Firehouse stood in way of Lane-Bane Bridge
Editor’s note: Today’s reprinted article is the fourth in a series about the effects the construction of the Lane-Bane bridge had on Brownsville and West Brownsville. It was originally published in January 2000.Last week, our visit to the old North Bend neighborhood took us from the Yee Hoy Laundry, around the bend and up the street to the Nahory residence that once stood next to the fire house. Today we resume our journey through that “lost neighborhood.” Let’s cross Market Street to Mulyar’s service station and walk up the hill. Just up Market Street from Mulyar’s was the red brick First Presbyterian Church. Built in 1896, the church was not touched by the Lane-Bane Bridge project, but it did not survive the ravages of an early morning fire five years later. The June 1967 blaze ruined all but the church’s basement. The displaced congregation shared the facilities of the downtown Central Presbyterian Church for about a year while they refurbished the basement of their burned church. Then they returned to the cleaned-up basement in 1968, where they held weekly worship services and optimistically planned the resurrection of their damaged house of worship. But it was not to be.
The basement services were the old building’s swan song. The last worship service was conducted there in May 1969. The Redstone Presbytery ruled that the Central and First Presbyterian congregations must combine, leading to the creation of the Fort Burd United Presbyterian Church. The new church on Route 166 near Brownsville General Hospital opened in 1972.
Next up the street past the First Presbyterian Church was the church’s manse. The dictionary defines the word “manse” as “the house and land of a cleric, especially the residence of a Presbyterian minister” or “a large stately residence.” Both definitions apply in this case.
The manse was originally known as the Playford house. Visible in a photograph that accompanied this column a few weeks ago, it was a lovely brick home built in the mid-1800s by Dr. Robert W. Playford. Playford, a London native, graduated from the prestigious Eton College in England. He studied medicine in London under the tutelage of his father, then accompanied him to Brownsville in 1820, where they established a practice that was soon thriving. The elder Playford returned to England two years later, and his son maintained the medical practice for 41 years. Only once during those 41 years was he away from Brownsville for more than one day.
In 1830, Dr. Playford wrote a letter to a friend back in England. That 170-year-old letter is in the collection of Dr. J.K. Folmar of California University of Pennsylvania. Playford told his friend that he had thought about moving away from Brownsville to the “back settlements” of America, but the “continual depredation by the Indians” had convinced him to stay put. Franklin Ellis, in his “History of Fayette County,” described Playford as “very successful, particularly as a surgeon, his practice extending into adjoining counties.” In fact, his practice was reputed to be the largest in Fayette County.
What did Dr. Playford think of the medical profession here in America? Sitting at his desk in his Market Street home, he wrote to his English friend that “every state at this time requires a license to practice (medicine) except Pennsylvania,” which was then contemplating legislation to prevent “the further increase of quackery” in the commonwealth. He also wrote “such is the rage for professions (in America) that if the mania does not cease, we shall have as many doctors as patients.” At that time, Brownsville, a town of only 1,000 inhabitants, had eight practicing physicians.
His letter from Brownsville also shows us that some things never change. Playford complained that “the method of doing business is so different and collecting your bills is so difficult that I should sincerely dissuade you from emigrating here.”
Robert Playford died in 1867 at the age of 68. He had five children, and by 1882, Ellis’ history lists only one of them, Miss Harriet Playford, as still residing in Brownsville. We can speculate that she did not marry and may have continued to occupy her family’s home on Market Street.
In 1920, the congregation of the First Presbyterian Church purchased the Playford house for $15,000. It served as the church’s manse until shortly after October 1961. Among the occupants during those years was the family of the Rev. William Strohm, the church’s pastor during the late 1940s and early 1950s. His son Sam, who now resides in central Pennsylvania, recalls living in the North Bend neighborhood.
“I hung out down at Mulyar’s service station a lot during those years,” Sam told me. “Even with the long hours Joe put in, he didn’t mind us hanging around. Joe’s version of a pop machine was a wooden box with a metal lining, filled with ice and pop. You just put a coin in a container and took the pop you wanted. Whoever took the last one got it for free and refilled the box with ice and pop.
