The History Of Pittsburgh

  • The March

    The March
    George Washington at 22, led 2 companies into the Great Meadows at an attempt to remove The French and their Native American Allies. But rain-filled trenches and forced the British retreat.
  • Victory

    Victory
    The brilliant and aggressive William Pitt the Elder came to power in 1757 as Prime Minister. His leadership resulted in British victories both in Europe and in The French and Indian War.
  • Time To Build

    Time To Build
    The Marquis Duquesne had a plan to build military forts from St.Lawrence to the Mississippi. But failing supply lines from distant bases forced him to stop with the third, Fort Duquesne. The French routed by the British in 1758, destroyed it just before they took flight.
  • The 100th Birthday

    The 100th Birthday
    On the occasion of the city's 100th Birthday, many Pittsburghers stopped at Hunt and Miner's bookstore on Fifth Street (Fifth Avenue) to buy a copy of the centennial celebration keepsake.
  • Naming The Land

    Naming The Land
    John Forbes named the land Pittsborough in honor of William Pitt
  • Fort Pitt

    Fort Pitt
    Completed in the winter of 1761, Fort Pitt was the last and largest of the five forts built by the British and The French at the forks of the ohio as they fought for control of the land.
  • Let Us Build

    Let Us Build
    Streets, Apartment buildings, markets, and courthouses were built. Boat Builders started to make Pittsburgh City
  • Pittsburgh Gazette

    Pittsburgh Gazette
    John Scull founded The Pittsburgh Gazette
  • The Iron Furnace

    The Iron Furnace
    George Anschutz built the first iron furnace in 1792.
  • The 1st Fire Brigade

    The 1st Fire Brigade
    Pittsburgh's first fire brigade, the Eagle Volunteer Fire Company was organized in 1794, and by 1815, it was competed with the Vigilant and Neptune companies for subscribers.
  • The Foundry

    The Foundry
    Joseph McClurg built the first foundry in 1803
  • The Pittsburgh Theater

    The Pittsburgh Theater
    Touring theatrical companies staged plays in Pittsburgh, choosing secondary roles from the amateur acting societies. The Pittsburgh Theater, better known as the Old Drury, was on Fifth Avenue near Wood Street. "We all fell under the fascination of the footlights, and every opportunity to attend the theater was eagerly embraced," Carnegie recalled of his visits there as a telegraph messenger boy admitted for free at age 15
  • First Mayor

    First Mayor
    When Pittsburgh was changed from a borough to a city Major Ebenezer Denny was the first Mayor of Pittsburgh
  • Grant's Hill

    Grant's Hill
    Projected like a peninsula from the Bluff into the City. The hill was named for General James Grant killed in 1858
  • The Monongahela Wharf

    The Monongahela Wharf
    The Monongahela Wharf was used for boats comint to Pittsburgh for business
  • Neville B. Craig

    Neville B. Craig
    Neville B. Craig was the influential publisher and editor of Pittsburgh Gazetter. Graig also authored the city's first published history
  • A Great Fire

    A Great Fire
    In 1845, a great fire consumed about 24 blocks in the heart of the city. It spread eastward beyond Great Street into Pipetown before burning itself out on the side of Boyd's Hill. Nearly 1,000 buildings and homes were destroyed, About 12,000 people were left homeless, but only 2 lives were lost
  • Bridges

    Bridges
    German-born John Roebling d eveloped the first wire rope in 1841 on his farm in Saxonburg and adapted it to the canal aqueduct across the Aleghany River. In 1845-1847 he used wire rope in the design of the world's firstcable suspension bridge acroos The Monongahela River at Smithfield Street, which replaced a covered bridge lost in the great fire.
  • The Mystery

    The Mystery
    One of several antislavery weeklies published in Pittsburgh was The Mystery, edited by Martin R. Delany, Harvard Medical School graduate. This issue urged Pres. James Polk to accept African American soldiers for the Mexican War. A major with the 104th Regiment at Charleston, South Carolina, Delany was the first African American field officer to serve in the Civil War
  • Women Power!!!!

    Women Power!!!!
    The first Pittsburgh woman to dent the man's world was abolitionist Jane Grey Swisshelm. From 1848 to 1854, she published the Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter, mainly further her crusade against slavery and for women's right. Yhrough her effort, Pennsylvania passed a law allowin married women to own property.
  • The Welcoming

    The Welcoming
    A crowd gathered in East Liberty to welcome the first though-trsin from the East, which had scaled the maountains via inclined planes. In 1854, after a tunnel had been buit, the Gazette proclaimed, "Fifteen hours from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia ought to satisfy the fastest of this generation.
  • The Irishman

    The Irishman
    Born in Ireland, Thomas Mellon attended Western University hung out a law shingle in 1839. After 10 years as judge of common pleas court, he open T. Mellon and Sons Bank on Smithfield Street, which back much of Pittsburgh Industrial growth.
  • Hot Day

