History of Pittsburgh

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Pittsburgh in 1902. Lithograph by Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler.

The history of Pittsburgh began with centuries of Native American civilization in the modern Pittsburgh region, known as Jaödeogë’ in the Seneca language.[1] Eventually, European explorers encountered the strategic confluence where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the Ohio, which leads to the Mississippi River. The area became a battleground when France and Great Britain fought for control in the 1750s. When the British were victorious, the French ceded control of territories east of the Mississippi.

Following

railway riots it was the site of the most violence and damage in any city affected by the nationwide strikes
of that summer. Workers protested against cuts in wages, burning down buildings at the railyards, including 100 train engines and more than 1,000 cars. Forty men were killed, most of them strikers. By 1911, Pittsburgh was producing half the nation's steel.

Pittsburgh was a Republican party stronghold until 1932. The soaring unemployment of the

New Deal Coalition under powerful Democratic mayors. In World War II, it was the center of the "Arsenal of Democracy
", producing munitions for the Allied war effort as prosperity returned.

Following World War II, Pittsburgh launched a clean air and civic revitalization project known as the "Renaissance." The industrial base continued to expand through the 1960s, but after 1970 foreign competition led to the collapse of the steel industry, with massive layoffs and mill closures. Top corporate headquarters moved out in the 1980s. In 2007 the city lost its status as a major transportation hub. The population of the

Pittsburgh metropolitan area
is holding steady at 2.4 million; 65% of its residents are of European descent and 35% are minorities.

Native American era

Native Americans lived near the forks of the Ohio for thousands of years. These are some important villages, most c. 1750s, and earlier sites.

For thousands of years, Native Americans inhabited the region where the Allegheny and the Monongahela join to form the Ohio.

Hopewell culture.[3]

By 1700 the Haudenosaunee, the Five Nations-based south of the Great Lakes in present-day New York, held dominion over the upper Ohio valley, reserving it for hunting grounds. Other tribes included the Lenape, who had been displaced from eastern Pennsylvania by European settlement, and the Shawnee, who had migrated up from the south.[4] With the arrival of European explorers, these tribes and others had been devastated by infectious diseases from Europe, such as smallpox, measles, influenza, and malaria, to which they had no immunity.[5]

A map of Western Pennsylvania made in 1680 from the Darlington Collection

In 1748, when

Mohican.[6]

Herr's Island, in what is now the Lawrenceville neighborhood in the city of Pittsburgh.[7]
: 289 

Chartier's Town was a Shawnee town established in 1734 by Peter Chartier. Kittanning was a Lenape and Shawnee village on the Allegheny, with an estimated 300–400 residents.[9]

Early colonization (1747–1763)

British and French Forts, 1753–1758, and the routes of the two British campaigns to take the forks of the Ohio

The first Europeans arrived in the 1710s as traders. Michael Bezallion was the first to describe the forks of the Ohio in a manuscript in 1717, and later that year European traders established posts and settlements in the area.[10] Europeans first began to settle in the region in 1748, when the first

Braddock's Road a few years later through present-day New Stanton. In the event, the colonists did not succeed in turning the path into a wagon road much beyond the Cumberland Narrows pass
before they came into conflict with Native Americans. The colonists later mounted a series of expeditions in order to accomplish piecemeal improvements to the track.

The nearby Native American community of

Celeron de Bienville, a French officer, traveled down the Allegheny and Ohio to bolster the French claim to the region.[12] De Bienville warned away British traders and posted markers claiming the territory.[13]

In 1753,

French Creek, from which it was possible at high water to float to the Allegheny. By summer, an expedition of 1,500 French and Native American men descended the Allegheny. Some wintered at the confluence of French Creek and the Allegheny. The following year, they built Fort Machault at that site.[14]

Alarmed at these French incursions in the Ohio Valley,

Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia sent Major George Washington to warn the French to withdraw.[15] Accompanied by Christopher Gist
, Washington arrived at the Forks of the Ohio on November 25, 1753.

George Washington's sketch of Monongahela River, Allegheny River (named as the upper Ohio), and French Creek that accompanied his journal (1753) in which he recorded his impressions:[16]

As I got down before the Canoe, I spent some Time in viewing the Rivers, & the Land in the Fork, which I think extremely well situated for a Fort; as it has the absolute Command of both Rivers. The Land at the Point is 20 or 25 feet (7.6 m) above the common Surface of the Water; & a considerable Bottom of flat well timber'd Land all around it, very convenient for Building.

