Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The Gateway to the West, Iron City, the Steel City, the high-tech city—Pittsburgh, which celebrated its 250th anniversary in 2008, has been called all of these. Noted as the founding city of public libraries and the home of artists such as impressionist painter Mary Cassatt to pop icon Andy Warhol, it is also a city known for its culture. For most of its history, however, Pennsylvania’s second-largest city was known as a gritty, working-class city, recognized as a leader in shipbuilding and iron and steel manufacturing.

Landscape

Situated in southwestern Pennsylvania, the city is located at the confluence of the Allegheny River to the north and the Monongahela River to the south. These two rivers meet to create the Ohio River. The three bodies of water are honored each summer in the Three Rivers Arts Festival and the Pittsburgh Three Rivers Regatta.

Bounded by the rivers, the city boasts more than seven hundred bridges. Its location on Interstate 76, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, also makes it accessible.

In January, Pittsburgh’s low temperatures reach an average of 20 degrees Fahrenheit and a high of 37 degrees Fahrenheit. In July, the average high temperature is 83 degrees Fahrenheit and the average low is 66 degrees Fahrenheit. The city receives about 41 inches of snow in a year. Located west of the Allegheny Mountains in the Allegheny Plateau, the city is about 100 miles south of Lake Erie, far enough to escape the lake-effect snows. However, it has the highest number of cloudy days in the state and is one of the cloudiest city in the nation.

Most of the town is in a narrow valley and is surrounded by high, forested bluffs. Originally, the triangle’s eastern edge included Grant’s Hill, which served as a lookout point and picnic spot before it eroded. The city has expanded by annexing suburbs and surrounding small towns and now has about ninety distinct neighborhoods. The city is at 760 feet above sea level, with hills on all sides.

People

According to the US Census Bureau, the city’s population was 302,898 in 2022, down from 333,000 in 2000. In 2022, about 63.1 percent of the population was White, 23.2 percent was Black or African American, 5.6 percent was Asian, and 3.6 percent was Hispanic or Latino.

The Great Migration during the 1920s was the movement of many African Americans from the South to northern cities. Pittsburgh was one of the cities that experienced a growth in the African American population, as black Americans came for jobs in industry.

Although the city recognizes dozens of different ethnic groups, the German ethnic heritage is the largest in Pittsburgh. About 20 percent of the people of Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, are of this heritage, which is even reflected in the city’s name; burg means fortress or castle in German.

It was the custom in Germany to use a hedgehog to predict when to plant. This tradition lives just outside of Pittsburgh, in Punxsutawney, where each February 2, a groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil predicts spring’s arrival. During its history, more than two hundred different breweries existed in Pittsburgh, where pilsner and lager were synonyms for German beer. Until 1942, the city had a German-lanugage newspaper.

Irish, Greek, Indian, Italian, and Polish cultures also flourish in the city’s distinct neighborhoods. There is an annual Folk Festival celebrating the contributions of all the various ethnicities. Organizations such as the Japan-America Society of Pennsylvania, the Hispanic Center, and the African American Cultural Center attest to the city's rich heritage. Groceries and restaurants in the historic area known as the Strip District showcase the foods of various ethnic groups.

Economy

The city has always been an industrial hub. According to the US Army Corps of Engineers, as of 2020, the latest year for which data is available, the amount of cargo shipped and received through the Port of Pittsburgh had reached 15.5 million tons yearly. In addition, the Pittsburgh International Airport is the second-largest in the state. However, the number of passengers and national airport ranking have slid during the past two decades. To remedy this, as of 2023, the airport was constructing a $1.4-billion terminal. As of May 2023, the total number of passengers was 69,396.

Shipbuilding was an early industry in Pittsburgh. By 1787, the town’s third-largest industry (after iron and textiles) was boatbuilding. That year, eight shipbuilding companies made about $40,000 worth of canoes, flatboats, keelboats, and schooners. Meriwether Lewis spent a few weeks in the city waiting for the completion of the largest ship for the 1803 Voyage of Discovery (also known as the Lewis and Clark Expedition).

