History & local legend
In the late 1920s, an Irish family living on Watson Street in Pittsburgh’s Uptown had three daughters sharing a bed. A family story, later told to folklore collector Ron Ieraci by Anabell K., a niece of one of the girls, credits a small visitor in green with protecting them.
One day, a sister moved the bed to clean beneath it. Each time she tried to push it back, a little man appeared and pushed it away from its usual position. After several attempts, she left the furniture where he wanted it. When her father asked why she had rearranged the room, she explained what had happened, and he allowed the bed to stay.
That night, while the girls slept, heavy plaster from the ceiling fell onto the place the bed had previously occupied. In the family’s telling, the little man’s stubborn intervention had moved all three sisters out of danger. Ieraci published the account in May 2009 as the story of the Uptown Leprechaun.
Sources
- Anabell K., account from the niece of one of the sisters, collected by Ron Ieraci, The Uptown Leprechaun, May 9, 2009
- Pittsburgh Streets, Watson Street history with references to the city ordinances that established its name in 1910
- City of Pittsburgh, Uptown and Bluff district, Watson Street and Seneca Street location
- Esri, Watson Street and Seneca Street intersection
- David Wilson, May 26, 1968 photograph on Seneca at Watson Street
- Pennsylvania Haunts & History — May 2009 archive