Proceeding up the Allegheny, Washington presented Dinwiddie's letter to the French commanders first at Venango, and then Fort Le Boeuf. The French officers received Washington with wine and courtesy, but did not withdraw.[15]

Governor Dinwiddie sent Captain

fort at the Forks of the Ohio. On February 17, 1754, Trent began construction of the fort, the first European habitation[17] at the site of present-day Pittsburgh. The fort, named Fort Prince George, was only half-built by April 1754, when over 500 French forces arrived and ordered the 40-some colonials back to Virginia. The French tore down the British fortification and constructed Fort Duquesne.[14][15]

Governor Dinwiddie launched another expedition. Colonel Joshua Fry commanded the regiment with his second-in-command, George Washington, leading an advance column. On May 28, 1754, Washington's unit clashed with the French in the

Tanaghrisson, unexpectedly executed the French commanding officer, Ensign Joseph Coulon de Jumonville. The French pursued Washington and on July 3, 1754, George Washington surrendered following the Battle of Fort Necessity. These frontier actions contributed to the start of the French and Indian War (1754–1763), or, the Seven Years' War, a global confrontation between Britain and France fought in both hemispheres.[15][19]

Fort Pitt Blockhouse, dating to 1764, is the oldest structure in Pittsburgh.[15]

In 1755, the

Battle of the Monongahela, the French inflicted heavy losses on the British, and Braddock was mortally wounded.[21] The surviving British and colonial forces retreated. This left the French and their Native American allies with dominion over the upper Ohio valley.[15]

On September 8, 1756, an

Etymology of Pittsburgh).[11][15] The British garrison at Fort Pitt made substantial improvements to its fortification.[11] The French never attacked Fort Pitt and the war soon ended with the Treaty of Paris and French defeat.[15]
They ceded their territories east of the Mississippi River.

Gateway to the West (1763–1799)

In 1760, the first considerable European settlement around Fort Pitt began to grow. Traders and settlers built two groups of houses and cabins, the "lower town," near the fort's ramparts, and the "upper town," along the Monongahela as far as present-day Market Street. In April 1761, a census ordered by Colonel Henry Bouquet and conducted by William Clapham counted 332 people and 104 houses.[21][22]: 148 

After Britain's victory in the French and Indian War, increasing dissatisfaction among Native Americans with the continuing encroachment of settlers on lands that had been agreed would be Indian-occupied (both in the 1758 Treaty of Easton and in the Royal Proclamation of 1863 the British authorities had decreed that there would be no British-American settlements west of the Alleghenies, but the authorities had been unable or unwilling to enforce these decrees) led to the outbreak of

Fort Pitt Blockhouse, which still stands, the sole remaining structure from Fort Pitt and the oldest authenticated building west of the Allegheny Mountains.[15]

Fort Pitt, 1795

The

Fort Stanwix Treaty of 1768, ceding the lands south of the Ohio to the British Crown.[21] European expansion into the upper Ohio valley increased. An estimated 4,000 to 5,000 families settled in western Pennsylvania between 1768 and 1770. Of these settlers, about a third were English-American, another third were Scotch-Irish, and the rest were Welsh, German and others.[23] These groups tended to settle together in small farming communities, but often their households were not within hailing distance. The life of a settler family was one of relentless hard work: clearing the forest, stumping the fields, building cabins and barns, planting, weeding, and harvesting. In addition, almost everything was manufactured by hand, including furniture, tools, candles, buttons, and needles.[23] Settlers had to deal with harsh winters, and with snakes, black bears, mountain lions, and timber wolves. Because of the fear of raids by Native Americans, the settlers often built their cabins near, or even on top of, springs, to ensure access to water. They also built blockhouses, where neighbors would rally during conflicts.[4]

Increasing violence, especially by the

Seneca villages along the upper Allegheny.[4]

With the war still ongoing, in 1780 Virginia and Pennsylvania came to an agreement on their mutual borders, creating the state lines known today and determining finally that the jurisdiction of Pittsburgh region was Pennsylvanian. In 1783, the Revolutionary War ended, which also brought at least a temporary cessation of border warfare. In the 1784

Purchase Line to Pennsylvania.[4]

Map of Pittsburgh in 1795

After the Revolution, the village of Pittsburgh continued to grow. One of its earliest industries was

keelboats were capable of traveling upriver.[24]

The village began to develop vital institutions. Hugh Henry Brackenridge, a Pittsburgh resident and state legislator, introduced a bill that resulted in a gift deed of land and a charter for the Pittsburgh Academy on February 28, 1787. The academy later developed as the University of Western Pennsylvania (1819) and since 1908 has been known as the University of Pittsburgh.[25]

Many farmers distilled their corn harvest into whiskey, increasing its value while lowering its transportation costs. At that time, whiskey was used as a form of currency on the frontier. When the federal government imposed an excise tax on whiskey, Western Pennsylvania farmers felt victimized, leading to the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. Farmers from the region rallied at Braddock's Field and marched on Pittsburgh. The short-lived rebellion was put down, however, when President George Washington sent in militias from several states.[20]

The town continued to grow in manufacturing capability. In 1792, the boatyards in Pittsburgh built a sloop, Western Experiment.[26] During the next decades, the yards produced other large boats. By the 19th century, they were building ocean-going vessels that shipped goods as far as Europe. In 1794, the town's first courthouse was built; it was a wooden structure on Market Square.[11] In 1797, the manufacture of glass began.[27]

Year City Population[11][21][28][29]: 80 [30]
1761 332
1796 1,395
1800 1,565

Iron City (1800–1859)

Second Court House, completed 1841[31]

Commerce continued to be an essential part of the economy of early Pittsburgh, but increasingly, manufacture began to grow in importance. Pittsburgh was located in the middle of one of the most productive coalfields in the country; the region was also rich in petroleum, natural gas, lumber, and farm goods.

