It came as welcome news the week before Christmas 1935. Chalfant had been approved for a "Federal Relief Project" to replace the wooden Brighton Street steps.

The steps had become too dangerous for travel. Their closure the previous spring had proved a hardship on the borough's 800 residents, of which only three owned autos. Many faced a longer walk to or from Electric Avenue along the Lincoln Highway.

The Chalfant Steps were built by the Works Progress Administration. The WPA was an acronym synonymous with survival for millions of Americans in the 1930s.

The WPA built catch basins, retaining walls and other vital parts of the nation's infrastructure. The Civilian Conservation Corps built trails and planted trees. Americans in need of jobs were put to work on things the country needed then. Put to work building things we still need and still use now.

The nation's governors and President-elect Barack Obama met in Philadelphia on Tuesday. A national economic stimulus plan was the central topic. They need look no further than the Chalfant steps to see a textbook example of the benefits of government investment in the country's infrastructure.

Long-term sustainability is reflected in the boastful landscape architecture -- American resolve in an uncertain economic time. Government investment, not handouts, allowed the community to weather a long economic storm.

Many of the WPA workers went on to serve in World War II. They came home to work in various industries. They were also grocers, barbers, policemen.

The people who worked on the Chalfant steps raised their families in Chalfant. Not a one of the workers outlived the steps they built.

WORK ON THE STEPS began in January 1936.

Rotating part time, more than 100 men worked on WPA jobs in Chalfant; most were residents of the tiny borough. (Today, Chalfant is the 128th or 129th largest municipality in Allegheny County. Measured from east to west, it's about 330 yards wide. The Steelers gained that distance against the Patriots last Sunday.)

The WPA put food on many a Chalfant table and paid rents and mortgages. Some WPA workers worked to pay off tax debts.

But the WPA did more. It bought lumber from Rutter Brothers and General Wrecking Co. It bought an anvil from Hartstein Hardware, a first aid kit at Judd's Drug Store, coal from Mr. McDowell, water from Mr. Habrel. The WPA rented a transit and plumb bob from J.R. Davis along with garage space from the widow Torok. Space for shovels, lots of shovels.

Large sandstone for the steps was quarried a quarter-mile east along Electric Avenue. Bob Baburich, a barber and Chalfant's tax collector today, remembers that Teamsters "beat the hell" out of their horses to deliver the stone. (Yes, horses.)

The steps could have been built in a straight line from Park Way toward Electric Avenue. Instead, cut sandstone of various sizes rise and fall, sometimes curving, sometimes at sharp implausible angles, forming parallel walls at conflicted heights. The steps could have been along the earth's surface, but a deep trench was dug, zigzagging its way up the hillside.

Large stone unearthed from the trench was used to build walls for a scenic overlook, providing a fine view of the Westinghouse Valley, Westinghouse Plant and Bridge. (The Westinghouse Bridge was perhaps the best 1930s public works project built in this region.) The Chalfant steps were functional, utilitarian in providing access from point A to B. Yet the site also offered a green space well before the advent of air conditioning. This was when Chalfant's backyards were used for sustenance gardens and chicken coops.

Besides being a connection to Electric Avenue and the trolleys beyond, the step site included green grass. The site was the "Park" in Park Way, the street at the top of the steps (now called Parkway Avenue).

With a bit of fanfare the steps were dedicated on Oct. 17, 1936.

OVER TIME, THE STEPS became less relevant. The automobile took over and the East Pittsburgh Westinghouse Electric Plant faded away.

By the early 1970s, the snow was no longer shoveled, the grass was left uncut, buildings on the adjoining properties burned down. The overlook became overgrown and a clandestine dumpsite. The WPA's optimistic architecture was lost from sight.

In the summer of 2001, I contacted Bob Regan, author of "The Steps of Pittsburgh." Bob, a Pitt research professor by day, saw the significance of the steps and sent a letter to Chalfant's mayor. The borough council applied for and received a community and economic development grant, thanks to state Rep. Paul Costa from Wilkins.

I cut down dead trees entangled with wild grape vines. I pulled and hacked poison ivy vines as thick as my arms from stone palisades. I carted off dumpster loads of debris -- carpets, car parts, toilets, whiskey bottles, even hypodermic needles.

I dug up buried walls and poked at clogged weep holes and drains. I unearthed massive concrete rain gutters that run the length of the step's sandstone walls. I shooed away underage beer drinkers and inadvertently "huffed" chemical cleaners while rubbing out graffiti.

I looked to Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation for guidance. I climbed into a crawl space above the volunteer fire department to read council minutes from the Depression era. The Penn State cooperative extension offered instructions to kill off invasive Japanese knotweed. I reviewed drawings in the Allegheny County engineer's vault. I sent a piece of slag from the site to David McCullough, the Pittsburgh-born historian.

At Chalfant's first annual Redd Up Day in the summer of 2007, a few people showed up with empty trash bags. Judy O'Connor, the wife of the late Pittsburgh mayor Bob O'Connor, even came to help.

Chalfant Council used eminent domain to claim the adjoining burned-out house lots, doubling the original size of the step site. I spread $200 worth of grass seed in the same earth where WPA workers had planted $2.10 worth of oats.

By making some investment in the step site now, the municipality is cleaning up its main street. It's showing some measure of respect for its present and past.

In the era of municipal mergers and streamlining government, it's difficult to imagine Chalfant's future. What's clear is that government investment in its people and infrastructure held together a way of life in the past century. It could work as well today as it did in the 1930s.

Harrisburg and Washington could find some wisdom in the Chalfant Steps.

Cartoonist Rob Rogers does "Rob's Rough," an early look at his work and his creative process, exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.