North Park is home to a Gravity Hill where cars appear to roll uphill. Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall is the largest memorial in the country dedicated to all branches of military service.
Want even more facts? Check out our list of Pennsylvania facts and our list of facts about Philadelphia. Jim Cheney is the creator of UncoveringPA. Based in the state capital of Harrisburg, Jim frequently travels around Pennsylvania and has visited, written about, and photographed all 67 counties in the state. He has also traveled to more than 30 different countries around the world.
You forgot to add George Blanda to your list of western PA famous football players. He was born and raised in Youngwood, PA. Technically, he was born in the suburb of Latrobe, but he did make a name for himself in Pittsburgh. A really big upset. It was a solo homerun in the bottom of the ninth. It was Bill Mazeroski But thanks for remembering. I created a 50 year collection on the history of the part of Pittsburgh called Shadyside.
Remember so much. My dad was from Mt wash. Enlightened employers such as Heinz and Westinghouse were the exception. Two of the most violent strikes in U. The more violent of the two was the great railroad strike of It was all for naught; unions were not to be a factor until the s. The major enterprises launched then drove the Pittsburgh economy to new heights for the next 50 years. So strong were these Pittsburgh corporations that they carried nearly the entire weight of the local economy.
Because the jobs were so attractive, they drew potential entrepreneurs away from smaller businesses. Again, population tells the story. In , the population of Pittsburgh peaked at , By , it was ,— roughly half. Some of this was migration to the county. But here the story is equally bleak. In , Allegheny County had a population of 1,, and in , 1,, Between and , the U. In , Pittsburgh had the second oldest demographic profile of any U. Economic development was not a high priority.
When Pittsburgh exited World War II in , the Point at the confluence of the three rivers was a tangle of railroads and warehouses. Through a combination of the steel mills and the universal use of soft coal for home heating, the sky was often black at 9 a. If you think Beijing is bad today, you should have seen Pittsburgh in Despite a vital economy, Pittsburgh was dying at its core and in danger of losing the head offices of the companies that made it great.
Two very different men formed a compact and a shared vision to put Pittsburgh back on track. David L. Lawrence — , mayor of Pittsburgh from to , was the foremost political figure this city ever produced. Richard King Mellon — the son of R. Mellon, was the chairman of Mellon National Bank, and through his vast holdings was the natural leader of the Pittsburgh business establishment.
With the able assistance of Wallace Richards and Arthur Van Buskirk, and through the instrument of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, they gave birth to what became known as the Pittsburgh Renaissance. Smoke-control legislation was passed, the skies cleared, and the industrial jungle at the Point was razed and replaced with a park and several new office buildings. In a brief 15 years, the face of Pittsburgh changed dramatically. It came in the form of a crippling day, industry-wide, steel strike.
It opened the door to the first major influx of imported steel. It was a problem that would eat away at the industry for the next 40 years, eventually bankrupting 29 steel companies. Still, the Pittsburgh industrial behemoth hummed along very well into the s, but beneath the surface, the tectonic plates of fundamental economic change were grinding on. Pittsburgh-based steel companies were expanding capacity but not in Pittsburgh. Light sheet steel for appliances and automobiles was their most important market, and it was best served from steel plants in the Midwest.
By the late s, over 75 percent of the steel-making capacity near Pittsburgh was shuttered. Sprawling facilities running along the Monongahela and Ohio rivers toppled like ten pins: the Pittsburgh Steel plant in Monessen, U.
Who is to blame for this tragedy? Everybody and nobody. The demise of the steel industry in Pittsburgh played out with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy. Our loss of jobs was a body blow such as no major American city had ever received, and worse was to come.
For a while, we consoled ourselves with the fact that Pittsburgh was the third-largest corporate headquarters city in the country. The brawn may have gone elsewhere, but the company brains remained in Pittsburgh.
Sadly, though, more than 75 percent of our major corporations in are no longer here today. Steel, Allegheny Technologies, H. Now, we live in a different Pittsburgh, with a cleaner and more beautiful environment. The region is a tourist destination. And our economy is more balanced than ever before. We can no longer be called a company town. Numerous opportunities in venture-backed start-ups and growing small businesses often are more appealing than a slow rise up the escalator of corporate hierarchy.
Like two-headed Janus, we may look forward to a promising future and, with great pride and a little nostalgia, look back to a time long ago when Pittsburgh forged the industrial might that made America the greatest nation in the world. Dietrich was a native of Pittsburgh, who wrote about Pittsburgh history and its greatest industrial leaders and historic philanthrophists.
He received his undergraduate education at Princeton, and earned a doctorate in political science from the University of Pittsburgh in Email address. Generic filters Hidden label. Hidden label. Archive Contact Subscribe Advertise About. Dietrich II. By , Pittsburgh was a bustling industrial town and inland port. Henry Clay Frick , grandson of western Pennsylvania whiskey distillers, made his fortune building and operating beehive coking ovens where coal was turned into coke, a necessary raw material in steel making.
Soon, the two men came together to form the Carnegie Steel Co. The history of America's labor union movement added some dark days during the Homestead Steel Strike and subsequent armed conflict of the Battle of Homestead.
From these dark days, though, grew modern labor practices and laws to protect workers. While the riverfront steel mills of the Mon Valley are mostly gone now, the generosity of industrial giants like Carnegie and Frick, food manufacturer H. What remained are the Frick family home, known as Clayton , as well as a masterful art collection. Up through the mids, Pittsburgh was the nation's eighth-largest city, accounting for nearly half of national steel output.
The city's population swelled to over a half million with European immigration via Ellis Island. Pittsburgh's patchwork of neighborhoods still retains an ethnic character reflecting the city's immigrant history. Even though Pittsburgh faced rough times in the s and 80s when steel production all but disappeared from its landscape, it has since re-invented itself as a hub for education , medicine , small manufacturing and research.
Under that law, only a majority of the combined voters was required. The following year, voters in Pittsburgh and Allegheny voted on consolidation, with Pittsburgh favoring it and Allegheny opposing.
However, Pittsburgh's numerical superiority meant that a majority was in favor. In , the U. Supreme Court ruled that the law was valid and Allegheny was annexed on December 9 of that year.
Allegheny now constitutes the north side of Pittsburgh. The many steel mills and other industrial concerns in Pittsburgh once produced so much smoke and soot that the city earned the title "Smoky City. The Allegheny Observatory is a University of Pittsburgh research facility.
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