John Oyler: Bridgeville in 1920

As we enter a new decade, it is appropriate for us to roll the calendar back a century and examine Bridgeville 100 years ago.

According to the 1920 census, its population that year was 3,092 — still significantly smaller than its neighbors, Carnegie and Canonsburg. But Bridgeville was larger than the mine patch towns in the nearby townships, so it became an important commercial center, filled with small businesses.

Evidence of the proliferation of these businesses is an advertisement in the Jan. 21 Canonsburg “Daily Notes” for Franco-American Coffee listing area dealers. Included in the list are nine Bridgeville stores — Ruben Abramovitz, R. Peterson, Harmuth Bros., O. Pinazzi, A Wagoner & Sons, Durgain Thomas, Mary Lavendosky, Albert Sam and Jos. Saperstein.

Business was booming in the Kirwan Heights industrial complex. C.P. Mayer had shifted his interest from the brickyard to the new airfield he had just constructed — the first commercial airfield west of the Alleghenies. General Electric took over the J.B. Higbee facility and converted it into “the Glass House.”

The Jan. 17 Pittsburgh Daily Post ran an advertisement for Universal Steel offering liberal wages for a “man to run Davis Bournondeille radiograph for cutting tops of steel ingots.” A series of similar ads later in the year attest to the continuing expansion of the Universal facility.

The Colussy family’s venture into selling automobiles was in its second year. One wonders if they had any idea that it would be Chevrolet’s oldest continuous franchise a century later.

An advertisement in the Pittsburgh Press on Jan. 30 reported the availability of a new bungalow in Bridgeville — five rooms and a bath, to be “sold at a bargain.”

On Jan. 20, the Daily Notes reported that Mr. and Mrs. W.M. Russell spent the weekend visiting friends in Canonsburg and had returned to their Bridgeville home. Trivial as this seems today, it is pleasant to imagine a day when newspapers found such information newsworthy.

Buried in a list of movie advertisements in the Jan. 22 Pittsburgh Daily Post is one for the Star Theater in Bridgeville, showing “The Call of the Soul,” starring Gladys Brockwell. I wonder where the Star Theater was located. Perhaps it was the one the Delphus family ran on Railroad Street.

Bridgeville made the society page of the Pittsburgh Press on Jan. 10 with a report of a meeting of the Bridgeville Women’s Club at the home of Mrs. Albert B. Murray, featuring the reading of papers on Belgium by various ladies.

There was great interest in sports in Bridgeville in 1920, especially in soccer. Bridgeville had a team in the Central Division of the Press Soccer League. Early in the month, they played a scoreless tie with Cecil, primarily because of the work of goalkeeper Darkus.

Another active team was a basketball team called the “Bridgeville Odds.” One suspects they were sponsored by the Odd Fellows, a fraternal club that changed its name to the Owls Club.

I’m not sure how valid a picture of life in Bridgeville a century ago we can imagine from a pile of newspaper clippings, but at least they are a good beginning. It certainly appears to have been a time less stressful than the decades that followed.