The city had access to rivers for shipping and coal, a source of inexpensive fuel. Taking advantage of these resources, at the close of the 1700s, glass factories began to produce so-called Pittsburgh glass. Sixty-two factories were in existence following the Civil War. They made useful items such as bottles and windowpanes, as well as flint glass, a type of clear crystal. The Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, now known as PPG Industries, was established in the early 1800s.

In 1869, Henry J. Heinz planted a horseradish patch that would eventually develop into the Heinz Company, famous for ketchup, relishes, and soups. During World War II, however, a secret room was reserved for an emergency project where women made glider wings for troop planes.

Unquestionably, the city is most known for its iron and steel industries that supported workers and their families for generations. The first iron furnace had been built in 1792 and the first foundry in 1803. Known as the Iron City by 1850, the town soon became the Steel City. Andrew Carnegie began producing steel on a mass scale in 1875, using the Bessemer process.

During the world wars, the city’s workers prospered. In the early 1940s, Pittsburgh mills generated 95 million tons of steel, about a quarter of national total, and $19 billion worth of war goods and munitions.

A total of more than 41,379 businesses were in the city in 2022. Women owned almost one-third of them, while minorities owned 18 percent. Many companies, such as Alcoa, American Eagle Outfitters, and Kraft Heinz, have corporate headquarters in Pittsburgh. Major employment sectors, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in 2023, include education (with noted colleges and universities such as Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh) and health services; trade, transportation, and utilities; and professional and business services. Information technology has become a significant industry. In March 2023, the Pittsburgh area had an unemployment rate of 2.9 percent, according to the BLS.

Pittsburgh has always been a communication center. In 1786, John Scull founded the Pittsburgh Gazette, the first newspaper west of the Allegheny Mountains, with a printing press that he had transported over those mountains. In 1920, the city broadcast the first commercial radio show on station KDKA. The Westinghouse Company, founded by Pittsburgh inventor George Westinghouse, provided the funding. The city began WiFi Downtown Pittsburgh in 2006, which provides wireless internet access for anyone downtown.

Landmarks

Pittsburgh is a mecca for patrons of the sciences, arts, culture, and history. Andrew Carnegie’s influence is apparent in the libraries and museums that his philanthropy endowed. In 1895, Carnegie donated the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh to the city; it now has eighteen branches. The Carnegie Museum of Natural History provides samples of habitats, birds, minerals, and dinosaurs. The Carnegie Science Center houses an Omnimax theater, a planetarium, and changing interactive exhibits. The mansion that Carnegie called home is now the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.

Another hands-on option exists for children at the Children’s Discovery Garden in Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, housed in one of the largest glass buildings in the country. Living creatures are on display at the National Aviary, home to more than four hundred bird species, some of which are endangered or threatened in the wild.

History buffs come to the city to visit the Senator John Heinz History Center, now an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institute. It is the largest history museum in Pennsylvania, dedicated to the story of the western region of the state. Within the museum is the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum.

Pittsburgh is also home to the Andy Warhol Museum, where changing exhibits chronicle the artist's life and work. The art of those who were influenced by him or within his circle is also displayed. The Frick Art and Historical Center is housed at the former home of Henry Clay Frick, one of Carnegie’s associates responsible for the actual running of the steel mills.

History

The Gateway to the West was originally a fort built on the western frontier. Both the French and the British vied for control of the area. In 1753, Major George Washington, then a twenty-one-year-old member of the Virginia militia, reported on the location as well situated for a fort because of its strategic command of both the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, with plenty of timber for building.

The following year, the French built Fort Duquesne on the site during the French and Indian War. Four years later, they surrendered the fort to General John Forbes, who renamed it Fort Pitt, to honor William Pitt the Elder, a British statesman. The largest and last of five forts that the British and French constructed in competing for dominance of the region, it was completed in 1761.

Settlers began arriving after a boundary dispute between Pennsylvania and Virginia was resolved. In 1764, John Campbell, a landowner who also helped to found Louisville, Kentucky, laid out the city of Pittsburgh around the fort. Following the American Revolution, settlers traveling down the Ohio River stopped in Pittsburgh to be outfitted for the journey.

