What's a travelgirl to do in...pittsburgh?

Steel Town Rediscovers its Rivers
Text and Photography by David Bernknopf

A city learns to find beauty and culture along its waterways

Rediscovering the Rivers

That was in the 1940s. Andy Warhol must have agreed. He couldn’t wait to flee Pittsburgh.

After graduating from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1949, he immediately fled to the brighter artistic lights of New York City, where he found a jobdrawing shoe ads. Warhol would return to Pittsburgh only twice. But his hometown refused to abandon him. In 1994, The Andy Warhol Museum opened a couple of miles from the spot where Warhol’s parents Adrej and Julia Warhola first made a home.

A five-minute walk across the bridge from downtown hotels and offices takes visitors to the world’s largest museum dedicated to a single artist. “There are many people who think they don’t like the work of Warhol who come here and are converted when they see the huge breadth of work and realize he was more than Campbell soup cans,” says Gina Frey, communications associate of the Warhol. Even a two hour visit will leave museum-goers with an understanding of Warhol’s wide influence on modern art, film and culture.

One of the most interesting exhibits lies in the fourth floor research room. A true pack-rat, Warhol collected thousands of small items, from bills and postcards to tiny pieces of art. He then had his assistants box and store them. He called them his time capsules. Some boxes took a day to fill . . . others weeks. When he died, he left behind more than 500.

The Warhol staff still hasn’t made it through all the boxes. But each time they open one, they unearth something intriguing . . . such as a pallet Salvador Dali gave Warhol. In another box, they found thousands of dollars in cash stashed, with no explanation. But most common are the everyday items that passed through his life: invitations to parties, bits of gift wrap, tiny plastic dolls, laundry receipts. The contents of several boxes are always on display. (Go to www.warhol.org for more info.)

Like the city itself, The Andy Warhol Museum is both surprising and world-class. Pittsburgh is a compact city, known for steel, its three rivers and the four-time super bowl champion Steelers football team. Most of what a visitor would want to check out can be found within sight of the Allegheny, the Ohio or the river out-of-towners can never pronounce . . . the Monongahela (mo-NON-ga-HEE-la) . If you want to sound like a native, just call it “the Mon.”

River life has always defined Pittsburgh. Some argue Lewis and Clark’s westward journey actually began in Pittsburgh. Merriweather Lewis supervised construction of the team’s boats there . . . and many of the crew came from Pittsburgh. In 1803, Lewis sailed them west on the Ohio where he joined up with Clark.

During the next century and a half, transportation, coal and steel drove the city to economic self-assurance.

Polluted rivers and smoky skies might not have looked attractive, but they meant food on the tables of the city’s laborers.

That is, until the steel industry began to collapse 25 years ago.

All of a sudden, a city that identified itself with mill workers and smash mouth football reeled from changing times.

In the dawn of the new millennium, Pittsburghers look at themselves, and their rivers, differently. The flowing waters of the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Mon offer walking paths, recreational boating and game fishing.

Where the old Three Rivers Stadium shut itself off from its surroundings, both the Pirates and Steelers new downtown stadiums open wide with river views. The old brick box convention center was even more dismal. Although only a block from the river, the building amazingly was built without a single window.

Now the newly opened Rafael Vinoly-designed convention center feels a part of the river, literally sloping down to the shore. City tourism officials say the landmark is already bringing a boom to the convention and tourism business. It’s as if Pittsburghers who once feared visitors noticing their rivers, awoke one day to the realization that the rivers were actually pleasant.

In the 19th century, Pittsburgh’s rivers were home to some of the world’s best rowers, but the boathouses disappeared as commerce filled the waterways. One hundred years later, The Three Rivers Rowing Association built a new facility on a quiet backchannel, just a mile up the Allegheny from downtown. Hundreds of rowers now routinely paddle that quiet tree-lined stretch without having to dodge barges.