Blacksmiths forged iron implements, from horse shoes to nails. By 1800, the town, with a population of 1,565 persons, had over 60 shops, including general stores, bakeries, and hat and shoe shops.[11]

The 1810s were a critical decade in Pittsburgh's growth. In 1811, the first steamboat was built in Pittsburgh. Increasingly, commerce would also flow upriver. The War of 1812 catalyzed growth of the Iron City. The war with Britain, the manufacturing center of the world, cut off the supply of British goods, stimulating American manufacture.[11] In addition, the British blockade of the American coast increased inland trade, so that goods flowed through Pittsburgh from all four directions. By 1815, Pittsburgh was producing $764K in iron; $249K in brass and tin, and $235K in glass products.[11] When, on March 18, 1816, Pittsburgh was incorporated as a city, it had already taken on some of its defining characteristics: commerce, manufacture, and a constant cloud of coal dust.[32]

Other emerging towns challenged Pittsburgh. In 1818, the first segment of the National Road was completed, from

Pennsylvania Main Line Canal was completed, making Pittsburgh part of a transportation system that included rivers, roads, and canals.[27]

Manufacture continued to grow. In 1835, McClurg, Wade and Co. built the first locomotive west of the Alleghenies. Already, Pittsburgh was capable of manufacturing the most essential machines of its age. By the 1840s, Pittsburgh was one of the largest cities west of the mountains. In 1841, the Second Court House, on Grant's Hill, was completed. Made from polished gray sandstone, the court house had a rotunda 60 feet (18 m) in diameter and 80 feet (24 m) high.[33]

Great Fire of Pittsburgh, 1845

Like many burgeoning cities of its day, Pittsburgh's growth outstripped some of its necessary infrastructure, such as a water supply with dependable pressure.

North Side).[27] In 1854, the Pennsylvania Railroad
began service between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

Despite many challenges, Pittsburgh had grown into an industrial powerhouse. An 1857 article provided a snapshot of the Iron City:[31]

  • 939 factories in Pittsburgh and Allegheny City
    • employing more than 10K workers
    • producing almost $12M in goods
    • using 400 steam engines
  • Total coal consumed — 22M bushels
  • Total iron consumed — 127K tons
  • In steam tonnage, third busiest port in the nation, surpassed only by New York City and New Orleans.
Monongahela River Scene, 1857.[31]
Year City Population City Rank[35]
1800 1,565 NA
1810 4,768 31
1820 7,248 23
1830 12,568 17
1840 21,115 17
1850 46,601 13
1860 49,221 17

Steel City (1859–1946)

See also: Pittsburgh in the American Civil War

The iron and steel industry developed rapidly after 1830 and became one of the dominant factors in industrial America by the 1860s.

Scots Irish leadership

Ingham (1978) examined the leadership of the industry in its most important center, Pittsburgh, as well as smaller cities. He concludes that the leadership of the iron and steel industry nationwide was "largely Scotch Irish". Ingham finds that the

Scotch Irish held together cohesively throughout the 19th century and "developed their own sense of uniqueness."[36]

New immigrants after 1800 made Pittsburgh a major Scotch-Irish stronghold. For example, Thomas Mellon (b. Ulster 1813–1908) left northern Ireland in 1823 for the United States. He founded the powerful Mellon family, which played a central role in banking and industries such as aluminum and oil. As Barnhisel (2005) finds, industrialists such as James Laughlin (b. Ulster 1806–1882) of Jones and Laughlin Steel Company comprised the "Scots-Irish Presbyterian ruling stratum of Pittsburgh society."[37]

Technology

In 1859, the Clinton and Soho iron furnaces introduced

Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock began to make steel rail using the new Bessemer process.[39]

Industrialists such as

T. Mellon & Sons Bank, founded in 1869, helped to finance an aluminum reduction company that became Alcoa.[39]

Ingham (1991) shows how small, independent iron and steel manufacturers survived and prospered from the 1870s through the 1950s, despite competition from much larger, standardized production firms. These smaller firms were built on a culture that valued local markets and the beneficial role of business in the local community. Small firms concentrated on specialized products, particularly structural steel, where the economies of scale of larger firms were no advantage. They embraced technological change more cautiously than larger firms. They also had less antagonistic relations with workers and employed a higher percentage of highly skilled workers than their mass-production counterparts.[41]

Geography of industrialization

Beginning in the 1870s, entrepreneurs transformed the economy from small, craft-organized factories located inside the city limits to a large integrated industrial region stretching 50 miles across Allegheny County. The new industrial Pittsburgh was based on integrated mills, mass production, and modern management organization in steel and other industries. Many manufacturers searched for large sites with railroad and river accessibility. They purchased land, designed modern plants, and sometimes built towns for workers. Other firms bought into new communities that began as speculative industrial real estate ventures. Some owners removed their plants from the central city's labor unions to exert greater control over workers. The region's rugged topography and dispersed natural resources of coal and gas accentuated this dispersal. The rapid growth of steel, glass, railroad equipment, and coke industries resulted in both large mass-production plants and numerous smaller firms. As capital deepened and interdependence grew, participants multiplied, economies accrued, the division of labor increased, and localized production systems formed around these industries. Transportation, capital, labor markets, and the division of labor in production bound the scattered industrial plants and communities into a sprawling metropolitan district. By 1910 the Pittsburgh district was a complex urban landscape with a dominant central city, surrounded by proximate residential communities, mill towns, satellite cities, and hundreds of mining towns.[42]

