Pittsburgh

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Pittsburgh sits at the exact spot where two rivers die and a third begins. The Allegheny comes from the northeast, the Monongahela from the southeast, and where they touch, the Ohio River is born. That convergence, known simply as "the Point," has made Pittsburgh one of the most contested pieces of land in American history. French soldiers from Quebec marched to claim it in 1749. The British lost a fort here. A young George Washington came as an aide to General Braddock and watched his forces get routed nearby. The city that grew from this meeting of waters would go on to produce half the nation's steel output, host a G20 summit, give the world a zombie film genre, and coin a dialect so distinctive that The New York Times compared it to the Galapagos Islands. How did a county seat of 302,971 people become all of that? The answer begins with rivers, iron, and a name bestowed by a Scottish general who probably said it like Edinburgh.

• 2. Named By a Scotsman

  ›

  John Forbes, the Scottish general who finally took the forks of the Ohio in 1758, named the settlement after William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham. Because Forbes was Scottish, he most likely pronounced it the way Scots say Edinburgh: ˈpɪtsbərə, PITS-bər-ə. The name has carried a small identity crisis ever since. From 1891 to 1911, the federal government officially recognized the city's name as "Pittsburg," dropping the final h. Local government and most organizations refused to comply, keeping the h alive through the entire period. A public campaign eventually reversed the federal decision. Even so, the Pittsburg Press continued spelling the city without the h until 1921, long after the official reinstatement. Before Forbes arrived, the Seneca people called the confluence of rivers Diondega or Jaödeogë'. Shannopin's Town, an 18th-century Lenape settlement, sat roughly between what is now 30th Street and 39th Street, along the south bank of the Allegheny. The first known European to describe the forks in writing was Michael Bezallion, in a 1717 manuscript, and by the time Forbes marched in, the British were already calling a 1769 survey of the future city the "Manor of Pittsburgh." The borough was officially incorporated on the 22nd of April 1794, and the incorporating act stipulated the name would be "the borough of Pittsburgh for ever."

• 3. Smoke and Steel

  ›

  By 1815, Pittsburgh was producing significant quantities of iron, brass, tin, and glass, a transformation driven in part by the War of 1812, which cut off British goods and forced American industry to meet its own needs. The Great Fire of 1845 destroyed over a thousand buildings. The city rebuilt, partly with labor from Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine. By 1857, Pittsburgh's factories numbered 1,000 and consumed 22 million coal bushels every year. Andrew Carnegie began steel production in 1875 at the Edgar Thomson Steel Works in North Braddock, adopting the Bessemer process to drive up output. By 1910, Pittsburgh accounted for between one-third and one-half of national steel output and ranked as the eighth-largest city in the United States. For part of the 20th century, Pittsburgh trailed only New York City and Chicago in corporate headquarters employment; it also led the country in stockholders per capita. During World War II, area mills ran 24 hours a day to produce 95 million tons of steel for the war effort, generating the highest levels of air pollution in the city's near-century of heavy industry. The journalist James Parton had described Pittsburgh in 1868 as "hell with the lid off." By the war years, that reputation was being resurrected precisely when the city wanted to be seen as an arsenal of democracy. In January 1901, J. P. Morgan and attorney Elbert H. Gary merged Carnegie Steel with several other companies to create U.S. Steel, and Pittsburgh's identity as the Steel City was complete.

• 4. The March 1936 Flood

  ›

  On March 17 and 18, 1936, Pittsburgh endured the worst flooding in its recorded history. Days of heavy rain combined with melting snow poured into the city's rivers. Flood levels peaked at 46 feet. At least 62 people died. That catastrophe, combined with decades of industrial soot, eventually pushed city leaders into action. After World War II ended, Pittsburgh launched what it called the "Renaissance" -- a clean air and civic revitalization project that cleaned up both the air and the rivers. A second initiative, "Renaissance II," followed in 1977 with a focus on cultural and neighborhood development. The flooding risk never fully disappeared. Residents living near Pittsburgh's roughly 1,400 creeks and streams still face occasional flooding, and a comprehensive flood control program for the region has been estimated to cost around $50 billion. The rivers also carry a more chronic problem: nine billion gallons of untreated waste and stormwater flow into them each year. Pittsburgh's combined sewer system, built in the early 1900s, mixes stormwater and wastewater, and even a tenth of an inch of rain can trigger overflow. The Allegheny County Sanitary Authority, operating under a consent decree from the EPA, received approval in 2019 for a proposed $2 billion upgrade. A separate lead crisis in 2016 drew national attention to Pittsburgh Water, the municipal authority, which responded by adding orthophosphate to the treatment process. By 2025, Pittsburgh Water reported a lead level of just 2 parts per billion -- the lowest ever recorded in the city's drinking water.