“When we first built the boathouse, old-timers would say, ‘Why on earth would you intentionally go near the water?’” said Mike Lambert of the Three Rivers Rowing Association. Now, anyone with spare time and experience can rent
a variety of recreational rowing boats. And for those who want to learn, the center offers orientation sessions the third Saturday of every month. Call (412) 231-8772 or check the website at www.threeriversrowing.org

Downtown workers, or visitors with time on their hands, can also rent bikes and rollerblades, or jog along the green Heritage Trails lining the rivers. Check in with Golden Triangle Bike Rentals at (412) 600-0675.

Friends of the Riverfront helped build the trails. The largely volunteer organization began about 10 years ago. “We’re definitely finding our ways back to the rivers,” says John Stephen, the group’s executive director. “People are really beginning to enjoy them.” In fact, any visitor with even 15 minutes to spare should head toward the rivers. It’s there you’ll find the most dramatic views of Pittsburgh.

“It’s almost a shock because their expectations are either low or there are noexpectations,” says Laura Ellis, communications director for the Greater Pittsburgh Convention and
Visitors Bureau

“They see the city. They see how shining it is. They see the rivers, how clean they are . . . the green hillsides. It’s just sheer surprise and delight. Kind of like you’ve discovered something no one else has. A lot of us who travel like to have that kind of story to take home.”

Some relics from the old days remain: just a five-minute cab or bus ride from downtown, two inclined railways still move up and down Mount Washington. The inclines once helped move thousands of workers each day to jobs downtown. Now, mostly tourists take the trip for the view. It takes only a few minutes to go up or down and costs just $1.75.

Start at the bottom. The views are spectacular as the city and its rivers appear while the incline cars slowly climb the hill. David Miller presides over the Duquesne Incline Society, which maintains the 125-year-old Duquesne Incline. “The most common thing we hear is, ‘I never believed it. It’s much prettier than I imagined.’”

Another element of Pittsburgh visitors often find surprising is the Cultural District. It covers only a few square blocks, but is filled with restored theatres, beautiful old buildings, public art and good restaurants.

Check out the Alexander Brodsky work Palazzo Nudo . . . a collection of wonderful old architectural fragments contained inside a three-storey cage. This giant piece of public sculpture by a Moscow artist can be found on the corner of Seventh Street and Penn Avenue.

Just across the street is the Seventh Street Grille, one of the newer restaurants calling downtown home. Open for lunch and dinner, it has a large and reasonably priced menu, not to mention a beautiful long bar in the downstairs dining room.

Owner Gary Reinert feels downtown needs additional restaurants to make it more of a destination. Reinert’s restaurant operates out of a beautiful old office tower called the Century Building.

Another boost to the local dining scene . . . 2002 James Beard Foundation “Chef of the Year” Lidia Bastianich has opened a restaurant in the city’s Strip District.

‘The Strip’ offers a mix of hip clubs, restaurants, food retailers and produce wholesalers in an old warehouse district bordering downtown. Lidia’s Pittsburgh is a near carbon of her other restaurants in New York and Kansas City, and offers trendy northern Italian cuisine.

While Pittsburgh continues to grow as a dining mecca, most agree downtown ‘Steel Town’ is already an established shopping destination. For a city its size (population 360,000), Pittsburgh has an amazing number of downtown department stores.

Over the past two decades, while other comparable cities were losing downtown shopping, Pittsburgh gained. Saks, Lord and Taylor, Lazarus-Macy’s and Kaufmanns are all found downtown. But even with the growth, it remains a struggle to get suburbanites to shop downtown, leaving less-crowded stores for visitors.tep a little further out, just 20 minutes from downtown, and you’ll find the historic gem that is The Frick Art and Historical Center. “I don’t think the average visitor to Pittsburgh stumbles on the Frick,” says Greg Langel, the facility’s director of communication. “In fact, many Pittsburgh residents aren’t fully aware of what we have to offer.”

The centerpiece of the five acre complex is Clayton, the grand Victorian home of one of the nation’s industrial founders, Henry Clay Frick.