Representative of the new industrial suburbs was the model town of

United States Steel Corporation.[43]

Machine politics

Progressive movement statewide and supported Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 election.[44]

Germans

During the mid-19th century, Pittsburgh witnessed a dramatic influx of

H.J. Heinz Company in 1869. Heinz was at the forefront of reform efforts to improve food purity, working conditions, hours, and wages,[45] but the company bitterly opposed the formation of an independent labor union.[46]

Labor unions

As a manufacturing center, Pittsburgh also became an arena for intense labor strife. During the

Pittsburgh Railway Riots.[47] Militia and federal troops were called to the city to suppress the strike. Forty men died, most of them workers, and more than 40 buildings were burned down, including the Union Depot of the Pennsylvania Railroad
. Strikers also burned and destroyed rolling stock: more than 100 train engines and 1000 railcars were destroyed. It was the city with the most violence of any affected by the strikes.

Burning of Pennsylvania Railroad and Union Depot, Pittsburgh, July 21–22, 1877

In 1892, a confrontation in the steel industry resulted in 10 deaths (3 detectives, 7 workers) when

H.J. Heinz workers, with the assistance of the Catholic Radical Alliance
.

Carnegie

Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.[39]

The third (and present) Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail was completed in 1886. In 1890, trolleys began operations.[27] In 1907, Pittsburgh annexed Allegheny City, which is now known as the North Shore.[27]

Steelworker watching molten steel being poured into a mold, J&L Steel, Pittsburgh, May 1942.

Early 20th century

By 1911, Pittsburgh had grown into an industrial and commercial powerhouse:[21]

  • Nexus of a vast railway system, with freight yards capable of handling 60K cars
  • 27.2 miles (43.8 km) of harbor
  • Yearly river traffic in excess of 9M tons
  • Value of factory products more than $211M (with Allegheny City)
  • Allegheny county produced, as percentage of national output, about:
    • 24% of the pig iron
    • 34% of the Bessemer steel
    • 44% of the open hearth steel
    • 53% of the crucible steel
    • 24% of the
      steel rails
    • 59% of the structural shapes

Prohibition

During the Prohibition era, 1920 to 1933, Pittsburgh was a hotbed of bootlegging and illicit alcohol consumption.[49][50] Several factors fed into resistance to Prohibition, including a large immigrant population, anti-establishment animosity dating to the Whiskey Rebellion, fragmented local government, and pervasive corruption.[50] The Pittsburgh crime family controlled significant portions of the illegal alcohol trade.

During that time, Prohibition Administrator John Pennington and his federal agents engaged in 15,000 raids, arrested over 18,000 people and closed down over 3,000 distilleries, 16 regular breweries, and 400 'wildcat' breweries.[50][51] Even the term "Speakeasy," meaning an illegal drinking establishment, is said to have been coined at the Blind Pig in nearby McKeesport, Pennsylvania.[50][52]

The last distillery in Pittsburgh, Joseph S. Finch's distillery, located at South Second and McKean streets, closed in the 1920s.[53] In 2012, Wigle Whiskey opened, becoming the first since the closure of Finch's distillery.[53]

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette produced a large web feature on this period in the city's history.[54]

Environment

During the late 19th century, city leaders debated the responsibility and expense of creating a waterworks system and disposal of sewage. Downstream users complained about Pittsburgh's dumping of sewage into the Ohio River. Allegheny County cities did not stop discharging raw sewage into rivers until 1939. Pittsburgh's smoke pollution, seen in the 1890s as a sign of prosperity, was recognized as a problem in the Progressive Era and was cleared up in the 1930s–1940s. Steel plants deposited mountains of slag until 1972, especially in Nine Mile Run Valley.[55]

In November 1927, 28 people were killed and hundreds were wounded in an

explosion of a gas tank.[56]

To escape the soot of the city, many of the wealthy lived in the

Shadyside and East End neighborhoods, a few miles east of downtown. Fifth Avenue
was dubbed "Millionaire's Row" because of the many mansions lining the street.

On March 17 and 18, 1936, Pittsburgh suffered the worst flood in its history, with flood levels peaking at 46 feet. This catastrophe killed 69 victims, destroyed thousands of buildings, caused $3B (2006 dollars) in damages, and put more than 60,000 steelworkers out of work.[57]

High culture

Oakland became the city's predominant cultural and educational center, including three universities, multiple museums, a library, a music hall, and a botanical conservatory. Oakland's University of Pittsburgh erected what today is still the world's fourth-tallest educational building, the 42-story Cathedral of Learning.[58] It towered over Forbes Field, where the Pittsburgh Pirates played from 1909 to 1970.[39]

Downtown Pittsburgh panorama, from 1920.