    Hot Day
    Nine deposits were made on a hot day, when the Pittsburgh Dollar Savings Institution opened its doors. It's Fourth Avenue building, designed by Philadelphia architect Isaac Hobbs and completed in 1871, still stands. Behind its red sandstone facade is the oldest intact interior space in downtown Pittsburgh, disigned in the classical style with pilasters lining the walls and a large medallion in the ceiling
  • Republicans

    Republicans
    Gazette editor David N. White published the first call for formation of a Pennsylvania Republican Party. He also was the founder of the national party, which completed organization in Pittsburgh at its first national convention.
  • The Cathedral

    The Cathedral
    Acclaimed as one of the finest church buildings in the United States, St.Paul Cathedral, consecrated in 1855, was at the corner of Grant Street and 5th Avenue, site of the present Two Mellon Center (Union Arcade).
  • Horse Straps

    Horse Straps
    On the horsecar's inaugural run the Gazette was pleased to observe interior straps, which a passenger could grasp and "ride as pleasantly as though he were sitting."
  • The Oil Business

    The Oil Business
    crude oil from the Titusville area, where Col. Edwin L. Drake had brougth in the first, was transported down the Allegheny River by flatboat. Oil traders like these met the boats and transacted business on the Duquesne Way Wharf. Out such operations came the Pittsburgh Petroleum Exchange.
  • The Iron City

    The Iron City
    Pittsburgh's industrial might grew during the Civil War, as business and residents mobilized to support the Union. Ten years after the war, a new kind of metal was born, one that would transform the Iron City into the Steel City.
  • Railroads

    Railroads
    By 1860, rails were being rolled in large quantities to meet the demands of rapidly expanding railroads, and Pittsburgh's iron industry boomed. Major furnaces and mills included those of the Kloman Brothers; Jones, Lauth and Company; and Laughlin and Company
  • The Major General

    The Major General
    One of Pittsburgh's outstanding military figures was Maj. Gen. James Scott Negley. A veteran of the Mexican War and later commander of the state militia, he saw action through the Shenandoah and Tennessee campaigns and won a promotion for heroic service at Murfreesboro.
  • Men And Their Guns

    Men And Their Guns
    The Rodman Gun was one of many produced during The Civil War by the C. Knapp Foundry. Named for Lt. Thomas J. Rodman, commander of the Allegheny Arsenal, it was the largest in the world. Pittsburgh factories supplied the Union with warships, armor plate, shot, shells, saddles, harnesses, wagons, gun carriages, caissons, clothing, and a variety of other war materials.
  • Helping The Wounded

    Helping The Wounded
    The Pittsburgh Sanitary Commission was organized early in the war to send medical aid to the front lines. On one such expedition, physician Felix R. Brunot was captured with a field hospital and held a short time in Libby Prison
  • Fighting to Producing

    Fighting to Producing
    After Civil War service in the Massachusetts Volunteers, Henry K. Porter began producing light switching locomotives in a LAwrenceville plant under the name Smith and Porter. The firm continued making locomotives, as many as 600 a year, until 1939, when it entered into widley diversified fields.
  • The First Air Brake

    The First Air Brake
    George Westinghouse was 19 when he obtained his first patent, for rotary steam engine. In 1869, at 22, he introduced the air brake, the first effective means for stopping a heavy trains, and started manufacturing it in a plant at Twenty-ninth Street and Liberty Avenue.
  • Coca Cola

    Coca Cola
    First to mass-produce coke in beehive ovens, a major factor in the opening of the steel industry, was Henry Clay Frick. At 14, in 1863, he was earning $3.50 a week as a errand boy. In five years, he was buying coal lands, determind to make coke. This went on through the panic of 1873, when coke dropped 90c a ton, forcing out many small companies.By the late 1880s, H.C. Frick Coke Company was nicknamed the Coke King
  • A Italianate house

    A Italianate house
    This Italianate house, designed by Isaac Hobbs for insurance agaent A. A. Carrier, later was the music-filled home of window-glass manufacturer Robert C. Schmertz, grandfather and namesake of the architect who wrote and sang such Pittsburgh folk songs as "Monongahela Sal."
  • The First Plant

    The First Plant
    On Braddock's Field, Andrew Carnegie opened the first plant to produce Bessemer steel on a mass scale. Its first order was 2,000 steel rails for the mill's namesake, Pennsylvania Railroad president J. Edgar Thompson.
  • Reign Of Anarchy

    Reign Of Anarchy
    Pennsylvania Railroad workers joined their brethren in other cities and struck to protest wage cuts and layoffs. When police and local militia sided with the strikers, troops were called from Philadelphia. On July 21, a revolver shot at the troops, they fired into the crowd killing 20 people and injuring 29. Millworkers, miners, and other workers soon joined the riot, and troops took cover in a roundhouse. The tumult left 61 people dead and 150 injured and $7 million in property damage.
  • The Incline

