Those huge, stone Wabash piers on the Mon are up for sale

Someone out there can own an unusual piece of Pittsburgh history — not to mention an unusual piece of real estate.

The Wabash piers, those hulking stone towers standing about 45 feet above the Monongahela River, Downtown, are up for sale.

“The fascinating thing about these piers — they were an enigma,” said A.J. Pantoni, director of industrial services for Hanna Langholz Willson Ellis, which is marketing the property.

“I’ve lived here most of my life, and so many people thought the city owned them. No one envisioned that a private person owned these.”

The piers are what remains of the Wabash Bridge, which was built in 1904 and spanned Downtown to Station Square. The bridge carried the Wabash-Pittsburgh Terminal Railroad from an elevated rail yard and terminal Downtown across the Mon to the Wabash Tunnel that cuts through Mt. Washington. The tunnel is used by vehicle traffic today.

Now in the hands of a trust, the piers were last owned by Graydon Crain, a business owner from Cranberry who bought them at a bankruptcy auction in 1979 for $18,000, Pantoni said. Crain died in 2020, and the piers are being sold from his estate. They went on the market in 2021.

Before Crain acquired them, they were owned by a nonprofit that was trying to redevelop spaces along the waterfront, Pantoni said.

Crain had used the piers, naturally, for river-oriented things such as mooring barges and the Gateway Clipper Fleet. They also were used for advertising. In the late 1970s, they were used during the Three Rivers Art Festival for an installation. In fact, the rods that held banners for the installation are still there.

But the structures seem to have inspired the imagination for years. When the bridge was torn down in 1948, James Fulton, a congressman from Mt. Lebanon, asked that the massive supports remain. He bought them from the rail company.

“He said, ‘Hang on, we’re going to do something with them,’ ” Pantoni said.

One idea was to build a marina and restaurant on the north pier, with an elevator to take guests to and from the top. He commissioned a drawing in 1958 showing decks circling the structure and topped with a glass-walled restaurant.

Courtesy of Hanna Commercial Real Estate

This 1958 rendering commissioned by the then-owner of the Wabash piers shows a plan to turn one into a restaurant and marina.

In recent years, other ideas have been pitched, including a proposal in 2006 into a public climbing wall. The Port Authority in the late 1960s also proposed Skybus, a rubber-tired transit system that was to have been built atop the existing Wabash piers.

The southern pier is only accessible by the river. But the northern pier is next to a trail and the Mon Warf.

As for uses now, Pantoni said that while the structures lend themselves to advertising because of their high visibility, he hopes that they’re used as a way to attract folks to the city.

“Personally, I’d love to see an art installation or something that can bring more people here,” he said. “So many cities have executed on their riverfronts so well, and we’ve been trying to do that. But it’s ‘do or do not; there is no try.’ ”

“There are so many people who have their eyes on this,” he noted. “It’s going to be really interesting to see what happens.”

He declined to say how much the piers may sell for, but said they’re looking at the “mid six-figures.”