New immigrants and migrants

Between 1870 and 1920, the population of Pittsburgh grew almost sevenfold, with a large number of European immigrants arriving to the city. New arrivals continue to come from Britain, Ireland, and Germany, but the most popular sources after 1870 were poor rural areas in southern and eastern Europe, including Italy, the Balkans, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Russian Empire. Unskilled immigrants found jobs in construction, mining, steel mills and factories. They introduced new traditions, languages, and cultures to the city, creating a diversified society as a result. Ethnic neighborhoods developed in working-class areas and were built on densely populated hillsides and valleys, such as

Strip District, the city's produce distribution center, still boasts many restaurants and clubs that showcase these multicultural traditions of Pittsburghers.[39]

African Americans

Further information: Great Migration (African American)

The years 1916–1940 marked the largest migration of African Americans to Pittsburgh during the Great Migration from the rural South to industrial cities of the Northeast and Midwest. These migrants came for industrial jobs, education, political and social freedom, and to escape racial oppression and violence in the South. Migrants going to Pittsburgh and surrounding mill towns faced racial discrimination and restricted housing and job opportunities. The black population in Pittsburgh jumped from 6,000 in 1880 to 27,000 in 1910. Many took highly paid, skilled jobs in the steel mills. Pittsburgh's black population increased to 37,700 in 1920 (6.4% of the total) while the black element in Homestead, Rankin, Braddock, and others nearly doubled. They succeeded in building effective community responses that enabled the survival of new communities.[60][61] Historian Joe Trotter explains the decision process:

Although African-Americans often expressed their views of the Great Migration in biblical terms and received encouragement from northern black newspapers, railroad companies, and industrial labor agents, they also drew upon family and friendship networks to help in the move to Western Pennsylvania. They formed migration clubs, pooled their money, bought tickets at reduced rates, and often moved ingroups. Before they made the decision to move, they gathered information and debated the pros and cons of the process....In barbershops, poolrooms, and grocery stores, in churches, lodge halls, and clubhouses, and in private homes, southern blacks discussed, debated, and decided what was good and what was bad about moving to the urban North.[62]

The newly established Black communities nearly all endured, apart from Johnstown where blacks were expelled in 1923. Joe Trotter explains how the Blacks built new institutions for their new communities in the Pittsburgh area:

Black churches, fraternal orders, and newspapers (especially the Pittsburgh Courier); organizations such as the NAACP, Urban League, and Garvey Movement; social clubs, restaurants, and baseball teams; hotels, beauty shops, barber shops, and taverns, all proliferated.[63]

The cultural nucleus of Black Pittsburgh was Wylie Avenue in the

Negro National League in the 1930s and 1940s.[39]

1930s

Pittsburgh was a Republican stronghold starting in the 1880s,

New Deal Coalition. By 1936, Democratic programs for relief and jobs, especially the WPA, were so popular with the ethnics that a large majority voted for the Democrats.[65][66]

Joseph Guffey, statewide leader of the Democrats, and his local lieutenant David Lawrence gained control of all federal patronage in Pittsburgh after Roosevelt's landslide victory in 1932 and the election of a Democratic mayor in 1933. Guffey and Lawrence used the New Deal programs to increase their political power and build up a Democratic machine that superseded the decaying Republican machine. Guffey acknowledged that a high rate of people on relief was not only "a challenge" but also "an opportunity." He regarded each relief job as Democratic patronage.[67]

1940s

Pittsburgh was at the center of the "Arsenal of Democracy" that provided steel, aluminum, munitions and machinery for the U.S. during World War II. Pittsburgh's mills contributed 95 million tons of steel to the war effort. The increased production output created a workforce shortage, which resulted in African Americans moving en masse during the Second Great Migration from the South to the city in order to find work.[11]

Postwar

David Lawrence, a Democrat, served as mayor of Pittsburgh from 1946 to 1959 and as Pennsylvania's governor from 1959 to 1963.[68] Lawrence used his political power to transform Pittsburgh's political machine into a modern governmental unit that could run the city well and honestly.[69] In 1946 Lawrence decided to enforce the Smoke Control Ordinance of 1941 because he believed smoke abatement was crucial for the city's future economic development. However, enforcement placed a substantial burden on the city's working-class because smoky bituminous coal was much less expensive than smokeless fuels. One round of protests came from Italian-American organizations, which called for delay in enforcing it. Enforcement raised their cost of living and threatened the jobs of their relatives in nearby bituminous coal mines. Despite dislike of the smoke abatement program, Italian Americans strongly supported the reelection of Lawrence in 1949, in part because many of them were on the city payroll.[70]

Year City Population City Rank[35]
1860 49,221 17
1870 86,076 16
1880 156,389 12
1890 238,617 13
1900 321,616 11
1910 533,905 8
1920 588,343 9
1930 669,817 10
1940 671,659 10
1950 676,806 12

Renaissance I (1946–1973)

"Pittsburgh Renaissance" redirects here. For the basketball team, see Pittsburgh Rens.
The multi-purpose Three Rivers Stadium was built in 1970 as part of the Renaissance I project. It was imploded in 2001.

Rich and productive, Pittsburgh was also the "Smoky City," with smog sometimes so thick that streetlights burned during the day

Urban Renewal projects that transformed the city[11]
in unforeseen ways.