    The Incline
    Built in 1877 for $14,000 had attracted 500,000 passengers "without injury to any one"
  • Not All Work

    Not All Work
    Pittsburgh wasn't all work. In the 1870s, one might enjoy Carncross and Dixey's Minstrels at Liberty Hall, Madame Rentz's Female Minstrels at the Academy of Music, or Sarah Bernhardt and Helena Modjeska at the Opera House.
  • Growing Industries

    Growing Industries
    Following the war, Pittsburgh glass industry continued to grow, at one time comprising 62 seperate factories. Anumber were in Birmingham (South Side).
  • Gustav Lindenthal and The Smithfield Bridge

    Gustav Lindenthal and The Smithfield Bridge
    The Smithfield Street Bridge, designed by Gustav Lindenthal and as a successor to Roebling's span, seperated carriage and wagon traffic from horse drawn trolley's
  • Female Education

    Female Education
    Student body are pictured in 1886 in front of Berry Hall at Pittsburgh Female College, chartered in 1868 to give young women opportunities for higher education denied them by all-male Western University. In 1890 the name was changed to Pennsylvania Colleg for Women, and in 1955 it was changed again to Chatham College. In 2007, it became Chatham University.
  • The Architect's Courthouse and Jail

    The Architect's Courthouse and Jail
    Architect Henry Hobson Richardson build the Alleghany Country Courthouse and Jail, which instantly became one of America's most admired and imitated architectural works
  • Pittsburgh Labor Strike

    Pittsburgh Labor Strike
    One of the bloodiest strikes in American labor history began as a lockout by Henry Clay Frick at Carnegie Steel's Homestead Works. Frick ahd sealed off the mills- Fort Frick, the workers called it- and hired 300 pinkertons to protect it. As the guards approached the mill on river barges under cover of darkness, they were met by steelworkers and their families. It ended with at least 14 dead-11 steekworkers and 3 Pinkerton guards
  • The Guilded Age

    The Guilded Age
    In hilly Pittsburgh, the contrasts between the haves and have-nots was evident to all: the city was filling up with millworkers' frame houses along narrow, terraced, switchback streets, and with elegant mansions on broad, tree-lined avenues for mill executives and owners
  • The Ferris Wheel

    The Ferris Wheel
    It had 36 glass-enclosed coaches and rising some 250 feet (about 25 stories) above the Midway Plaissance of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago was a "big wheel from Pittsburgh". Designed and erected by engineer George W.WG. Ferris, it proved to be the fair's biggest attraction.
  • The Pirates

    The Pirates
    The 1893 second-place Pirates were one of Baseball's strongest-hitting clubs
  • The International Art Museum

    The International Art Museum
    Andrew Carnegie founded the Carnegie International in 1896. It would bring the art world to Pittsburgh and build a collection of contemporary art through purchase of the "Old Masters of tomorrow." Today it is the oldest exhibition of international contemporary art in North America, second oldest in the world.
  • University of Pittsburgh

    University of Pittsburgh
    Here is Schenley Farm in the spring of 1899, from Centre Avenue Hill, site of the University of Pittsburgh's upper campus after 1908. The Schenley Hotel, just opened the previous fall, is seen across the future site of soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall.
  • The Gathering

    The Gathering
    On the eve of formation of the United States Steel Corporation, 89 excutives of Carnegie companies gathered for dinner in the Schenley Hotel Ballroom
  • A Financial Empire

    A Financial Empire
    In 1880 Andrew William Mellon became head of T. Mellon and Sonss Bank. From it he and his brother, Richard B., with combined interests in coal, coke, steel, aluminum, oil, railroads, and more, developed one of the world's great financial empires around Mellon National Bank, incorporated in 1902. Mellon later was the secretary of the U.S, Treasury and ambassador to England.
  • The Heinz Business

    The Heinz Business
    From a three-quarter-acre horseradish patch he planted in 1869 in Sharpsburg, Henry J. Heinz built a multimillion-dollar food business. At his death in 1919, he was suceeded by his sons: Howard, as president, and Clifford, as vice president.
  • Luna Park

    Luna Park
    Luna Park opened on the old Aspinwall estate, with its main entrance at the present corner of Craig Street and Baum Boulevard. The park attracted crowds of up to 35,000 people nightly who came for the aerial acts, band concerts, and a shoot-the-chutes ride into a pool of water
  • Elected Mayor

    Elected Mayor
    George W. Guthrie was elected mayor in 1906 on a Democratic anticorruption platform and served four years. in 1913, Pres Woodrow Wilson appointed Guthrie ambassador to Japan, where he died four years later
  • The Pittsburgh Survey

