As Allegheny County Republicans saw it, Franklin Roosevelt had challenged them.

Col. Frank Knox, their vice presidential candidate, already had scheduled a speech at Duquesne Garden in Oakland for Oct. 1, 1936. Then FDR's re-election campaign announced the president would address Democrats that same night at Forbes Field, about a half-mile away.

Many GOP leaders seated "on the mourners bench ... dolorously said there wouldn't be a crowd [to hear Knox], and attempted to have the meeting called off until a later date," Post-Gazette reporter C.W. Dressler wrote on Oct. 3, 1936.

Campaign Chairman James H. Duff, who went on to become Pennsylvania's governor and a U.S. senator, was undeterred. "We were perfectly willing to rely on the enthusiasm and loyalty of a revitalized Republican Party," he told Dressler. "The Democrats gave us a challenge, and we were willing to accept it."

Knox drew more than 9,000 people to the ice rink-sports arena, the newspaper reported the day after the event. "It turned out to be the biggest indoor rally the Republican Party ever held here."

That record didn't last long.

Knox's running mate, Kansas Gov. Alf Landon made an appearance at the same location on Oct. 27, one week before the election. "Pittsburgh gave Alfred M. Landon the greatest ovation of his presidential campaign last night as he entered Duquesne Garden to deliver an aggressive assault upon the New Deal's 'mismanagement,' " the Post-Gazette reported the next day. The newspaper estimated 20,000 people "jammed and milled around the auditorium to stage one of the wildest demonstrations ever seen here. Members of the Landon party said the reception overshadowed in spontaneity and enthusiasm any they had seen, including those in Los Angeles and in Chicago."

The Landon-Knox team was riding high that fall. Former New York Gov. Al Smith, the Democratic presidential candidate in 1928, had endorsed Landon for president.

The Literary Digest's national poll, which had correctly predicted the outcome of the five previous elections, showed Landon with a comfortable lead over FDR.

When Father Charles E. Coughlin, known as the Detroit radio priest, came to Pittsburgh, he blasted Roosevelt's "New Deal" programs.

"I do not say that President Roosevelt is a Communist," he told a crowd of 4,500 at the Syria Mosque on Oct. 8, 1936. "I do say that he has adopted Communistic activities."

Coughlin, however, turned out to be an equal-opportunity scold. "Do not think I would stultify myself by asking you to go back to Landon," he said. "I'd no more ask you to vote Republican than I'd ask you to vote Communist."

And as for the media ...

"How long must we put up with a reportorial staff of morons?" Coughlin asked his audience.

While Landon, Knox and Coughlin piled up impressive numbers during their Pittsburgh visits, FDR outdid them all by far.

A crowd of 5,000 met him at Pittsburgh's Baltimore & Ohio freight station when he arrived by private railroad car on Oct. 1.

The anonymous reporter made an indirect reference to Roosevelt's inability to walk, the result of a bout with polio 15 years earlier. "The President seemed a trifle weary," the Post-Gazette said the next day. "Secret service men assisted him into the tonneau [open rear seat] of the car and helped him into an overcoat."

"Thousands of hat and hand-waving Pittsburghers, who cheered him along the path to Forbes Field, gave President Franklin Delano Roosevelt a tumultuous welcome last night," the newspaper reported. "Men, women and children lined the presidential route four and five deep ..."

Roosevelt spoke to an estimated 50,000 people at Forbes Field. Sounding like almost every presidential candidate since, FDR promised to balance the federal budget 'without additional taxes 'within a year or two.' "

A month later, Roosevelt beat Landon in a landslide, carrying 46 of 48 states, including Pennsylvania. FDR went on to win re-election two more times. He died on April 12, 1945, less than three months after he was sworn into office for his fourth term.