Bates, Juliet, and Romeo Streets; South Oakland [Aphilotus! Aphilotus!]

Note: Some of this article is supposition, and is noted as such.

In the 1820s and 1830s, the area which is now South Oakland was owned by a woman named Juliet Simple. Juliet Street is presumably named after her. Later as more streets were built, presumably, the naming trend continued, but rather than pull from the names within Ms. Simple's family, "Juliet" was taken to be a Shakespeare reference, and so one now finds Hamlet, Ophelia, Juliet, and Romeo Streets in the vicinity. Or so I presume from the cartological records I came across.

Juliet is a relatively flat street that runs close to North-South. To the west the land falls down into a short valley that was once called Three Mile Run (after the creek that formed it, which entered the Monongahela three miles from the Point (see Four Mile Run, Nine Mile Run for further use of this creative naming scheme), but after the Democrat publisher of the "Tree of Liberty" newspaper, Tarleton Bates, who was killed there in a duel on January 8th, 1806, the name was changed. He was slain by Thomas Stewart, an Irish shopkeeper who was friends with Ephraim Pentland, Bates' rival, the Republican publisher of "The Commonwealth."

In that paper, Pentland called Bates one of the "most abandoned political miscreants that ever disgraced a State." Bates responded by purchasing a whip and attacking Pentland in the street some days later. Pentland challenged Bates to a duel via Stewart, who served as messenger. Dueling, however, had been outlawed since 1794. Bates declined, and then subsequently published an account of the whole incident, in which he accused Stewart of being "ungentlemenly" simply for being the messenger. Stewart called for an apology, and when none was given challenged Bates himself. Bates accepted the challenge.

One cold winter morning they boated out to Oakland, then wooded and far from the town, and finding a glade half way up Three Mile Run, proceeded to duel. William Wilkins, the lawyer after whom Wilkinsburg is named, served as Stewart's second. Morgan Neville, son of the colonel for whom the street is named, was Bates' second. Pistols were drawn, paces marched, and facing each other, shots were fired in unison. The first round, both parties missed. The second round, Bates was struck in the chest. He died within the hour. The duel was the last one Pittsburgh would ever see.

Since then, the glade has been paved over, and the valley mostly filled, but the name remains.

On the side of the valley, west and uphill from Bates, east and downhill from Juliet, lies her lover, Romeo Street. It is hard to call it a street, however, because it is in fact a set of stairs. Four houses line the staircase, all of them with their own sub-staircases leading down to their respective doors. Three of them were built some time before 1906, and the fourth some time between 1914 and 1932.

They were most likely built, as were many of the houses in the area, as housing for the workers at the Linden Steel Corporation. The plant employed 1500 Linden steel was owned by WJ Lewis and his son, WJ Lewis Junior. In the 1890s they were embroiled in a massive fraud incident. Apparently one of their employees had made a copy of the official inspector's seal used on steel that had been certified to a certain quality. Substandard steel was being stamped with this fake stamp and sent on as certified, full price steel. The subterfuge might not have been detected, save that one of Linden's chief customers was the US Navy, who had their own set of inspectors. Indeed, during the 1880s and 90s they sold more steel to the Navy than the Carnegie Corporation did.

WJ Lewis Jr. sold Linden Steel some time before 1901, sold his mansion on Chatsworth Avenue in Hazelwood, which was apparently a bit of a "Millionaire's Row" back in the 1880s, and moved to Texas. The mansion and grounds were sold to the city, which turned them into a community center and a now-gone park.

But I digress. The three houses and one wreck that stand today on Romeo street appear to have the same overhead plans as the houses on the 1932 map- they are probably original. They are, I believe, the most extreme examples of the city's tendency to fill ever nook and cranny it can, a testament (and tenement, if one will pardon the pun (or parole it)) to the will to expand, to fill.