Canton Avenue, Beechview [Aphilotus! Aphilotus!]

On Thursday night, my colleague and I decided to investigate the reports that Canton Avenue, in the Beechview neighbourhood of our fair city's South Hills, is the steepest municipal street in the world -- or at least in that part of the world which keeps such records.

Beginning, as ever, from our headquarters at the Junkshop in Squirrel Hill, we took the Parkway out as far as the Fort Pitt Tunnel and then struck south along Banksville Road. Coast Avenue, our connecting road, proved elusive, and we were obliged to come about in Dormont and retrace our steps. Our eyes discerned more clearly, and we turned onto Coast -- and were immediately foxed by its unexpected twisting as it climbed abruptly into the hills. Surprising, perhaps, but a good sign that our goal would be as steep as it was advertised to be.

And then, moments later, there it was, rising madly up to our left: Canton Avenue. Crazy, vertiginous, its sidewalk a ramshackle stairway, its road surface rough cobbles, it seemed by its very presence to forbid any effort to climb it.

James and I drew our breath deep, and I tromped on the gas pedal.

The car's engine roared in protest -- or in enthusiasm -- as we made our rattling way up. Canton Avenue is actually very short, for all its mountainous steepness, and the climb, though wild and exhilarating, was swiftly over. I pulled my vehicle to a stop and we clambered out onto the flat, allowing both ourselves and the car to recover.

Canton Avenue continues for another half-block beyond the crest of the hill; it was here that we parked. From this side, the edge is marked by a pair of DO NOT ENTER signs, which I was only too happy to obey -- though the temptation to throw caution flapping to the wind and trust luck and Providence to see ourselves through the pell-mell suicide run to the bottom rose up, inevitably, and had to be quashed. The rapture of the deeps.

James and I started down the stairs, which fall unevenly, long and short, on the east side of the street. Even their tread is angled somewhat, and where the steps are broken by driveways -- for a few brave souls in brave houses cling to this cobblestone cliff -- the concrete is crumbled and lies at ankle-trapping angles.

We ventured perforce onto the street itself. From above the washboard roughness of the stones gives them an almost stairlike aspect which we found slightly better footing than the sidewalk, though with no railing to catch at a stumble or trip would have had long, painful consequences. James was reminded of the crumbling terraces of Machu Picchu.

Perhaps halfway down -- though it was difficult to judge -- we found a patch of the street, roughly circular and perhaps ten or twelve feet across, so broken and cracked that it seemed as though mortar-fire had fallen on Canton Avenue. We poked cautiously
about it, careful of our balance, and were quietly thankful that it had not been necessary to drive across it on the climb.

At about this point our party doubled in size. My colleague's young lady-friend, together with an old friend of his, arrived at the bottom of the hill and, after some telephonic coaxing and reassurance, drove up -- with a flourish of gunned engine that I had to admire -- and joined us. There followed a bit of enjoyable clowning for the cameras' sake, and all together we marched back up to investigate what lay at the other end of the street.

A child's doll, lying limp and abandoned among the trash at curbside, caught our eyes. It was difficult at first to determine what it was meant to be: early theories, as we approached, included a headless Snow White, or even an actual dead creature. In fact it was a parrot, though the crude form of its head and body, the beak merely a yellow blob, made this difficult to determine. The sad scraps of the Pittsburgh Pirates jersey about its wings and midriff were they key and only clue to its origin and purpose.

Canton Avenue exists, on the maps, for only a block: it connects Coast Avenue, down the hill, with Hampshire Avenue, at its crest, and this is all. However, we found the corner of Canton and Hampshire marked not by house or woodlot but by a set of Jersey barriers, with vague darkness beyond.

As I have always found Jersey barriers an irresistible invitation to entry, I threaded through and found myself in the fine gravel and spindly weeds of an abandoned roadway. The street, plainly, had formerly run farther than Hampshire; indeed, the wires and telephone poles continued overhead towards the woods.

The four of us advanced down what remains of Old Canton Avenue. After a short distance it narrowed and was overshadowed by the encroaching trees. The street itself seemed to end -- or to have ended, I should say -- at some tarred timbers laid across it, with a small turnaround or parking area on the downhill side. Beyond, the remains of some open space, now largely consumed by undergrowth, and some sort of structure. I shone my penlight towards it.

A cage, of boards and heavy wire, lay burst and half-wrecked in the feeble light. It could not have been intended to hold any large animal -- indeed, it had something of a chicken-coop look -- and must have been decades abandoned, but finding it nevertheless gave us all a frisson. Trash and unidentifiable detritus lay about our feet, though not in anything like such quantities as we had found at the Lost House above Ivondale Street.

Clearly there must once have been a house here -- and we had in fact walked straight past it only moments before. Screened from view by darkness and vegetation, a few concrete pillars still stood above man-height just back from the old road, and behind them crumbling foundations of cement and fieldstone were a rectilinear gash in the hillside, half-filled with rubble. However old this scene may have been, it appeared a hundred times older to the eye: I felt as though we had disturbed the burying-mound of a Saxon king, or of some Scythian warlord who went to his rest draped in gold, with ten horses and a hundred maidens laid with him to ease his passage into the hereafter...

Connor's young lady espied a coal-scuttle, and I set my musings aside. These ruins were the only sign of any habitation along Old Canton Avenue; if ever there were other houses, the hillside and the forest have long since swallowed them. We may perhaps be given license to imagine some ancient resident, stubbornly clinging to home and address long after the city has bought and demolished all their neighbors in preparation for the shortening of Canton Avenue, prolonging the house's existence both as dwelling and as ruin far longer than any other -- but this is merely fancy, and it might well be that there was only ever one house there. The maps my colleague has lately uncovered in the University's library will tell us more.

The discovery of the ruined house placed a cap on the evening's investigations. There was little more to find that could match it for bulk, or foreboding, or surprise. I remarked to James that we kept finding ruined houses where we least expected them -- which should keep us expecting them, in the future!

We returned to our vehicles, said our cheerful adieus, and drove away through the steep dark streets of Beechview.

I have the honour to remain
Your obedient servant in the field,
Alan