Sunday, August 03, 2003

By Lillian Thomas, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

In 1803, nightlife in Pittsburgh percolated up and down Market Street, the borough's only paved road, where signs swung in front of taverns packed with locals and travelers.

Anita Dufalla, Post-Gazette illustration Click photo for larger image. A sign of the times in social Pittsburgh Popular taverns: Sign of the General Butler Black Bear Hotel The Harp and Crown The White Horse Andrew Watson's Tavern Cost of an annual license fee for tavern: $20 Brewing: Point Brewery opened in 1803 Plays performed in 1803: Comedies - "Trick upon Trick," or "The Vintner in the Suds" "The Jealous Husband," or "The Lawyer in the Sack" Pantomime -- "The Sailor's Landlady," or "Jack in Distress" Tragedy -- "The Gamester" Liquors available for purchase in Pittsburgh: Madeira Sherry Claret Lisbon Port Teneriffe wines French and Spanish brandies Jamaica spirits Antique spirits Whiskey Popular card games: Whist, called Whisk Boston Popular dances: Cotillion Minuet Jigs Country dance Fourth of July entertainment: Fireworks SOURCES: Heinz History Center research. "Pittsburgh: A Sketch of Its Early Social Life," by Charles W. Dahlinger, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London, 1916

Meriwether Lewis would have found nearly two dozen taverns to choose from to drown his frustration as he awaited the recalcitrant and behind-schedule boat builder, who, according to Lewis, was drowning, period, in alcohol.

Lewis spent many of his days in Pittsburgh collecting supplies and stowing them at Fort Fayette, built along the Allegheny River in the area that is now Penn Avenue between Ninth Street and Garrison Way. That's when he wasn't checking on the keelboat that was being built, and posting irritated letters about the slow progress on the craft as the river levels dropped ever-lower over the summer days.

After such days, he would have gone along narrow, muddy streets populated by pigs to the commercial district. The night air would have been filled with sounds of hammering, sawing and clanking from forges and shipyards, where workers labored into the night during the summer. After dark, he would have carried an oil lamp to illuminate his way. That drought-plagued summer, the air was close and smoky, and despite the lack of rain, there was often fog.

The air was hotter and closer in the taverns, where cooking fires as well as oil lamps lit the rooms.

Taverns were more than bars; they were gathering places that formed the hub of social and political life. There was usually one per block, and also at ferry landings, marked with signs. Around the time Lewis was in Pittsburgh, some of the popular taverns included the Black Bear Hotel, the Harp and Crown, the White Horse, and Andrew Watson's Tavern.

Pittsburgh's boat-building industry made it a stopover place for travelers.

"A lot of people in Pittsburgh were from someplace else, going someplace else, in town to get supplies and get a boat," said David Halaas, museum division director for the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania.

Lewis arrived just after the peak of the spring-early summer boat launching season. "The crowds would have been thinning because most of the people going downriver had gone," Halaas said. Nevertheless, the night streets were still busy. "In a sense, it was a boom town. It was aggressive, on the move, a place where activity goes on at all hours."

An advertisement for the White Horse described it as a place "where all gentlemen travellers and others who please to favour him with their custom, may depend upon meeting with good entertainment and kind treatment, by the public's humble servant, Robert Erwin."

Molly Murphy ran the Sign of General Butler, one of the most popular taverns in town, on the east side of Market Street, between Third and Fourth Streets. She took over the management of the tavern after her husband, Patrick Murphy, drowned in 1797 trying to save a child struggling in the Monongahela River.

Molly Murphy successfully operated the tavern until 1800, when she hired a manager. She owned a whole section of the street known as "clapboard way."

Business was good.

"Drinking was universal among both men and women," wrote Charles W. Dahlinger in "Pittsburgh: A Sketch of its Early Social Life."

Social elixirs

The people of Pittsburgh in 1803 lived principally along four main streets: Water, Second, Ferry and Market. There were a few brick houses, but most were log. It wasn't a wilderness outpost, but it was still a raw place where whiskey greased the gears.

Judge James Veech observed that whiskey "was the indispensable emblem of hospitality and the accompaniment of labor in every pursuit, the stimulant in joy and the solace in grief. It was kept on the counter of every store and in the corner cupboard of every well to do family. The minister partook of it before going to church, and after he came back. At home and abroad, at marryings and buryings, at house raisings and log rollings, at harvestings and huskings, it was the omnipresent beverage of old and young, men and women; and he was a churl who stinted it."

Not that drinking was the town's only diversion. Dancing was its second most popular social passion.

Taverns had separate ballrooms, and some offered dancing lessons in the afternoons. One proprietor, John Irwin, operated a house used for "public entertainment" in which he sold whiskey, stoves and dry goods, and he held public dance classes for women at 3 in the afternoon and for men at 6 in the afternoon in his ballroom.

"All classes and nationalities danced, and dancing was cultivated as an art," wrote Dahlinger. "Dancing masters came to Pittsburgh to give instructions, and adults and children alike took lessons." Dancing masters gave "practicing balls" that started at 7 p.m. and went till midnight.

A bit of drama and horse racing also were part of the Pittsburgh scene.

In 1803, a theater company came to town for one season and held performances in the courthouse in the western half of the "Diamond," later known as Market Square. It had been built a few years before to replace an earlier courthouse.

There were horse races held every autumn. The courses were sometimes in the area of Sixth and Smithfield down to Wood Street (encircling the city's early Presbyterian, Episcopal and German Evangelical churches), and at times between Liberty and the Allegheny River.

A traveler reported that there were side bets and "considerable open air imbibing."

Judge Henry M. Brackenridge published his recollections of the sport: "The whole town was daily poured forth to witness the Olympian games. ... The plain within the course and near it was filled with booths as at a fair, where everything was said, and done, and sold, and eaten or drunk, where every fifteen or twenty minutes there was a rush to some part, to witness a fisticuff -- where dogs barked and bit, and horses trod on men's toes, and booths fell down on people's heads!"

Militia drills held twice a year in the area near Grant's Hill also drew big crowds.

The Fourth of July was already a major holiday, with oratory, picnicking and -- of course -- fireworks, punctuated by cannon blasts.

Smaller pleasures

There was plenty of small-scale, informal socializing as well. People organized village balls, held dances at private homes and gathered to sing and play games.

Dahlinger described it this way:

"The inhabitants of Pittsburgh were pleasure-loving, and the time not devoted to business was given over to the enjoyments of life. Men and women alike played cards. Whisk, as whist was called, and Boston were the ordinary games."

Church and pub seemed to coexist peacefully. Tavern proprietors were respected in the community, and most clergy did not object to drinking. There was no prohibition against selling alcohol on Sundays.

John Reed, proprietor of Sign of the Waggon, was a prominent member of the Presbyterian Church, and on Sundays "lined out the hymns" and led the singing.

Though Lewis recorded many details of his life on the road in his journals, any forays into taverns were not included. Since even his boss, Thomas Jefferson, noticed his ability to lower levels in bottles from the White House liquor supply, it's likely he visited a tavern or two during his six weeks here.

He certainly stocked whiskey for the expedition in Pittsburgh: After the first day's slow progress down the Ohio -- the crew twice had to unload the 12-ton keelboat and drag it over sandbars before mooring, exhausted, somewhere between McKees Rocks and Neville Island -- Lewis wrote that he "gave my men some whiskey and retired to rest at 8 OClock."

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