"Renaissance I" began in 1946. Title One of the Housing Act of 1949 provided the means in which to begin. By 1950, vast swaths of buildings and land near the Point were demolished for Gateway Center. 1953 saw the opening of the (since demolished) Greater Pittsburgh Municipal Airport terminal.[27]

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the lower

Civic Arena, which opened in 1961.[73]
Other than one apartment building, none of the other buildings planned for the cultural center were ever built.

In the early 1960s, the neighborhood of East Liberty was also included in Renaissance I Urban Renewal plans, with over 125 acres (0.51 km2) of the neighborhood being demolished and replaced with garden apartments, three 20-story public housing apartments, and a convoluted road-way system that circled a pedestrianized shopping district. In the span of just a few years during the mid-1960s, East Liberty became a blighted neighborhood. There were some 575 businesses in East Liberty in 1959, but only 292 in 1970, and just 98 in 1979.

Preservation efforts by the

Allegheny Center Mall
and apartments.

The city's industrial base continued to grow in the post-war era

Golden Triangle, Point State Park was completed.[77]
Although air quality was dramatically improved, and Pittsburgh's manufacturing base seemed solid, questions abound about the negative effects Urban Renewal continues to have on the social fabric of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, however, was about to undergo one of its most dramatic transformations.

Like most major cities, Pittsburgh experienced several days of rioting following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968. There were no further major riots, although tension remained high in the inner-city black neighborhoods.[78]

Reinvention (1973–present)

Downtown Pittsburgh in July 1974
A similar picture of Downtown Pittsburgh from Mt. Washington in December 2005

During the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. steel industry came under increasing pressure from foreign competition and from American mini-mills constructed inexpensively using salvaged steel.[citation needed] Manufacture in Germany and Japan was booming. Foreign mills and factories, built with the latest technology, benefited from lower labor costs and powerful government-corporate partnerships, allowing them to capture increasing market shares of steel and steel products. Separately, demand for steel softened due to recessions, the 1973 oil crisis, and increasing use of other materials.[11][79] The era began with the RIDC's "Building on Basics" report in 1974.[80]

Collapse of steel

Further information: Steel crisis

Free market pressures exposed the U.S. steel industry's own internal problems, which included a now-outdated manufacturing base that had been over-expanded in the 1950s and 1960s, hostile management and labor relationships, the inflexibility of

work-rule reforms, oligarchic management styles, and poor strategic planning by both unions and management. In particular, Pittsburgh faced its own challenges. Local coke and iron ore deposits were depleted, raising material costs. The large mills in the Pittsburgh region also faced competition from newer, more profitable "mini-mills" and non-union mills with lower labor costs.[79]

Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the steel industry in Pittsburgh began to implode along with the deindustrialization of the U.S.[81] Following the 1981–1982 recession, for example, the mills laid off 153,000 workers.[79] The steel mills began to shut down. These closures caused a ripple effect, as railroads, mines, and other factories across the region lost business and closed.[82][83] The local economy suffered a depression, marked by high unemployment and underemployment, as laid-off workers took lower-paying, non-union jobs.[84] Pittsburgh suffered as elsewhere in the Rust Belt with a declining population, and like many other U.S. cities, it also saw white flight to the suburbs.[85]

In 1991 the Homestead Works was demolished, replaced in 1999 by The Waterfront shopping mall. As a direct result of the loss of mill employment, the number of people living in Homestead dwindled. By the time of the 2000 census, the borough population was 3,569. The borough began financially recovering in 2002, with the enlarging retail tax base.

Corporations

Top corporate headquarters such as

Westinghouse (1996) and Rockwell International
(1989) were bought out by larger firms, with the loss of high paying, white collar headquarters and research personnel (the "brain drain") as well as massive charitable contributions by the "home based" companies to local cultural and educational institutions. At the time of the Gulf Oil merger in 1985 it was the largest buyout in world history involving the company that was No. 7 on the Fortune 500 just six years earlier. Over 1,000 high paying white collar corporate and PhD research jobs were lost in one day.

Today, there are no steel mills within the city limits of Pittsburgh, although manufacture continues at regional mills, such as the

Braddock
.

Higher education

Pittsburgh is home to three universities that are included in most under-graduate and graduate school national rankings,

La Roche College, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Trinity School for Ministry (an Episcopal seminary) and the Community College of Allegheny County
.

Beginning in the 1980s, Pittsburgh's economy shifted from heavy industry to services, medicine, higher education, tourism, banking, corporate headquarters, and high technology. Today, the top two private employers in the city are the

West Penn Allegheny Health System (13,000 employees).[87][88]

Civic improvements

Despite the economic turmoil, civic improvements continued. In the mid-1970s, Arthur P. Ziegler, Jr. and the

Forest City Enterprises which created an endowment to help support its restoration efforts and educational programs. Each year the staff and docents of Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation introduce more than 10,000 people – teachers, students, adults, and visitors – to the architectural heritage of the Pittsburgh region and to the value of historic preservation.[89]

During this period, Pittsburgh also became a national model for community development, through the work of activists such as Dorothy Mae Richardson, who founded Neighborhood Housing Services in 1968, an organization that became the model for the nationwide NeighborWorks America. Activists such a Richardson shared the aim of Landmarks to rehabilitate Pittsburgh's existing built landscape rather than to demolish and redevelop.

