| Brownsville | |
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Market Street in Brownsville, Pennsylvania
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| Named for: Thomas Brown | |
| Country | United States |
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| State | Pennsylvania |
| County | Fayette |
| Coordinates | |
| Area | 1.1 sq mi (3 km2) |
| - land | 1.0 sq mi (3 km2) |
| - water | 0.1 sq mi (0 km2) |
| Population | 2,331 (2010) |
| Density | 2,119.1 / sq mi (818 / km2) |
| Established | 1785 |
| Mayor | Lester Ward |
| Timezone | EST (UTC-4) |
| - summer (DST) | EDT (UTC-5) |
| Area code | 724 |
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Location of Brownsville in Fayette County
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Location of Brownsville in Pennsylvania
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Location of Pennsylvania in the United States
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Brownsville is a borough in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, United States, officially founded in 1785 located 35 miles (56 km) south of Pittsburgh along the Monongahela River. The borough was an industrial center, transportation hub, outfitting center, and river boat building powerhouse acting as a gateway city for emigrants heading west to the Ohio Country, Northwest Territory and beyond on the various Emigrant Trails to the far west from its founding until well into the 1850s. Founded about the same time, industrious bustling Brownsville early on easily eclipsed both by size and dynamism the nearby city of Pittsburgh until well into the 1850s when the Railways through to Kanesville, Iowa in the Midwest left Pittsburgh with the better transportation system, and made Kanesville the newest and best gateway city to the far west. Brownsville's flatboats could not cross Nebraska, Wyoming, and the Continental divide either, but by 1869 the trains could.
Even while emigrant outfitting began to decline steadily from the 1853 completion of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to the Ohio, the nascent steel industry was building and adding capacity, giving the borough a new growth spurt as a Railroad yard and coking center. It gradually lost its diverse mix of businesses and became more fragile as a result, but in general prospered. Like the rest of the country, Brownsville tightened its belt during the Great Depression, but then resurged as steel demand picked up during World War II.
In 1940, 8,015 people lived in Brownsville, and it experienced a postwar growth spurt which allowed it to develop cross-county-line suburbs like Malden, Low Hill, and Denbo Heights, which were mainly bedroom communities within commuting distance. After the boom-bust-boom of the fifties and sixties, the borough went into a third and more severe decline in the mid-1970s along with much of the Rust Belt, so that the population was just 2,804 at the 2000 census. In 2011, Brownsville still has a handful of buildings condemned or boarded up. Some abandoned buildings are the Union Station, several banks, and other businesses. The sidewalks around the town are still intact and usable.
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Because of the mysterious mounds believed to be a prehistoric fortification by colonial settlers, Brownsville began as Redstone Old Fort and later in the 1760s – 70s eventually became known as Redstone Fort or by the mid-1760s, Fort Burd — named eponymously after the officer commanding the forts establishment in 1759.[1] The fort was constructed on the bluff above the river on what may have been a fortification or burial ground of native peoples[2] during the French and Indian War, and which stockade was later occupied and garrisoned by a force from the Colony of Virginia during the 1774 Indian war against the Mingo and Shawnee peoples known as Lord Dunmore's War, as it was situated commanding the important strategic River ford of Nemacolin's Trail, the western part to the summit — which when improved, later became known as 'Burd's Road' — an alternative route down to the Monongehela River valley from Braddock's Road, which George Washington helped to build. Washington also came to own vast portions of the lands on the opposite bank — in honor of which, Pennsylvania named Washington County, the largest of the state.
