The editor of a monthly Pittsburgh neighborhood newspaper recently asked me to cover a benefit being held at a local cafe. The benefit was to raise money for a customer battling stage 4 brain cancer.
Naturally, I had to ask about the building’s history. The owners proudly told me that the building they lovingly rehabilitated in 2017 was used for more than a century as a barbershop. One of them even described the meticulous research he had done to confirm what nearby residents had told him.
Advertisement, Pittsburgh Daily Post, November 2, 1912.
After the benefit, I returned to my office to write the story. I couldn’t resist a little snooping of my own into the building’s history so I went beyond the barbershop ads to read some of the other things printed about the wood frame building in Chestnut Street. Yes, there were advertisements published in Pittsburgh’s newspapers going back to the early 1900s touting barbering businesses at the address in Pittsburgh’s North Side.
I also came across two stories that really intrigued me so I wrote to the owner and wrote, “I took a swing through the store site’s history — there are some wild stories attached to that building!”
He replied, “I guess you found the one about the gas explosion.”
And then I wrote, “Yep. And the suicide ….”
The “suicide” I mentioned happened in 1939. Carl Knorr, a wallpaper hanger, had hit the skids and killed himself inside the room he rented in the building. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that Knorr’s body was found with “a hose running from a natural gas stove to his mouth.” The paper also reported, “He was estranged from his wife and had not been working steadily.”
Though Knorr might not have been working steadily in 1939, his woes began much earlier. In 1934, Knorr was arrested along with two other people for running a numbers gambling operation. “Officers said they arrested the three … and confiscated an adding machine, numbers books and slips,” reported the Pittsburgh Press.
Kaffeeehaus cafe, September 2019.
The second unusual episode occurred in 1999. “Police are still trying to figure out what caused an explosion last night that injured two men and blew out windows and burned a hole in the floor at a Spring Garden apartment,” reported the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
There were no follow-up articles so there’s no way to know without digging into law enforcement records whether it was a bomb or something else that cause the explosion. Authorities, wrote the newspaper, “[We] know it had something to do with a brown paper bag in the second floor apartment … When the bag was opened, the contents exploded.”
Come on Post-Gazette, how could you leave folks hanging with a story like that?
At any rate, my story on the benefit will be published in the October issue of the Northside Chronicle. Meanwhile, if there are any enterprising local historians or journalists out there who want to find out what was in the brown paper bag in 1999 that caused the explosion, please let me know what you learn.
© 2019 D.S. Rotenstein
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