• 5. Reinvention After Steel

  ›

  Beginning in the early 1980s, the steel and electronics industries imploded during a wave of national industrial restructuring. Massive layoffs followed mill and plant closures. The city's population, which had peaked at 680,000 people in 1950, never recovered to that high. Yet Pittsburgh did not become a ruin. Since the 1990s, the city has built its economy around healthcare, education, and technology. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is now Pittsburgh's largest employer, with 48,000 employees. All hospitals, outpatient clinics, and physician offices combined account for approximately 10% of regional jobs -- a share that reportedly exceeds what the steel industry represented in the 1970s. In 2007, the annual payroll of the region's technology industries collectively exceeded $10.8 billion. By 2010, the region housed 1,600 technology companies. Google occupies research and technology offices in a refurbished Nabisco factory built between 1918 and 1998, a complex now known as Bakery Square; the original large dough mixer was left standing. The city is home to ten Fortune 500 companies, including Alcoa, PNC Financial Services, and The Kraft Heinz Company. A 2014 National Bureau of Economic Research report named Pittsburgh the second-best U.S. city for intergenerational economic mobility. During the late 2000s recession, Pittsburgh added jobs when most American cities were losing them, and between 2006 and 2011, its metropolitan housing prices appreciated by more than 10% -- the highest rate among the 25 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the country, 22 of which saw housing values decline.

• 6. A City Built on Bridges and Steps

  ›

  Pittsburgh has 446 bridges, more than any other city in the United States, earning it the nickname the "City of Bridges." The downtown area, called the Golden Triangle, holds 30 skyscrapers, nine of which exceed 500 feet. The tallest, the U.S. Steel Tower, reaches 841 feet. The terrain itself is extraordinary: more than a quarter of Pittsburgh's neighborhood names reference hills, heights, or similar features, and the city contains 800 sets of outdoor public stairways with 44,645 treads and 24,090 vertical feet of climb. The Great Allegheny Passage and Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Towpath connect Pittsburgh directly to downtown Washington, D.C., some 335 miles away, via a continuous bike and running trail. The Cultural District spans 14 blocks along the Allegheny River. The North Side, once an independent city called Allegheny City until its annexation in 1907, hosts the Andy Warhol Museum, the National Aviary, Acrisure Stadium, and PNC Park. Squirrel Hill is known as the hub of Jewish life in Pittsburgh and is home to approximately 20 synagogues. The Hill District was home to photographer Charles Harris and various African-American jazz clubs. The Strip District functions as an open-air marketplace by day and a nightlife destination after dark. Pittsburgh's urban forest was valued in a 2011 analysis at between $10 and $13 million in annual benefits; the city invests $850,000 each year in tree planting and maintenance.

• 7. Music, Words, and the Zombie Film

  ›

  George A. Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, shot in and around Pittsburgh, is recognized as the birthplace of the modern zombie film genre. The city's creative output extends well beyond horror. The National Negro Opera Company, founded in Pittsburgh, was the first all-African American opera company in the United States and helped launch the career of Leontyne Price. Billy Strayhorn, who grew up in the city, shaped 20th-century jazz. Wiz Khalifa's "Black and Yellow" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2011. Hip hop artist Mac Miller named his debut album Blue Slide Park after the slide in Frick Park. Pittsburgh's punk and hardcore tradition produced bands like Anti-Flag and Aus Rotten; Code Orange, a more recent metal act from the city, received a Grammy nomination. Electronic music also has deep roots here: raves in the 1990s drew thousands of attendees, and the after-hours Hot Mass party has run since 2012, a venue that electronic artist Yaeji credits as formative during her time at Carnegie Mellon University. On the literary side, Gertrude Stein and Rachel Carson were both born in the Pittsburgh area. August Wilson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, grew up in the Hill District, and the August Wilson House remains there. David McCullough, a two-time Pulitzer winner and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, was born and raised in Pittsburgh. Terrance Hayes, winner of the 2010 National Book Award and a 2014 MacArthur Foundation Fellow, earned his MFA at the University of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh's position as an early center of community-owned and networked commercial television gave the country Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, while Hellbender Vinyl, the largest vinyl record manufacturer in Pennsylvania, operates in the city today.

• 8. Sports and the Black and Gold

  ›

  Pittsburgh is the only city in the United States where all major professional sports teams share the same colors: black and gold, which are also the official colors of the city itself. The Steelers, Penguins, and Pirates all wear them, as does the Riverhounds soccer club. The Pittsburgh Steelers have been owned by the Rooney family since the team's founding in 1933 and have had only three head coaches since the 1960s: Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher, and Mike Tomlin. The team won four Super Bowls in a six-year span in the 1970s and holds the league record of six Super Bowl victories. The Pittsburgh Penguins have won five Stanley Cup championships, in 1991, 1992, 2009, 2016, and 2017. Until moving to PPG Paints Arena in 2010, the team played at the Civic Arena, informally called "The Igloo," which was the world's first retractable domed stadium. The Pittsburgh Pirates, founded in 1881 as the Pittsburgh Alleghenies, were in the first World Series in 1903 and have won five World Series titles. In 1971, the Pirates became the first Major League team to field an all-minority starting lineup. The team also holds the MLB record for consecutive losing seasons, with 20 straight from 1993 until 2012. Golf also runs deep in the region: Foxburg Country Club, dating from 1887, is the oldest U.S. golf course in continuous use. Oakmont Country Club, in the suburbs, holds the record for most times hosting the U.S. Open at nine. Pittsburgh hosted the first professional football game and the first World Series, and in September 2009, it hosted the G20 summit.