A forward thinking entrepreneur named Thomas Brown acquired the lands in what became Fayette County around the end of the American Revolution.[3] He realized the Opening of the Cumberland Gap and wars end made the land at the western tip of Fayette County a natural springboard to settle points west such as Ohio, Tennessee, and the in-fashion destination of the day, Kentucky — all reachable via the Ohio River and its tributary the Monongahela. The sparse primitive settlement at the time around the fort was mostly called Redstone, but eventually became known as Brownsville, as the land became owned by Thomas Brown by the 1780s when Jacob Bowman bought the land on which Nemacolin Castle was constructed, beginning his trading post and a business expansion of settler services providers as foreseen by Thomas Brown. Since Redstone had been a frequent point of embarkation for travelers who were heading west via the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers it became a natural center for the construction of many keel-boats — even those heading for the far west via the Santa Fe Trail or Oregon Trail as floating on a poleboat even against hundreds of miles of river current was usually safer, easier and far faster than overland travel. The major attraction of these early settlers to Brownsville was twofold. One, Brownsville was positioned at the western end of the primitive road network (Braddock's Road to Burd's Road via the Cumberland pass) that eventually became known as the National Pike, U.S. Route 40. The other was the Redstone Creek and terraced banks gave easy access to the wide and deep Monongahela River where a vast flatboat building industry — that later evolved into the largest steamboat industry developed during the 19th century — was already well established. This access to the river provide a "jumping off" point for settlers headed into the western frontier. The Monongahela converges with the Ohio River at Pittsburgh and allowed for quick traveling to the western frontier.[4]
Redstone Old Fort is mentioned in C. M. Ewing's The Causes of that so called Whiskey Insurrection of 1794 (1930) as being the site of a July 27, 1791, meeting in "Opposition to the Whiskey Excise Tax," during the Whiskey Rebellion, the first illegal meeting of that insurrection.[1]
The first all cast iron arch bridge constructed in the United States was built in Brownsville to carry the National Pike (at the time a wagon road) across Dunlap's Creek. See Dunlap's Creek Bridge. The bridge is still in use in 2012.
Brownsville has a more recent claim to fame: according to Mike Evans in "Ray Charles: The Birth of Soul", the hit song What'd I Say was first concocted as part of an after-show jam in the borough in December 1958.
Brownsville is located at (40.020026, -79.889536)[5] situated on the east (convex) side of a broad sweeping westward bend in the northerly flowing Monongahela River at the westernmost point of Fayette County. Erosion undercutting action by the river on the surrounding characteristically steep-sided sandstone hills has created several shelf-like benches and connecting sloped terrain and thereby given the borough lowland areas adjacent to or otherwise accessible to the river shores. Much of the borough's residential buildings are built above the elevation of the business district arrayed upslope to either side along the connecting slopes and shelves cut by the geological action of long ago when the river bed moved gradually westward leaving the lowered shelves and slopes behind.
Concurrently, the opposite river shore of Washington County is, uncharacteristically for the region, shaped even lower to the water surface and is generally flatter and more plain-like than the more diverse geology of the borough's lands. That shore holds a tightly bound mirror community of about a fifth the size, a small hamlet called West Brownsville, Pennsylvania. Historically the low height of the concave shore of the river have made the river banks at the locii of two communities attractive as a natural river crossing, ferry, bridge, and boat building site. When the nascent United States government first appropriated funds for its first ever road building project, Brownsville, was an early intermediate target destination along the new National Road when construction began in 1811. Until a bridge was built, it was the western terminus.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the borough has a total area of 1.1 square miles (2.8 km2), of which, 1.0 square mile (2.6 km2) of it is land and 0.1 square miles (0.26 km2) of it (9.91%) is water. Lester Ward was elected Mayor in 2009.
Redstone Creek is the name of a minor local tributary stream of the Monongahela River in the area, and was said to have taken its color from the ferrous sandstone that lined its bed, as well as that of the sandstone heights near the Old Forts of an indigenous Amerindian culture. The valley of Redstone Creek is U-shaped characteristic of a glaciated valley, generally broadening it, and allowing a wide shallow brook class stream to lazily wander into the Monongahela. The Creek was wide enough to build, dock and outfit numerous flat boats, Keel boats, and other river craft and the boat building business was such that it would build the first steamboats on the inland rivers, and many hundreds afterwards, as well as the thousands of pole boats that moved the emigrants that settled the vast Northwest Territory.
"Old Forts" were colonial era names given to mounds and earthworks created by the early (possibly ca. 3000 BC[6]) Native American Mound Builders Culture by early explorers and pioneers in those early days of the scientific revolution antedating the anthropologists, sociologists, and archeologists professions.