    The Pittsburgh Survey
    As the steel industry continued to dominate Pittsburgh landscape and climate, the lives of workers and their families drew national attention with publicationof a Pittsburgh Survey, the first and most complete analysis of urban conditions in the United States.
  • The Alvin Theater

    The Alvin Theater
    Box seats full at the Alvin Theater on Sixth Street for a benefit showing of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Pirates Of Penzance. When the Alvin opened in 1891, the Gazette wrote that it was the finest theater in the state and had few equals in the country.
  • The President

    The President
    On a visit to dedicate Memorial Fountain in Arsenal Park, Pres. William H. Taft saw the Pirates lose to Chicago at Exposition Park. As he enjoyed Honus Wagner's double, his picture was taken by Frank Bingaman, and the next day it appeared in the Gazette-Times' Illustrated Sunday Magazine
  • Pirates Win!

    Pirates Win!
    The Pirates, under Fred Clarke, won 110 league games and the World Series. One reason was a bowlegged infielder from carnegie: John Peter Wagner, league batting champ in 8 of 12 seasons from 1900 through 1911.Honus Wagner and another all-time great, Ty Cobb of the Detroit Tigers, discuss bats during the 1909 series at the new Forbes Field
  • The Irene Kaufmann Settlement

    The Irene Kaufmann Settlement
    Founded in 1897 to aid immigrants settling in the Hill District, the Irene KAufmann Sttelment was named in memory of Henry Kaufmann's daughter when he provided a new building at the Centre Avenue, where Hill House now stands.
  • The One Man Rule

    The One Man Rule
    Andrew Carnegie built his one-man rule on a competitive system that rewarded the shrewdest and strongest with partnership. Henry Clay Frick, who ran Carnegie's steel mills, believed in corporate interdependence and rule by directors. This clash of philosophies led to a long feud
  • The Homestead Grays

    The Homestead Grays
    Cumberland W. Posey, son of one of the founders of Pittsburgh Courier, organized a group of Homestead steelworkers into what was to be one of baseball's greatest clubs and gate attractions. In later years, the Homestead Grays won eight out of nine National Negro League titles.
  • The Pennsylvania Station

    The Pennsylvania Station
    Railroads were a major mode of transit for some 50 years. in 1910, East Liberty alone was served by 104 trains a day, and in peak hours, railroads scheduled 12,323 seats out of downtown, compared with 23,942 on street railway lines.
  • Union News Stand

    Union News Stand
    For many years the Union News Stand at the Carnegie Depot served railroad travelers and commutes with newspapers, magazines, tobacco, candy, and parcel-checking service. It is shown around 1911, when it was operated by Leonard McMillen.
  • Wabash Terminal

    Wabash Terminal
    The triangular Wabash Terminal, at Ferry Street and Liberty Avenue, was a busy travel center from 1904 to 1913, the years of rise and fall of George Jay Gould's railroad empire.
  • Mellon Institute for Industrial Research

    Mellon Institute for Industrial Research
    Andrew William and Richard Beatty Mellon established Mellon Institute for Industrial Research. Later they supplied nearly $10 million for a new building at Fifth and Bellefield Avenue designed by Janssen and cocken and inspired by the Parthenon.
  • Gulf Oil

    Gulf Oil
    gulf Oil opened the world's first drive-in station on Baum Blvd. at the cornver of South St. Clair Street, East End. Previously, gas pumps were located at curbs and automobiles parked on city streets to be serviced.
  • Cultural Legacies

    Cultural Legacies
    Both Carnegie and Frick left cultural legacies in Pittsburgh, Carnegie with his musums, libraries, and university, and Frick with the Frick Art and Historical Center-the house, art, and carriage museums established by his daughter, Helen Clay Frick. In New York, Carnegie's mansion is now the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum and Frick's home is the Frick Collection
  • Women's Rights

    Women's Rights
    Tp gain support for women's right to vote, Jennie Bradley Roessing drove a "Liberty Bell" truck over the rural roads of Pennsylvania, traveling to and speaking in all 67 countries. The truck carried a Women's Liberty Bell, a life-size replica of Philadelphia's. A nationally known suffragist, Roessing and her husband, Frank, lived at 5506 Harriet St. in the East End in 1920, the year women voted here for the first time.
  • The Scientist

    The Scientist
    In the world of science, Dr. John A Brashear was known and honored for his precision instruments and lenses, which made possible many of the most important astronomical discoveries of this century. In his own South Side Slopes neighborhood, he was to all "Uncle John," a gentle, understanding man who loved children and was loved in return.
  • The Pennsylvania Calvary

    The Pennsylvania Calvary
    Troop H, 1st Pennsylvania Calvary, departed for duty on the Mexican border; it was formed in 1911 by Col. Charles C. "Buck" McGovern.
  • The Engineer

