October 2, 1922
Over a year after the first segment of the Boulevard of the Allies made its debut, the entire route in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was opened to traffic. The road, which links downtown Pittsburgh with the city’s Oakland neighborhood, was named in honor of the Allied Powers that had fought against Germany and the other Central Powers just a few years earlier during World War I. A key champion of the road and its orientation as a war memorial was Pittsburgh City Councilman Robert Garland, who would also achieve fame as a strong advocate of daylight saving time in the United States.
The opening of the whole boulevard was marked with the cutting of a silk cord by public officials, but the actual dedication ceremony for the road wouldn’t take place until more than a month later on Armistice (now Veterans) Day. “There is always something splendid and stirring about a great highway,” noted the Wisconsin-based Waukesha Daily Freeman newspaper in reporting on Pittsburgh’s newest thoroughfare.
The Boulevard of the Allies made transportation history again when one of the world’s first interconnected traffic signal systems was installed on an experimental basis at all the intersections along that route. For more information on the Pittsburgh-based Boulevard of the Allies, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulevard_of_the_Allies and http://www.brooklineconnection.com/history/Facts/BlvdAllies.html.
For a photo of the dedication ceremony, click here.