found: “central amusement park,” pittsburgh 1923

Here is a fantastic map, made by the G.M. Hopkins Company in 1923 and available from Pitt’s Historic Pittsburgh site, showing “Central Amusement Park,” complete with grand stand, on exactly the spot hypothesized the other day, on the south side of Wylie Avenue between Junilla and Chauncey.  In those days Hallett Street cut all the way through from Junilla to Chauncey, so Central Park was bounded by Humber Way on the north, Chauncey Street on the west, Jacobus Way on the west, and Hallett on the south.

The plot of land on which Central Park stood seems to have been divided, as of 1923, between “A.H. Wood,” “Mrs. A. H. Wood” and “C. Machesney,” with “A. Williams” owning two thin strips along the east side of the park, either in the outfield or just beyond it.  It’s hard to tell just from this map what Machesney and the Woods had to do with the ballpark.  They might have been Williams’s or Sell Hall’s creditors or financial backers.  It could be that the park was built on leased land, or that Williams owned all the land originally but, in dire financial straits by 1923, had sold the land in pieces (with Hall or Williams paying rent to the landowners). 

Also, looking through the maps at Historic Pittsburgh, it appears that the current Josh Gibson Field is actually located a block west of the historic Ammon Field where Gibson and the Crawfords played in the late 1920s and early 1930s (and which did not exist at all in 1923).  I’ll post more about this in the next day or two.

UPDATE 1:16 a.m.  It’s unclear where the exact boundaries of the park were, by the way, but any way you look at it Central Park was evidently quite tiny.

Comments

[Scott Simkus]

Nice find. I strongly suggest taking a virtual cruise around the neighborhood with Google Earth (street view feature).