Get to know your imaginary community (part 2 of 22)

Pennsylvania Avenue: "The Virginia Avenue of the East."

This was the rallying cry of Heinrich Behrenkinder as he built the original gridwork of "Penn Ave" (as it is called) in the latter years of the 19th century. When Behrenkinder's father first moved to Baltic Avenue, there were no railroads. By the time young Heinrich came of age (back then that meant he turned eight!), the Reading was complete and ground was just being broken on the mighty Pennsylvania Railroad. Heinrich got in on the ground floor and rode that train all the way to the top. He soon owned a palatial estate on Virginia Avenue, a vantage point from which he could easily oversee the railroad operations which, by his 13th birthday, were largely under his own control. He could also see, from his rooftop, the virgin prairies of the northeast he had somehow always longed for.

Yes, many thought Heinrich crazy when he extended the Pennsylvania Railroad all the way past the Go To Jail box. Few imagined he could get anybody to live in the "emerald city" he started building there. And, indeed, Heinrich grew old and died alone, the only human resident in what we now think of as "the green properties." Rumors and theories abound-- some say he kept company with phantasms and ghosts, some say he took a shine to the native ibexes and billy goats that used to pepper the hills, some say he never really left his mansion on Virginia Avenue, but built the emerald city after losing a dare to a hobo in States Avenue, a hobo who, under the identity of Heinrich Behrenkinder, lived out his final days in opulent solitude in Pennsylvania Avenue.

Whatever happened to Heinrich, soon after his death gold and silver were discovered in the surrounding prairies. On the newly-built Short Line Railroad came prospectors, then realtors, and finally the monocled and top-hatted elite who populate the East today.


Did you know? . . .

-Pennsylvania Avenue was once called home by major-league third-baseman Corey Koskie?
-The Fruit Roll-up was invented on Pennsylvania Avenue?
-Pennsylvania Avenue briefly adopted the metric system in the 1930s?