In 1985, the

Heinz Field and PNC Park, despite being rejected by voter referendum. In 2010, PPG Paints Arena, replaced the Civic Arena, which at the time was the oldest arena in the National Hockey League.[90]

Also in 1985, Al Michaels revealed to a national TV audience how Pittsburgh had transformed itself from an industrial rust belt city.[91]

Pittsburgh today

Present-day Pittsburgh, with a

World's Most Livable Cities.[92] Tourism has recently boomed in Pittsburgh with nearly 3,000 new hotel rooms opening since 2004 and holding a consistently higher occupancy than in comparable cities. Medicine has replaced steel as a leading industry.[93] Meanwhile, tech giants such as Apple, Google, IBM Watson, Facebook, and Intel have joined the 1,600 technology firms choosing to operate out of Pittsburgh. As a result of the proximity to CMU's National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC), there has a boom of autonomous vehicles companies. The region has also become a leader in green environmental design, a movement exemplified by the city's convention center. In the last twenty years the region has seen a small but influential group of Asian immigrants, including from the Indian sub-continent. It has been generally considered as the most recovered city from the rust belt. [94]

Year City Population City Rank[35] Population of the
Urbanized Area[95]
1950 676,806 12 1,533,000
1960 604,332 16 1,804,000
1970 540,025 24 1,846,000
1980 423,938 30 1,810,000
1990 369,879 40 1,678,000
2000 334,563 51 1,753,000
2010 307,484[96] 61[96] 1,733,853 (Ranked 27th, between
Sacramento)[97]

Jurisdiction timeline

  • Possibly as early as 17,000 BCE, and until approximately 1750 CE, the area was home to numerous Native American groups, including the Lenape and Seneca tribes.
  • 1669 Claimed for the French Empire by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle.
  • 1681 King Charles claims the forks for Pennsylvania with 5 degrees west of the Delaware.
  • 1694 Arnout Viele a Dutch trader explores the area.[98]
  • 1717 Settled by European traders, primarily Pennsylvanians; dispute occurs between Virginia and Pennsylvania.
  • 1727 Joncaire visits with a small French force.
  • 1748 Both Pennsylvanian Conrad Weiser visits and the Kingd approves the Ohio Company for Virginia.
  • 1749 Frenchman Louis Blainville deCeleron sails by on the Allegheny and Ohio burying lead plates claiming the area for France.
  • 1750 Cumberland County Pennsylvania founded, though its jurisdiction is not governable.
  • 1753 George Washington visits en route to Fort LeBeouf.
  • 1754 French Forces occupy the area and construct Fort Duquesne.
  • 1757 Jesuit Father Claude Francis Virot founded Catholic Mission at Beaver.
  • 1758 British Forces regain the area and establish Fort Pitt though some dispute over claims between the colonies of Pennsylvania (Cumberland County) and Virginia (Augusta County).
  • 1761 Ayr Township, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.
  • 1763 The Proclamation of 1763 grants Quebec rights to all lands west of the Alleghenies and North of the Ohio River.
  • 1767 Bedford Township, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.[99]
  • 1770 George Washington visits for Virginia.
  • 1771 (March 9) Bedford County, Pennsylvania.[99]
  • 1771 (April 16) Pitt Township founded.[100]
  • 1773 (February 26) part of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.
  • 1788 (September 24) part of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.
  • 1788 (December 16) A new Pitt Township is formed as a division of Allegheny County.[101]
  • 1792 (June) Petition for a Pittsburgh Township at the forks.
  • 1792 (September 6) Pittsburgh Township, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.
  • 1794 (April 22) Pittsburgh borough, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.[102]
  • 1816 (March 18) City of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.