The Penn family, which had been granted the land, began to sell some of it in 1783. By 1796, Pittsburgh had 800 citizens and 230 houses. Pittsburgh officially became a city, rather than a borough, in 1816.

Fire was the peril of all early towns, the buildings of which were primarily built of wood. In 1845, a fire destroyed about twenty-four blocks in the city’s heart. Although only two people died in the blaze, twelve thousand were left homeless and almost a thousand homes and buildings were consumed.

That same year, John Roebling began constructing the first cable suspension bridge, replacing a covered bridge across the Monongahela River that was destroyed in the fire. Two decades later, Roebling would design the Brooklyn Bridge.

The city became famous for an 1877 railroad strike protesting layoffs and wage cuts. Subsequent riots resulted in $7 million property damage, sixty-one people dead, and 150 injured. In 1881, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) had its beginnings in the city, though their quest for fair treatment of workers seemed doomed during the 1892 lockout at Carnegie Steel’s Homestead Works, during which fourteen people died. Although the Pinkerton guards hired to maintain the lockout were forced to flee, manager Henry Clay Frick hired replacement workers, breaking the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steelworkers, a labor union formed in 1876. Labor causes received a setback from which they did not recover for three decades.

In the fall of 1946, the city passed antismoke laws to counter industrial pollution. It became, in 1957, the first city in the United States to use nuclear power for generating electricity. During the 1970s, as a result of decrease in demand and foreign competition, the steel industry began a steep decline; more than 75,000 jobs were lost in the region from 1974 to 2002. Economic development projects have since transformed the city into a high-tech haven.

In October 2018, Pittsburgh became the site of a mass shooting when a lone gunman opened fire on a synagogue in the city, killing eleven people.

Trivia

• In 1842, Charles Dickens, a British author touring the United States, traveled to Pittsburgh on a packet boat from Harrisburg.
• The Hannibal Guards was a troop of black men who rushed to join the Union Army when the Civil War began. President Abraham Lincoln did not originally allow black recruits to fight. By the end of the war, however, about 8,600 African Americans from Pennsylvania had served.
• At Chicago’s 1893 Columbian Exposition, more than a million people paid to ride “the big wheel from Pittsburgh”—an invention of George W. G. Ferris.
• Television Hall of Fame inductee and ordained Presbyterian minister Fred Rogers arrived in 1953 to work at the country’s first community-supported television station, WQED. He attended Pittsburgh Theological Seminary as well as the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Child Development. He developed the television show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood in 1966; when he retired in 2001, he returned to Pittsburgh.

Bibliography

Gadomski, Michael P. Pittsburgh: A Renaissance City. Schiffer Publishing, 2015.

Kidney, Walter C. Pittsburgh Then and Now. Thunder Bay Press, 2004.

Lorant, Stefan. Pittsburgh: The Story of an American City. Esselmont Books, 1999.

"Navigation: Who Uses the Rivers?" US Army Corps of Engineers Pittsburgh District, www.lrp.usace.army.mil/Missions/Navigation.aspx. Accessed 10 May 2019.

Perelman, Dale Richard. Steel: The Story of Pittsburgh’s Iron & Steel Industry, 1852–1902. The History Press, 2014.

"Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania." QuickFacts, United States Census Bureau, www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/pittsburghcitypennsylvania/RHI125221. Accessed 20 Feb. 2024.

"Pittsburgh Area Economic Summary." Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Dept. of Labor, 1 May 2023, www.bls.gov/regions/mid-atlantic/summary/blssummary‗pittsburgh.pdf. Accessed 20 Feb. 2024.

Pittsburgh International Airport Summary of Airline Traffic December 2023. Allegheny County Airport Authority, 2023, chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://flypittsburgh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/December‗2023‗Airport‗Stats‗Report.pdf. Accessed 20 Feb. 2024.

“QuickFacts: Pittsburgh City, Pennsylvania.” United States Census Bureau, www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/pittsburghcitypennsylvania/PST045218. Accessed 20 Feb. 2024.