“I also spent a lot of time down at the Yee Hoy Laundry, because I was good friends with the Hoy children. I seem to recall that Dave Hoy was a typewriter repairman for the United States Army during World War II. In fact, I think Dave’s father was living at the laundry with them, too. Dave was a hard worker. I would help him carry a big package of finished laundry to a hotel down past the bottom of Front Street. You know, I have lost contact with those Hoy children, but I believe they went on to very successful careers.”
“The manse,” I said to Sam, “was almost a century old when you lived there. Did you feel it was still in good shape?”
“Yes. I thought it was,” Sam said. But in late 1961, when it was time to build the partial cloverleaf ramp for the Lane-Bane bridge, the Department of Transportation took a corner of the manse property. The state also removed a picturesque feature of the house’s facade.
“They took the beautiful stairs leading up to the front door,” Bill Claybaugh told me. Bill, who now lives in Kailua, Hawaii, grew up one block up the street. He remembers the special design of the stairs leading up to the front door of the Playford house.
“Picture two semicircles,” he said, “one going off to the right, the other to the left, and curling back to meet at the top in front of the front door.” Gracefully framed by wrought iron railings, it was a distinctive entry to an elegant home. Unfortunately, the design of the ramp called for the cloverleaf to begin its southward curve near that spot, clipping off the corner of the property and the manse’s stylish entrance. It also brought the highway uncomfortably close to the front door. Shortly after that, the family of the Rev. Donald C. Smith, who had been the minister at the Presbyterian church since December 1954, moved out of the manse to a rental property. The Playford house’s days as a home were over.
Within one year of each other, both historic buildings were destroyed. On Jan. 2, 1966, four years after the Lane-Bane bridge opened, the congregation of the First Presbyterian Church voted to demolish the vacant Playford house and add a new entrance into the church from that side. The new entrance went into service in November 1966. Eight months later, fire destroyed the church.
In October 1973, the site of the former church was sold to the Brownsville Historical Society, and the society had the ruins of the burned structure cleared and the foundation filled in. Today only the front steps of the church remain intact, mysteriously climbing from the Market Street sidewalk to the grassy lot above.
As for the Playford house, it had graced the corner of Second Avenue and Market Street from the mid-1800s until it was razed in May 1966. Now, no clue remains that it ever existed.
Almost directly across Market Street from the church was the original headquarters of the Brownsville Fire Department, which evolved into Brownsville Fire Company No. 1 (North Side) with the 1933 consolidation of Brownsville and South Brownsville boroughs. I talked with fire company historian Thomas L. Wardman about that old firehouse.
“The fire company was organized in 1910,” Tom said. “We don’t know where they had their headquarters in the first few years, if they had one at all. In September of 1914, having purchased their first fire truck, they opened that firehouse above the North Bend.”
Like the other buildings on that side of the street, the firehouse was built into the steep hillside that fronted on Market Street and descended into the hollow. It was a buff-colored brick building with an equipment/truck room at street level. On the second floor were a meeting room, a small kitchen area and bathing facilities. A boiler room below street level provided steam heat.
The firehouse served the town well for nearly half a century until the state decreed that the Lane-Bane Bridge was coming through that site. A new site for a firehouse was selected near the intersection of Church Street and Fifth Avenue, and construction began in the latter half of 1960.
“We moved into the Church Street headquarters,” said Tom Wardman, “in March of 1961.”
With the fire department having moved into its new building, the old Market Street firehouse was demolished. There was no other building on that side of Market Street between the firehouse and the top of Hill Street.
For the North Bend neighborhood, the most widespread impact of the Lane-Bane bridge project was felt along Market Street between Second and Third Avenues, where every building on the south side of the street was condemned by the state in order to build the cloverleaf ramp. In a few weeks when we resume this series, we will walk along that block and visit the S.S. Graham building and Nathan Silver’s wholesale business. Then I will take you to a spectacular “tear down the house” party at Mary Claybaugh’s Market Street home. See you there!
Comments about these articles may be sent to Editor Mark O’Keefe, 8 – 18 East Church Street, Uniontown, PA or e-mailed to mo’keefe@heraldstandard.com.