See also

References

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Bibliography

See also: Timeline of Pittsburgh § Bibliography
  • Baldwin, Leland D. Pittsburgh: The Story of a City (U of Pittsburgh Press, 1937) online
  • Bauman, John F.; Muller, Edward K. (2006). "Before Renaissance: Planning in Pittsburgh, 1889–1943". University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 331. Retrieved February 10, 2014.
  • Cannadine, David. Mellon: An American Life (2006), major biography of Thomas Mellon and Andrew Mellon, top financial leaders
  • Carson, Carolyn Leonard. Healing Body, Mind, and Spirit: The History of the St. Francis Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Carnegie Mellon U. Press, 1995. 246 pp.
  • Couvares, Francis G. (1984). The Remaking of Pittsburgh: Class and Culture in an Industrializing City 1877–1919. State University of New York Press.
  • Cowan, Aaron. A Nice Place to Visit: Tourism and Urban Revitalization in the Postwar Rustbelt (2016) compares Cincinnati, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore in the wake of deindustrialization.
  • Crowley, Gregory J. The Politics of Place: Contentious Urban Redevelopment in Pittsburgh. (U. of Pittsburgh Press, 2005). 207 pp.
  • Devault, Ileen A. Sons and Daughters of Labor: Class and Clerical Work in Turn-of-the-Century Pittsburgh. (Cornell U. Press, 1991). 194 pp.
  • Dieterich-Ward, Allen Beyond Rust: Metropolitan Pittsburgh and the Fate of Industrial America. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. 347pp. online review
  • Glasco, Laurence A., ed. The WPA History of the Negro in Pittsburgh. (U. of Pittsburgh Press, 2004). 422 pp.
  • Greenwald, Maurine W. and Margo Anderson, eds. Pittsburgh Surveyed: Social Science and Social Reform in the Early Twentieth Century. U. of Pittsburgh Press, 1996. 292 pp.
  • Grinder, Robert Dale. " From Insurgency to Efficiency: The Smoke Abatement Campaign in Pittsburgh before World War I." Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine (1978) 61#3 pp 187–202.
  • Hays, Samuel P., ed. City at the Point: Essays on the Social History of Pittsburgh. U. of Pittsburgh Press, 1989. 473 pp.
  • Heineman, Kenneth J. (1999). A Catholic New Deal: Religion and Reform in Depression Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania State U. Press. p. 287.
  • Hinshaw, John. Steel and Steelworkers: Race and Class Struggle in Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh. State U. of New York Press, 2002. 348 pp.
  • Holli, Melvin G., and Jones, Peter d'A., eds. Biographical Dictionary of American Mayors, 1820-1980 (Greenwood Press, 1981) short scholarly biographies each of the city's mayors 1820 to 1980. online; see index at p. 410 for list.
  • Hoerr, John. And the Wolf Finally Came: The Decline of American Steel. U. of Pittsburgh Press, 1988. 689 pp.
  • Holt, Michael. Forging a Majority: The Formation of the Republican Party in Pittsburgh, 1848-18 (1969).
  • Ingham, John N. Making Iron and Steel: Independent Mills in Pittsburgh, 1820–1920. Ohio State U. Press, 1991. 297 pp.
  • Kleinberg, S. J. The Shadow of the Mills: Working-Class Families in Pittsburgh, 1870–1907. U. of Pittsburgh Press, 1989. 414 pp.
  • Kobus, Kenneth J. City of Steel: How Pittsburgh became the world's steelmaking capital during the Carnegie era (2015) 320pp.
  • Krause, Paul. The Battle for Homestead, 1880–1892: Politics, Culture, and Steel. U. of Pittsburgh Press, 1992. 548 pp.
  • Lopez, Steven Henry. Reorganizing the Rust Belt: An Inside Study of the American Labor Movement. U. of California Press, 2004. 314 pp.
  • Lorant, Stefan. Pittsburgh: The Story of an American City, (1964), well written, heavily illustrated popular history
  • Lubove, Roy. Twentieth Century Pittsburgh: Government, Business, and Environmental Change (1969).
    • Lubove, Roy. Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh. Vol. 2: The Post-Steel Era. U. of Pittsburgh Press, 1996. 413 pp. the major scholarly synthesis.
  • Mayfield, Loomis. "Voting Fraud in Early Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 24#1 (1993), pp. 59–84 online
  • Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie (2006), major scholarly biography. online
  • Rishel, Joseph F. Founding Families of Pittsburgh: The Evolution of a Regional Elite, 1760–1910. U. of Pittsburgh Press, 1990. 241 pp.
  • Rose, James D. Duquesne and the Rise of Steel Unionism. U. of Illinois Press, 2001. 284 pp.
  • Ruck, Rob. Sandlot Seasons: Sport in Black Pittsburgh. U. of Illinois Press, 1987. 238 pp.
  • Seely, Bruce E., ed. Iron and Steel in the Twentieth Century. Facts on File, 1994. 512 pp.
  • Slavishak, Edward Steven. Bodies of Work: Civic Display and Labor in Industrial Pittsburgh (2008)
  • Smith, Arthur G. Pittsburgh: Then and Now. U. of Pittsburgh Press, 1990. 336 pp.
  • Smith, George David. From Monopoly to Competition: The Transformation of Alcoa, 1888–1986. Cambridge U. Press, 1988. 554 pp.
  • Stave, Bruce M. "Pittsburgh and the New Deal," in John Braeman et al. eds. The New Deal: Volume Two – the State and Local Levels (1975) pp 376–406
  • Tarr, Joel A., ed. (2003). "Devastation and Renewal: An Environmental History of Pittsburgh and Its Region". U. of Pittsburgh Press. p. 312. Retrieved February 10, 2014.
  • Trotter, Joe W., and Jared N. Day. Race and Renaissance: African Americans in Pittsburgh Since World War II (University of Pittsburgh Press; 2010) 328 pages. Draws on journalism, oral histories, and other sources to study the city's black community, including its experience of the city's industrial decline and rebirth.
  • Wade, Richard C. The Urban Frontier: The Rise of Western Cities, 1790–1830. (1959)
  • Wall, Joseph. Andrew Carnegie (1970). 1137 pp.; major scholarly biography
  • Warren, Kenneth. Triumphant Capitalism: Henry Clay Frick and the Industrial Transformation of America. U. of Pittsburgh Press, 1996.
  • Weber, Michael P. Don't Call Me Boss: David L. Lawrence, Pittsburgh's Renaissance Mayor. U. of Pittsburgh Press, 1988. 440 pp.
  • Winant, Gabriel. The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America (Harvard University Press, 2021), focus on Pittsburgh

Primary sources

External links

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