    The Engineer
    Dr, Frank Conrad, Westinghouse engineer began experimenting with "wireless telephone" . This led to amateur station 8XK in a garage behind his Wilkinsburg home. Thus KDKA had its birth.
  • A Dedication

    A Dedication
    With 1,000 soldiers standing at attention in front of the College of Fine Arts on the Carnegie Tech campus, the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory. The speaker, Dr. John A. Brashear, asked that it be named in memory of his good friend and fellow scientist Samuel P. Langley. In this structure, built in 29 days, servicemen were trained for wartime duty as airplane mechanics and riggers.
  • John M. Phillips

    John M. Phillips
    John M. Phillips founded the Pennsylvania Game Commission and cofounded the Boy Scouts of America. Four of the six children are those Phillips and his wife, Harriet Duff, a noted crusader for social and humanitarian causes.
  • Penn Avenue Parade

    Penn Avenue Parade
    Soldiers of the 80th Infantry Division parade on Penn Avenue in East Liberty after a year in France. Many Pittsburghers also saw action with the 28th Division. The Enright Theater, on Penn, was named for Thomas F. Enright of the North Side, the first American soldier killed in the war.
  • The Beginning of KDKA

    The Beginning of KDKA
    Will Rogers and Ziegfeld Follies cast members team up for a special broadcast from KDKA's first downtown studio. About 1,000 Pittsburghers tuned crystal sets to KDKA, based in East Pittsburgh, to hear returns of the Harding-Cox election, as furnished by telephone by the Post. That was the world's first scheduled radio broadcast
  • University of Pittsburgh

    University of Pittsburgh
    Frick Acres in Oakland, a gift from the Mellons, became the site of the University of Pittsburgh's new campus. The focal point would be the "Cathedral of Learning," a neo-Gothic skyscraper designed by Charles Klauder
  • King Tutankhamen's Tomb

    King Tutankhamen's Tomb
    After the opening of King Tutankhamen's Tomb, Kennywood Park changed the theme of it's Bug House dark ride to Tut's Tomb the following year.
  • Charles Lindbergh

    Charles Lindbergh
    Thousands of admires swarmed into Pitt Stadium to welcome the hero of the day, Charles Lindbergh. To the left of Lindbergh is Mayor Charles Kline. At far left is police superintendent Peter P. Walsh; second from right is Pittsburgh City Council president Daniel Winters. Virginia Pierce and Lucille Munn are the women in sashes
  • The Liberty Bridge

    The Liberty Bridge
    The $6 million Liberty Tubes project was completed in 1924, four years later country commissioner Joseph G. Armstrong's two grandsons undid a ribbon to open the companion Liberty Bridge. For the next 90 minutes, automobiles four abreast streamed across it, with three lanes heading into the tubes and along South Hills streets and roads lined with thousands of residents
  • The Great Depression

    The Great Depression
    A depression village sprang up between Penn and Liberty Avenues, extending from Sventeenth Street nearly to Eleventh Street. Next to it was old St. Patrick Church, a parish of Rev. James R. Cox. From there, a jobless army of 15,000 men, under Father Cox's command, marched to Washington to appeal to Pres. Herbert Hoover for relief. On return , Father Cox declared himself "Jobless Party" candidates for president.
  • A New Era Of Brewing

    A New Era Of Brewing
    Thirsty Pittsburghers began drinking in a new era of brewed conviviality. In barrooms everywhere, depression gloom was put to flight as legalized 3.2 beer was gulped down in great quanities.
  • The Democratic Mayor

    The Democratic Mayor
    Pittsburgh elected its first Democratic mayor, the erratic, controversial, and conservative William McNair. "A born windmill tilter," Time Magazine called him, and with his resignation in 1936, newsmen sorely missed his page 1 antics. A "Chief mourner" was Post-Gazette cartoonist Cy Hungerford, whose editorial cartoons began appearing in the Sun .
  • The Mellon King

    The Mellon King
    Richard King Mellon was the man who stood behind Renaissance I, as it later became known. He began his Mellon Bank career as messenger and rose to president in 1934 at 35. From his father he learned to "Live where you work and work where you live."
  • Miss America

    Miss America
    McKeesport's Henrietta Leaver won the Miss America crown and later posed in a bathing suit for Italian-born Pittsburgh sculptor Frank Vittor.
  • Science

    Science
    Westinghouse announced a new experimental project that it hoped would solve "much of the mystery surrounding the structure of matter." The following year the world's first industriel atom-smasher appeared in Forest Hills. There Dr. William E. Shoupp headed research leading to the discovery of photofission, the first use of gamma rays to split uranium atoms.
  • The Conductor

