Pittsburgh's Lost Cyclist

Frank George Lenz (1867-1894), a celebrated cyclist and photographer from Pittsburgh, was widely admired for his audacity and ingenuity and loved for his warmth and charm. Born in Philadelphia to German emigres, he moved to Pittsburgh at an early age with his widowed mother Anna Reinhart, who soon married his adoptive father, William A. Lenz, a Westinghouse machinist. In 1886, while working as an accountant for a brass manufactory in the Strip District, Lenz spent $100, his monthly salary, on a Columbia highwheeler and joined the Allegheny Cyclers, riding many thousands of miles over the region's rugged dirt roads. Though only 5'7" in a sport that favored the long-legged, he also excelled as a racer, then gradually shifted to cycle touring with a boxy wooden camera. In the summers of 1890 and 1891 he rode with Charles Petticord to St. Louis and to New Orleans, and he eventually persuaded Outing Magazine to send him on a journey around the globe. On May 15, 1892, thronged by an adoring public, he left his home on Webster Avenue to circle the globe on a 57-pound Victor safety with inflatable tires, the prototype of the present-day bicycle. Two years later, after pedaling some 15,000 miles on two continents, he vanished mysteriously in Turkey as he neared Europe for the last leg of his trip. Although his life was cut short, he helped spark a great bicycle boom and establish the bicycle's enduring utility and appeal.

Baldwin, Pennsylvania · United States