All photographs from Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh.
The unseasonably warm temperatures we frequently enjoyed during this passing month of March helped take the bite out of winter. A similarly premature warm-up in March 1936, however, had disastrous consequences.
Following a cold, snowy winter, warmer-than-normal temperatures and heavy March rains were the recipe for one of Pittsburgh’s worst floods. Swollen rivers jumped their banks and spread a carpet of water throughout Downtown. Floodwaters submerged mills and other occupants of the riverbanks, claimed 47 lives and left 10,000 homeless. Property damage was estimated at nearly $1 billion in today’s dollars.
Pittsburgh was not alone. Cities and towns in a broad Mid-Atlantic region that included the Ohio River Valley and the Potomac and James Rivers also experienced devastating floods, prompting long-sought federal flood control legislation and projects that included a series of reservoirs to protect Pittsburgh.
Diamond Street on March 18, 1936 after floodwaters rolled into Downtown. Streetcars stranded in high water on Liberty Avenue are visible in the far background.
The icy waters of the of the Monongahela River rose to levels that threatened the Smithfield Street Bridge ramp, seen here looking north toward Downtown.
The Monongahela River flooded the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad yard leaving passenger cars partially submerged just west of the terminal that today is the heart of Station Square.
People crowd the sidewalks of Liberty Avenue on March 18 to observe flood.
A rowboat is tethered to a traffic signal where men gather in calf-deep water at Eighth Avenue and Liberty Avenue.
The Boulevard of the Allies, too, was under a carpet of water. The view here looks toward Wood Street and the Point beyond.
A week after the flood, workers spent days trying to free a coal barge that high water on the Mon lifted onto the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad tracks just west of the Smithfield Bridge.