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WHEREAS, Pittsburgher A. Leo Weil wrote, and presented on June 24, 1908, to the Pennsylvania Bar Association,
“Who would not wish to be proud of his city; to boast of the honesty and efficiency of its government; to point to its civic advancement and betterment; to speak with pride of the public officers' devotion to the public service; to believe that the public moneys were applied for the public's good; to know that the city's property was conserved for the city's use; to realize that the people's rights were safe with the people; to be assured that the people's will was obeyed by the people's choice; to feel a civic consciousness of love and pride and confidence in the greatness and goodness and accomplishment of his city . . . . ?”
WHEREAS, A. Leo Weil became a lawyer in 1879, practicing initially as an oil and gas lawyer when Pittsburgh was just becoming a center for refining oil; and Mr. Weil built a house in 1898 at the corner of Howe Street and Highland Avenue; and
WHEREAS, Mr. Weil was one of the founding members of Rodef Shalom Temple, and his grandmother served as president of the Columbia Council (now the National Council of Jewish Women); and
WHEREAS, Mr. Weil served prominently as a member of the executive committee of the Voters' Civic League; and
WHEREAS, A. Leo Weil wrote “In the City of Pittsburgh, immediately upon the grant of a franchise to build a street railway on Grant Boulevard, the value of the franchise was appraised by street railway experts at $3,000,000. The city received not one cent for this grant. The value of the franchises in the cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, granted without compensation to the city, would . . . far exceed the public debt of those cities; probably would amount to more than double such public debts”; and
WHEREAS, it was Mr. Weil who stopped council members from making Grant Boulevard (which became Bigelow Boulevard) into a railway; and
WHEREAS, a few years later, Mr. Weil was ...
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