    The Conductor
    William Steinberg left Germany with Adolf Hitler's rise. In 1937, after helping to form the Israeli Philharmonic, he was named associate conductor of Toscanini's NBC Symphony. In 1952, he became Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra's permanent conductor. Under Steinberg's baton, the orchestra developed into one of the worl'd best children and cultural force in the community.
  • Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt

    Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt
    Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt came to town to inspect the Homestead Works and Mesta Machine plant, both important producers of war armaments, and to dedicate Terrace Village, then the nation's second -largest public housing project.
  • Shipbuidling

    Shipbuidling
    Pittsburgh was again a key shipbuilding center in World War 2. LSTs and other seagoing vessels by the hundred slid into the Ohio River from the Dravo Corporation's Neville Island Yard. On Memorial Day 1944, LST-750, financed entirely by $5 million worth of extra war bonds bought by Allegheny Country residents, was launched before a crowd of 25,000 people.
  • The Round-The-Clock Mayor

    The Round-The-Clock Mayor
    In his first year in office, a rash of utility, hotel, trolley, and other strikes plagued the city, and Mayor David L. Lawrence often was on a round-the-clock schedule trying to settle them.
  • The Snow Storm

    The Snow Storm
    The Pittsburgh-Gazette, Press, and Sun-Telegraph reported "snow flurries" were on the way. The next day they failed to publish. Pittsburgh was in snow up to its car tops-30.5 inches had fallen, the heaviest in local history. Five thousand stranded cars blocked trolley routes; National Guardsmen came in to patrol streets.
  • The Terrazzo Compass

    The Terrazzo Compass
    After Greater Pittsburgh Airport opened many families took their children to watch arrivals and take-offs from its observation decks. Inside, one of the features of the distinctive International Style terminal building was a terrazzo compass in the lobby.
  • The Doctor and The Vaccine

    The Doctor and The Vaccine
    Dr. Jonas Salk prepared to draw blood from children. As a part of vaccine testing to combat infantile paralysis in the early 1950s. From his University Of Pttsburgh Laboratory came a polio vaccine. Dr. Salk personally began the first inoculations to 137 children at Arsenal School Lawrenceville.
  • The Park

    The Park
    Mellon Square Park came from an innovative public-private alliance- that between Richard K. Mellon's world of high finance and industry and David L. Lawrence's world of government and polictics.
  • The Perfect Pticher

    The Perfect Pticher
    Harvey Haddix became the first pitcher in baseball history to throw 12 perfect innings- before being beaten by a double off the bat of Joe Alcock, Milwaukee Braves first baseman, in the 13th inning.
  • The Russian President

    The Russian President
    Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev, who spent 13 days in the United States visited the Mesta Machine plant in West Homestead. Three days later, in a nationally televised speech, Khruschev predicted the volume of Soviet industry would surpass that of the United States in a dozen years.
  • The Civic Arena

    The Civic Arena
    The $22.5 million Civic Arena takes shape in April 1960. Funded in part by department store owner Edgar J. Kaufmann and designed by Mitchell and Ritchey, it featured the world's largest retracable dome. Pittsburghers weighed in on what to call it: The Auditoridome, The Big Beanie, and the Renasasaucer. Civic Auditorium was its official name, but most people called it the Civic Arena.
  • The Chief Of Staff Of The United States Army

    The Chief Of Staff Of The United States Army
    Former U.S. Army chief of staff Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, who led American forces in Europe and Asia during World War 2, chaired the board of Mellon Institute for 5 years before retiring in 1960. He died in 1993 at age 98 at his Fox Chapel home.
  • Mr. Kennedy

    Mr. Kennedy
    John F. Kennedy made the last of his six political visits here, addressing about 8,300 people at the Pit Field House on behalf of Democratic candidates. He discarded his prepared remarks to blast away a Republicans. Some 300,00 people saw him pass in an open car en route from the airport a year before he was assassinated in Dallas.
  • Rachel Carson

    Rachel Carson
    Born in 1907 in the Allegheny River town of Springdale, Rachel Carson grew up in rural setting with a mother who nurtured her love of nature. Writer, scientist, and ecologist, Carson alerted the world to the dangers of pesticide misuse and began the modern enviromental movement with her 1962 book, Silent Spring.
  • The City of Champions

    The City of Champions
    The Steel City and the Smoky City had become the City og Champions. One of the champions was Pirate right-fielder Roberto Clemente, "Who played the game baseball with great passion," said his friend fellow Pirate Manny Sanguillen.
  • The Bishop

    The Bishop
    John Cardinal Wright was known for his ecumenicism while serving as bishop of Pittsburgh from 1959 to 1969, when he was elevated by Pope Paul VI.
  • Pedestrian Mall

    Pedestrian Mall
    The new East Liberty pedestrian mall, with fountains and pagoda-covered seating areas, wasdedicated in June. To create the mall, streets were closed to cars and narrowed to create wide sidewalks that, after the dedication, proved unnecessary: shoppers stayed home in drove.
  • The Riot