Geographically, in the 1750s the area thus known as "Redstone Old Forts" was strategically situated at the end of a natural navigable path down the extensive 41 miles (66 km)[7] heavily forested western slopes of the Western Allegheny ridgeline and its western foothills (given distance by modern roads, as approximated from the vicinity not far west of the summit near Fort Necessity) — which George Washington had been using as a staging area while conducting road improvements to establish a fort at Brownsville/Redstone Old Forts. Geographically, the site has another virtue important in undeveloped times — the northwards traveling Monongahela river makes a broad sweep curving east to west in which the river undercuts and knocks down the high bluffs characteristically lining and surrounding the riverbed; at Brownsville, this created a terrain shelf down near the water, allowing settlers or military units to reach the water as well as a broad slow moving shallows along the curve which was shallow enough to pole across using a poleboat or scratch-built timber raft.
| Historical populations | |||
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| Census | Pop. | %± | |
| 1970 | 4,856 |
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| 1990 | 3,164 |
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| 2000 | 2,804 | −11.4% | |
| 2010 | 2,331 | −16.9% | |
As of the census[8] of 2000, there were 2,804 people, 1,238 households, and 716 families residing in the borough. The population density was 2,796.6 people per square mile (1,082.6/km²). There were 1,550 housing units at an average density of 1,545.9 per square mile (598.5/km²). The racial makeup of the borough was 85.95% White, 11.41% African American, 0.11% Native American, 0.07% Asian, 0.21% from other races, and 2.25% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.82% of the population.
There were 1,238 households out of which 24.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 36.2% were married couples living together, 17.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 42.1% were non-families. 38.0% of all households were made up of individuals and 20.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.24 and the average family size was 2.97.
In the borough the population was spread out with 23.2% under the age of 18, 9.0% from 18 to 24, 25.6% from 25 to 44, 21.1% from 45 to 64, and 21.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females there were 83.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 77.7 males.
The median income for a household in the borough was $18,559, and the median income for a family was $32,662. Males had a median income of $31,591 versus $21,830 for females. The per capita income for the borough was $13,404. About 28.8% of families and 34.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 51.2% of those under age 18 and 17.9% of those age 65 or over.
Dunlap's Creek Bridge (1839), carrying old U.S. Route 40 over Dunlap's Creek in Brownsville, is the nation's oldest cast iron bridge in existence. (Capt. Richard Delafield, engineer; John Snowden and John Herbertson, foundrymen) Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) [2]. The bridge has an HAER engineering significance like that of the Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty and Hoover Dam.
The Flatiron Building (c. 1830), constructed as a business building in thriving 19th-century Brownsville, is one of the oldest, most intact iron commercial structures west of the Allegheny Mountains. Over its history, it has housed private commercial entities as well as public, such as a post office. It is the unofficial "prototype" for the flatiron buildings seen across the United States. The most notable is the Fuller Building in Market Square in New York City.
After nearly being demolished, the building was saved by the Brownsville Area Revitalization Corporation (BARC). Throughout two decades, via private and public grants, BARC has restored the Flatiron Building as an historic asset to Brownsville. The Flatiron Building Heritage Center, located within the building at 69 Market Street, holds artifacts from Brownsville's heyday, as well as displays about the community's important coal and coke heritage. The Frank L. Melega Art Museum, located with the Heritage Center, displays many examples of this local southwestern Pennsylvanian's famous artwork, depicting the coal and coke era in the surrounding tri-state region.[9]
Brownsville is the location of other properties on the National Register of Historic Places, such as Bowman's castle (Nemacolin Castle), the Philander Knox House, and the Brashear House.
The Brownsville Area School District serves Brownsville as well as several nearby communities. Schools within the district are:
Brownsville is connected to West Brownsville by the Brownsville Bridge built in 1925, which spans the Monongahela River. In 1960, the Lane Bane Bridge was constructed just downstream and U.S. Route 40 was moved to the new high level structure.
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