“Pittsburgh town is a smoky ol’ town. Solid iron from McKeesport down. All I do is cough and choke. From the iron filings and the sulphur smoke.” — Woody Guthrie, 1940s
No more.
A quarter century after the steel mills that built the nation shut down in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s second largest city is a cleaner and greener place, endowed with culture. No longer dark and smoky, Pittsburgh has reclaimed itself.
Its energy now flows to medicine, technology, environment and finance. Its once blighted red light district now sports theaters, galleries, restaurants and residents. Last year, Forbes magazine called it America’s most livable city. But the grit, daring and determination that once mined coal and made girders to support the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge still course through veins here. Everywhere you turn, there are vestiges of the past and the people who were part of it.
A tradition of innovations
The Heinz History Center is a good place to start exploring. This industrial modern six-floor museum, a Smithsonian affiliate, was once an ice house. Its exhibit, “A Tradition of Innovation,” traces the city’s evolution through Stephen Foster’s songs, Rachel Carson’s environmental warnings, Dr. Thomas Starzl’s organ transplants and Mister Rogers.
Undergirding it all was steel. Andrew Carnegie, a tough Scottish immigrant short in stature but long on vision, built an industry here that both defined and defiled Pittsburgh for nearly a century. Italians, Poles, Germans, Ukrainians and Irish streamed in, ready to work long hours for a better life in a city that came to be known as “hell with the lid off.”
They, too, shaped the city as they clustered in neighborhoods that retain ethnic flavors today.
When steel was king
To get a handle on what life was like when steel was king, I headed southeast along the Monongahela River to Homestead. Ten miles of continuous steel mills once lined this valley, belching smoke, fire and fumes day and night.
Thousands of workers turned out a third of the nation’s steel. But times and technology changed. The mills aged, foreign steel was cheaper and we didn’t need as much of it. By 1986, the party was over. Homestead Works closed. Most of its buildings have been razed. A shopping mall, Waterfront, moved in, as did nature and herds of deer.
The Rivers of Steel Heritage Area uses what remains to tell the story in a small museum in its headquarters, the Bost Building. Twelve-hour shifts were common. Despite oppressive heat, workers wore long johns to absorb sweat. In the hottest parts of the plant, they wore fireproof suits and hinged wooden sandals under their boots; sometimes they got so hot they smoked.
Language was no barrier
There were fun times, too, as immigrant groups shared unfamiliar foods, dances, music and wedding rituals with cookie tables.
“Few people spoke English,” said Pat French (born Paina Jordonoff to Bulgarian parents) and immigrants banded together in ethnic clubs for companionship.
Today, French’s Bulgarian/Macedonian National Educational and Cultural Center in West Homestead sells 14 kinds of homemade soup every Saturday morning, September through May. On Saturday nights, they dance. Come at 7:30 p.m. and you can take a lesson before the fun begins. When their shifts ended, many workers headed for Homestead’s bars.
Jerry Miller has transformed what he says was a “really bad bar right outside the entrance to the mill” into a friendly bistro called Blue Dust, a name for powdery iron ore. He’ll regale you with way-back-when stories while you quaff beer and try his scrumptious smoked brisket.
Cool water and a heated battle
One of the few remaining structures is Homestead’s restored Pump House. It once sucked seven million gallons of water a day from the river to cool steel. Interpretive signs tell the story of the 1892 Battle of Homestead when unionized workers, locked out of the plant by Carnegie’s anti-union partner, Henry Clay Frick, rioted as Pinkerton agents arrived to guard the plant. Ten men were killed, seven Homesteaders and three Pinkertons.
A free cellphone walking tour of the Homestead Works is available, as well as one about the battle. For groups of 10 or more, a tour called Babushkas and Hard Hats can be arranged through Rivers of Steel.
An incredible hulk
Across the river from the Pump House, the Carrie Furnaces made the iron needed for steel. Two of the original seven blast furnaces remain, huge and hulking, dark and rusty.
Jim Kapusta was on the labor gang there for 19 years. Some days he worked in the dungeon loading coke and iron ore into Larry cars that fed the furnace. Other days he climbed to the top to make repairs. When the siren sounded, he stood back as molten iron poured through chutes into torpedo cars that hurtled down rails to the steel mill.
Now Kapusta, a volunteer, helps take people through the furnace when it opens for tours. “I love this place,” he says. “When I come back it’s like coming home.
Legacies
Although steel made Carnegie the second richest man in the world, he believed that “a man who dies rich dies disgraced.” As a philanthropist, he left great treasures to enrich the lives of the “toilers of Pittsburgh” who had made him wealthy. In the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, a dinosaur fossil bears his name: Diplodocus carnegiei.
Carnegie financed an expedition to Utah to “get one for Pittsburgh.” In bronze, Carnegie oversees the foyer of his opulent Music Hall. A mural in the Carnegie Art Museum preserves a patch of black grime from the days when smoke and soot coated everything in the city. And more than 3,000 Carnegie libraries dot Pittsburgh and the world.
Other legacies are found in Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods. 'Burgh Bits and Bites offers food and history walking tours in several of them. On a recent tour in Bloomfield, Pittsburgh’s Little Italy, our group climbed stairs and found ourselves in Maria Mercanti’s kitchen, where she shared her Italian heritage along with roasted red peppers, stuffed mushrooms and limoncello.
Another tour took us to The Strip, Pittsburgh’s gritty immigrant marketplace, for a gastronomic escapade of ethnic specialties. We sampled everything from Mancini’s pepperoni roll and S&D Polish Deli’s pierogies to Parma’s prosciutto and the Lahad family’s hummus, made fresh three times a day.
The beat goes on
A favorite Pittsburgh pastime is to ride the incline up to Mount Washington, where the homes are luxurious, the restaurants upscale and the view of the city aerial.
Few know that Mount Washington was once called Coal Hill. Its hillsides, riddled with coal mines, were part of the steel story. They were bare and ugly, traversed by rickety wooden steps. As the mines closed and trees grew back, the hillsides became dumps for everything from old tires to old cars.
In keeping with its “why not” spirit, Pittsburgh is reclaiming these hillsides, carving out Emerald View Park with trails and overlooks. It will be another legacy to the vision, hard work and determination that you find in this city.
For more information: www.visitpittsburgh.com
TAKE IN A BALLGAME
Don’t forget to take in a baseball game and see the Pittsburgh Pirates at PNC Park, one of the top 10 baseball stadiums in the nation according to Major League Baseball. For ticket availability and prices, visit the Pittsburgh Pirates’ page at http:// mlb.mlb.com/ index.jsp?c_id=pit.
Monday, July 18, 2011, 1:30 PM