    The Riot
    Rioting in the Hill District and other neighborhoods following the slaying of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. resulted in 505 fires; the death of a women in Homestead, millions in thefts, trade losses, police, and National Guard costs; $620,000 in property damage; and 926 arrests.
  • The Jazz Man

    The Jazz Man
    Jazz pianist Walt Harper helped breathe life back into the Market Square nocturnal scene with the opening of his Attic nightclub. Harper gre up in a musical family in Schenley Heights and was mainstay at the Crawford Grill before opening his own club.
  • Anti War Protest

    Anti War Protest
    Protesters stage an antiwar demonstration in Market Square.
  • The Pittsburgh Symphony

    The Pittsburgh Symphony
    The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and other are groups found a new home in 1971 when the Loew's Penn Theatre was converted into Heinz Hall for the Performing Arts, a glittering palace of crystal chandeliers; white, gold-leafed Corinthian columns; and crimson carpet.
  • Agnes

    Agnes
    Tropical Storm Agnes struck the Pittsburgh area in june 1972. After 4 days of heavy rain, the rivers crested at 35.82 feet at the confluence-more than 10 feet above flood stage and the highest level since 1942. Point State Park was inundated, and many low-lying communities flooded. Damage was estimated at $45 miilion and would have been much higher but for the effective system of reservoirs and dams erected in the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers after the flood of 1946.
  • The New Football Coach

    The New Football Coach
    Johnny Majors was hired away from Ohio State University as head of football coach by the University Of Pittsburgh after the Panthers had suffered a dismal 1 and 10 seasons, posted a 6-5-1 record in his first season, and won an invitation to the Fiesta Bowl.
  • Mayor Flaherty

    Mayor Flaherty
    After the passing of David L. Lawrence on November 21, 1966, and Richard King Mellon on June 5, 1970, new leaders emerged in various sectors, with the political arena dominated by Mayor Pete Flaherty. Frequently embroiled in feuds and controversy, Flaherty made austerity the watchword of his administration and managed to avoid tax increases during his first 5 years in office.
  • Pittsburgh Water Fountain

    Pittsburgh Water Fountain
    The Fountain with its soaring 150-foot spray, was the final component at Point State Park, which incorporated a new Fort Pitt Museun in the re-created Monongahela Bastion of Fort Pitt and the outline, in Belgian block, of fort Duquesne in the grass.
  • The Pittsburgh Triangles

    The Pittsburgh Triangles
    The Pittsburgh Triangles and World Team Tennis came to the Civic Arena with Australia native and Wimbledon champion Evonne Goolagong Cawley as the main attraction. The team won the championship Bancroft Cup in 1975, but in 1976, owner Frank Fuhrer dissolved the Triangles, and 2 years later the league folded.
  • St. Jane Scully

    St. Jane Scully
    President of Carlow College from 1967 to 1982, became the first woman elected to the board of directors of Gulf Oil Corporation. During her tenure, the college, now a university, changed it's name from Mount Mercy to Carlow, honoring the Irish country the Sisters of Mercy emigrated from 1843.
  • The Pirate Broadcaster

    The Pirate Broadcaster
    Robert Ferris Prince, a great-nephew of engineer George Ferris, was a big wheel around Pittsburgh himself as a Pirates broadcaster from 1948 to 1975 and breifly again just before his death in 1985. Always the team's biggest fan, had a penchant for giving the players nicknames-like the dog, the Deacon, and the Quail-that made them seem like familiar fellows on the neighborhood sandlot.
  • Mayor Richard Caliguiri

    Mayor Richard Caliguiri
    A larger-than-life Mayor Richard Caliguiri is a bronze sentinel on the steps of the City-Country Building. A visionary leader and competent administrator who came up through the parks and recreation department to win a seat on Pittsburgh City Council, Caliguiri inspired inn 1980's downtown building boom known as Renaissance II
  • Myron Cope

    Myron Cope
    For 35 years, Myron Cope made steelers games crackle for fans who would turn down their televisions and turn up their radios to listen to "the ever-celebrated sand-blaster of the spoken word," as Gene Collier wrote. When the Post-Gazette asked readers to share their memories after his death February 2008, the response was overwhelming."He gave us a perfect blend of chuttzpa, modesty,comedy,compassion,passion, and intellect," Lon Santis wrote.
  • Steve Blass

    Steve Blass
    Steve Blass's pitching led the Pirates to an upset World Series win against the Baltimore Orioles in 1971. In 2 games he quieted the Baltimore bats, limiting their powerful lineup to one run in each game. Blass became a color commentator for the Pirates in 1983.
  • The End

