Monongahela Incline Lifts Passengers and Spirits

Coming home from a hard day of work or school, every step can feel more difficult than the last. What if there was a climb of 38 stories in between?

That was the prospect facing the residents of the Coal Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh in the mid-1800s. To be sure, the summit provided cleaner air than the industrial area below plus a gorgeous view of the city’s three rivers and of downtown on the other side of the Monongahela River, but the hike up was long, winding, and frequently muddy. 

“There were paths, and sometimes staircases, that would go from the bottom to the top of the hills, and they were arduous, at best,” said Donald Doherty, author of the book, Pittsburgh’s Inclines (and also a theoretical and computational neuroscientist in the Dura-Bernal lab at Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn, N.Y.). “It was not practical to commute from these hill tops down to work.”

To remedy the situation, the city built the Monongahela Incline, the country’s oldest funicular for passengers. Opened in 1870—three years before the first passengers would ride cable cars up the less steep slopes of San Francisco—it has been in near continuous operation since.

Today, the Monongahela Incline and the nearby Duquesne Incline, both relics of a bygone era, are ASME Engineering Landmarks. Rather than essential pieces of transportation infrastructure knitting together Pittsburgh’s bridges, rail lines, industries, and neighborhoods, the funiculars are tourist attractions providing rides and views to visitors from around the world. 

Before all that, and before the construction of the Monongahela Incline, the peaks of Pittsburgh’s hills were occupied mostly by farmers. 
 

A city of hills and rivers

The mid-1800s was the first great rush of the Industrial Revolution in a city known for its steelmaking and manufacturing. Pittsburgh began in the triangle of land where the Allegheny River from the north joined with the Monongahela River from the south to form the Ohio River. Railroads, which needed level ground, twisted along the riverbanks and the factories that needed access to both the rivers and rails to bring in materials and ship out products clustered there, too.  

Unemployment was scarce and the large population of factory workers were “squished down in the flat land,” said Doherty, “primarily in those areas where the factories were.” The low parts of the city were overcrowded, and the air was polluted. Those workers who lived at the top faced a long and sometimes dangerous trudge home every night. 

Landowners of property on Coal Hill, so called due to the mines dug into its treeless slope, together with real estate speculators hoped to increase the value of their assets in an area that, altitude aside, was close to the city’s center. What they needed, though, was a quick and easy way to get to the top of the hill—plus a more attractive name for the neighborhood.

These capitalists formed the Mount Washington Inclined Plane Company with the purpose of building, and funding, the vertigo-inducing ride. 

Before construction could start, the Civil War and a dispute over property rights stopped the work in its tracks. Fortunately, both were resolved by 1867, at which time the Pennsylvania Legislature chartered the construction of the line. The Mount Washington Inclined Plane Company got to work immediately. A surveyor, one J.S. Kirk, picked two potential sites: One that would become the Monongahela Incline, chosen because it was closer to downtown, and another less than a mile away that would be the site of the Duquesne Incline. 

From plans solicited from engineers across the country, the company selected one submitted by John J. Endres, a Prussian-born engineer and inventor who had moved to Cincinnati in 1866 to help build incline planes for mining and other industries. (Much like Pittsburgh, Cincinnati sits on steep hills carved by the mighty Ohio River.) 

Endres would eventually create 10 patents, design a system for washing coal—which worked to the tune of 10 tons an hour—build several coal washing plants around the country, and become the chief engineer of the North Hudson County Railway in Hoboken, N.J. Endres brought along his daughter (or possibly his sister—the history is a bit murky on the relationship) Caroline Endres Diescher and her husband Samuel Diescher, an engineer who immigrated from Budapest. Diescher had experience in Ohio building inclines for mines and, after building the Monongahela Incline, or the Mon Line, as it’s known to locals, he would go on to build the Duquesne Incline and roughly 15 others, as well as the first Ferris Wheel with G.W.G. Ferris in 1893, among many other projects.

Caroline Endres Diescher’s contributions may have also extended to engineering, Doherty said. “She was involved in the interior decorating,” Doherty said. “She may have very well have contributed more, but we don’t really know.” 

Construction of the incline started at the end of 1869. The two pairs of 640-foot tracks set at a 38° grade enabled two cars to travel back and forth independently. (Many other funiculars attach two cars to the same cable, which enables a single engine to run the whole system.) In addition to the two pairs of tracks that would pull passengers up and down the hillside, an additional pair was built next to it to carry freight and supplies. 

The cable for each car—an engineering feat in itself—was produced by John Roebling, who designed the Brooklyn Bridge (he died in 1869, before the incline opened). The cars were pulled by steam engines and would be for the next 65 years. The Jones and Laughlin Steel Company provided the tracks, and the Iron City Bridge Company made the bridge that would allow the funicular to pass over the level railroad line below.

On May 28th, 1870, the Mon Incline took its first passengers to the top and back—994 of them, for six cents each. The next day more than 4,000 people rode the incline. These were not fresh residents of homes in a newly accessible neighborhood—yet. 

“You have to remember that this is pretty much before electricity, before a lot of things,” Doherty said. “It was kind of an amazing thing many people had never experienced—where you could go pretty much almost straight up the side of a hill and look way down on the city. It became a local tourist attraction.”
 
Before long the peak of the hill had become what would eventually be known as the Mount Washington neighborhood. The Dieschers themselves would own a house there.
 

Incline on the decline

In addition to the Monongahela Incline, 16 other vertical railways were built to link Pittsburgh’s riverside flatlands and its hilltop neighborhoods. Some might have been longer—including the Knoxville Incline that ran for half a mile—and the Duquesne Incline reaches higher, but none took on as steep a slope as the Mon Line. In fact, due to the steepness of the climb, the cars are split into three levels of eight-passenger compartments. 

In spite of that investment in vertical infrastructure, the first years of the 20th century would see a four-wheeled disruptive technology that would make the inclines obsolete. 

“The inclines were thriving between 1870 and 1900,” Doherty said, “but by 1920 they were all closing down because of the automobile. Nobody was taking them because they were driving their cars.” 

In fact, the Mount Washington Roadway was completed in 1928, allowing residents—and anyone after the scenic view—to drive to the top from the city below. 

But, as the city’s inclines closed one by one, the Monongahela and the Duquesne survived. The Duquesne incline skirted demolition thanks to efforts from the neighborhood it supports. But the Monongahela Incline managed to keep selling enough tickets. 

“The actual demand was still there,” said Doherty. “They didn’t need to shut it down.” And it remains one of Pittsburgh’s most heavily trafficked tourist destinations. 

The motors are now electric, most of the bits and pieces, large and small, have been replaced, and it’s now operated by the Pittsburgh Regional Transit. But for just $2.75 anyone can still ride the top and back on the country’s first and longest serving passenger funicular. 

Michael Abrams is a technology writer in Westfield, N.J.