Remember When: Sewickley Herald headlines from 1913

Melanie Linn Gutowski
Thursday, Nov. 23, 2023 7:00 a.m. | Thursday, Nov. 23, 2023 7:00 a.m.

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“Palmer’s Pictorial Pittsburgh,” published in 1905

The Riter-Conley Manufacturing Company’s North Side plant, seen here in a circa 1905 rendering, was producing parts for a spate of new bridge-building projects in Leetsdale in 1913.

In the news this week 110 years ago:

• The Sewickley YMCA was host to one of the earliest Montessori schools in the country, opened in October 1913. “Until the past summer, the only school here in America authorized to teach [the Montessori] method was the school in Washington, D.C.,” Ethel P. Tiemann, directress of the Montessori Home for Childhood, wrote in an editorial. “Now, however, other teachers have come back from Rome, graduates of Dr. Montessori and holding diplomas, authorizing them to teach this Montessori method.”

Local mothers were the catalyst for bringing the new school to the Valley, a group that promised their support for a year. The Sewickley Montessori classroom had initially been limited to 15 students, all under Ms. Tiemann’s instruction.

“We are anxious that all educators, mothers and thinkers may become interested and co-operators in this Montessori movement, so that this organization may grow eventually from a small one into that of a large organization,” Tiemann wrote.

• Leetsdale officials were responding to a rash of floods and stormwater by building new bridges. “The destruction of bridges by floods, and the great storm early this month has caused an extra demand for bridge construction,” the Herald wrote. In an effort to strengthen the new bridges, they were to be made of steel, rather than wood or stone.

“Therefore the Riter-Conley mills are making bridges by the train load,” the article continued. Daily shipments of bridge parts were coming from both Riter-Conley’s North Side mills and from Ambridge. Reportedly “a thousand men are kept busy at the Riter-Conley shops, day and night, and the loaded trains go west.”

• Glenfield Public School hosted a debate put on by the school’s Literary Society. The subject was “Should Women Have the Ballot?” Students Sarabelle Robinson and Rachel McCombs argued for the ballot, while Raymond Peck and Walter Fuchs argued against. “The decision was in favor of the affirmative,” the Herald reported.