    The End
    With the Steelers' victory, 42 years of patient waiting for a championship came to an end for owner Art Rooney, shown here in 1982.
  • The Skyscrapers and Obelisk

    The Skyscrapers and Obelisk
    Downtown saw a skyscraper boom in the 1980s, with the addition of 6 towers including PPG Place, Philip Johnson and John Burgee's crystalline neo-Gothic fantasy with an austere plaza whose monumental obelisk Post-Gazette column ist Peter Leo dubbed "The Tomb of the Unknown Bowler."
  • Willie Stargell

    Willie Stargell
    Pittsburghers bade a fond farewell to the Pirates' leading home run hitter of the 1970s when Willie Stargell retired in 1982. A hall of fame baseman who played his entire 20-year career with the Pirates, Stargell was a seven-time all-star who hit 475 home runs and drove in more than 1,550 runs.
  • Dr. Thomas Starzl

    Dr. Thomas Starzl
    Dr. Thomas Starzl, whose pioneering work as a researcher, surgeon, and teacher continues a give people around the world a second chance at life. Starzl's work elevated perceptions of Pittsburgh as a center of frontline medical research and the highest quality of health care, University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Mark Nordenberg noted when the university named one of its biomedical science towers in his honor in 2006.
  • Herbert Simon

    Herbert Simon
    Carnegie Mellon University professor Herbert Smion was a fixture for 52 years at the school he helped transform into a leader in computer science. His research on how people make decisions was honored with the 1978 Nobel Prize in economics, and his work with Allen Newell in the mid-1950s gained renown when they created the first "thinking machine" and launched the field of artificial intelligence.
  • The Unthinkable

    The Unthinkable
    Unthinkable to many, the once mighty Homestead Works, which employed 10,000, was reduced to rubble and hauled away. There was talk of an industrial park, but what finally sprang up 10 years later was a shopping center called the Waterfront, park strip mall, part Disneyesque Main Street complete with ersatz town square.
  • The Andy Warhol Museum

    The Andy Warhol Museum
    One of 4 Carnegie Museums, the And Warhol Museum opened on the North Side, celebrating the life and work of one of America's most influential artists. Showcasing a wide range of often provocative traveling exhibits and its own substantial collection of Warhol's work, the museum is a potent cultural force in the region and beyond.
  • Thee History Center

    Thee History Center
    When the senator John Heinz History Center opened in a former ice company. Pittsburgh gained a large historic space in which to examine and celebrate its past. It's coglike finial, designed by Pfaffmann and Associates, pays tribute in part to the city's engineering achievements.
  • Suzie McConnell-Serio

    Suzie McConnell-Serio
    Suzie McConnell-Serio, born into a big Brookline family of hoopsters, competes for the Cleveland Rockers against the Washington Mystics in August 2000 game shortly after announcing her retirement from the Rockers. She won Olympic medals in 1988 and 1992 and earned a 321-86 record as coach for 13 years at Oakland Catholic High School before coaching in the WMBA.
  • Mario Lemieux

    Mario Lemieux
    Mario Lemieux retired in 1997, but he returned to the ice in 2000, he retired again in 2006. Despite serious health problems, Lemieux battled with the Penguins for 17 seasons and became the first player to own his former team when he bought the Penguins out of bankruptcy in 1999.
  • The Three Rivers Stadium

    The Three Rivers Stadium
    The Three Rivers Stadium disappeared in a cloud of concrete dust. In its place came rugged Heinz Field and PNC Park, widely regarded as the best and most intimate traditional ballpark in Major League Baseball.
  • Mister Rogers

    Mister Rogers
    Educator, Presbyterian minister, and consummate gentleman, Fred Rogers hosted Mister Rogers' Neighborhood for 33 years in the Oakland studios of WQED, which became the nation's first public television station when it signed on in 1954.
  • August Wilson

    August Wilson
    August Wilson "spent his play-writing life depicting the natural elders and shamans of his culture, in the process gradually becoming the essential, soft-spoken epitome of those elders himself," Post-Gazette drama critic Christopher Rawson wrote after Wilson's death in 2005. The 10 plays of his Pittsburgh Cycle-one for each decade of the 20th century.
  • Jerome Bettis

    Jerome Bettis
    jerome Bettis's final season as a Steeler running back was a Lombardi trophy winner. "The bus," known for his strength and nimble footwork on the field, helped drive the team to a 21-10 victory over the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XL.
  • The Statues on Mount Washington

    The Statues on Mount Washington
    Guyasuta, chief of the Senecas, acted as guide to George Washington on his trip to Fort Leboeuf in 1753. James West's bronze sculpture, installed in 2006 on Mount Washington, depicts the reunion of the two men in 1770, when Washington came to survey lands in apparent violation of the Proclamation of 1763. Today the spawling, perhaps inevitable city at their feet looks to the future as it honors its complicated past.