Nine Mile Run Viewfinder, West Street

40.444585, -79.890060

From the corner of Penn Ave and West Street, Walk south toward the big brick building on the West side of West Street, Outside the entrance to Wilkinsburg’s Magisterial Court, Look for the Viewfinder in the sidewalk Can you see or hear water? You may be able to see the brick tunnel that holds the stream AKA a culvert a transverse drain 1 a drain or channel crossing under a road, sidewalk, sewer; conduit. 2 a tunnel carrying a stream, diverting it under a road or rail 3

Because of this culvert’s shallow depth, when the storms are big, Nine Mile Run will rise and flood the street Imagine this stream running Running through Wilkinsburg without being confined: Cutting through a yard, crossing an intersection, a street, a sidewalk. Water finding its way The stream was buried in the 1930s to create space and improve sanitation conditions: a single pipe system designed to carry away waste and stormwater to be diluted in streams and rivers Though the rivers became so polluted with raw human waste that a new system had to be created Let us honor the water, the storm that becomes stream, the stream a river As well as the waste our bodies produce and imagine even newer systems to honor both, as separate, necessary life givers