a lonely older lady lived in one. She still has memories of her mother baking homemade bread and occasionally would take her a loaf.
If you look closely at the picture, there a couple of odd things that kind of stand out, at least to us. The sidewalk on the bridge is paved and looks very fancy, especially since the main roads leading to and from the bridge are all still dirt roads. Another thing that stands out is the rooftop next to the business at the end of the bridge. The building looks to large to be an outhouse but we don’t know what else it could be. The dirt road just seems to drop off into the building also. Like we said, odd.
If you see something else we missed, please leave a comment below or email us at info@ellwoodcitymemories.com
That building across from the house probably was a store that provided feed for horses in those days. Later it became a hot dog shop — kind of an upscale Pe’Wee Lunch — run by Theodore and Emma Tolla, who lived at 514 First Avenue. I don’t know if that building was torn down.
The paved road coming in from the left side with the ornamental railing was the Fifth Street bridge (which was torn down about 12 years ago. You know it was that because it had a paved road and it led over the creek. Nothing else was paved so this was in the Thirties. They put the sidewalk in for Wampum Avenue in the Thirties, and before that there was a wooden walkway. I don’t know when they paved the street but I think the increasing traffic because of the bridge would have made it necessary. Tricks had to navigate up and down the hill so it would have been a nightmare if it weren’t paved.
Remember that the route leading from New Castle, down North Street hill and onto the bridge and so on was a state road,not an Ellwood responsibility. It was route 19 going to Pittsburgh.
The Fifth Street bridge is a memory in the minds of every ellwoodian. It may be a parade,,the dummy at the north end, traveling by car across it 5 times a day , the beauty of the old cement work and lights, or for most northsiders, walking across to school every day. I don’t know about you, but I had that feeling of fear almost everytime I crossed. I would walk next to the road rather than the rail side of the walk. No time was more frightening than the early sixties when they replaced all the cement and lighting. The contractors elected to tear out the sidewalk and replace it with 2 inch wooden planks. These planks were not butted against each other but had several inches of space between boards. You could look straight down 190 feet to the valley below. They were placed in such a way that there was a gap between the boards and the railing of almost a foot. I really had the fear then and no one tarried crossing the bridge during those few months.