His daughter, Helen Clay Frick, maintained Clayton as a residence, with long-term plans to turn it into a museum. She died there at the age of 96, in 1984.

If Andy Warhol was a modern pack rat, Henry Clay Frick was his spiritual godfather. Frick kept virtually every bill and invoice created during his 30 years running the coal and steel empire that would eventually become US Steel.

Dozens of photos recorded every detail in the house, which enabled historians to restore Clayton to exactly the way it looked more than a century ago.

The grounds also include a greenhouse, a car and carriage house, an art museum and The Café. It takes a good half day to see the entire estate and the entrance fee is $10.

At one point in his life, Henry Clay Frick’s business dealings made him the most hated man in America. Today, his massive art collection adds to the cultural history of the country. Most of Frick’s artwork resides in New York now, but the Italian Renaissance collec-tion at Pittsburgh’s Frick Center is world renowned. Among the paintings are many depicting idealized visions of family life and nature.

The Frick residence, Clayton, is where you should spend the majority of your time, however.

Imagine yourself visiting in 1890 . . . to find the Fricks showing off two fascinating “high-tech” devices of the time.

The staff could tell exactly where to head when the Annunciator rang. A family member would trigger the electronic system from the room where they wanted a servant. Wires ran behind the walls down the kitchen where they triggered a magnetic pointer. The Annunciator would ring and the pointer would show the room where a servant was requested.

Even more impressive is the Orchestron, a kind of mutant player piano found on the enclosed porch. Only a handful were ever made. The still-functioning device stands about 10 feet tall and 10 feet wide. It acts as a small orchestra, with piano, tuba, snare drum and other instruments. Only the wealthiest families could afford either of these two devices.

But all was not music and light for Frick and his family. They actually abandoned Clayton after a rapid-fire series of tragedies. In 1881, Frick’s six-year-old daughter Martha died after a long and painful ailment. A few months later, Frick sent Pinkertons by barge to break a strike at the nearby Homestead steel mill. More than a dozen people died in the fighting.

In response, an anarchist snuck into Frick’s office, shooting and stabbing him. Frick survived, but a few days after his brush with death, his infant son Clay suddenly died. The memories were too much for Frick and his wife Adelaide. They moved to New York in 1905.

But Clayton remains as the family knew it. In fact, one of Frick’s personal checks still sits on his desk. Printed on the check is a picture of Martha, a constant reminder of the little daughter he loved and lost.

If the Frick Center represents Pittsburgh’s past, then the refurbished Navy Yard boats docked near the Carnegie Science Center on the Ohio River represent the future.

Discovery and Voyager take student and adult groups on educational sails along the three rivers. The twin 80-foot boats started life as U.S. Navy Yard boats. Rather than turn them into scrap, the Navy sent them to Pittsburgh to begin their new careers as symbols of the city’s new river vision. A two hour trip allows time to study bridge architecture, environmental improvements in the rivers and wildlife along the shores.

One weekday morning on a trip down the Ohio with a group of fifth graders, we counted six great blue herons and an osprey. Ron Havranek swam in the Ohio decades ago and now teaches science to students at Western Beaver Elementary School in Industry, PA, about 20 miles northwest of Pittsburgh.

His kids performed numerous water quality tests during the excursion in the floating classroom.

“At one time, you had all the pollutants from the mills coming in. But now with the new sewage systems — and the mills closing, the rivers have totally come back,” says Havrenek.

Beth O’Toole, the executive director of Pittsburgh Voyager, says students are often surprised. “The kids hear what their Moms and Dads say . . . what their grandparents say. Then, they go home and say, ‘Hey the rivers really are healthy. You’ll never believe what I found.’”

Something to consider if you need to do business in Pittsburgh — the boats also offer a unique location for corporate meetings. O’ Toole says the boats are increasingly used for corporate gatherings and private functions for up to 40 people. The cost for two hours on the river, including lunch, runs about $600. Contact Pittsburgh Voyager at
(412) 231-2847 or through their web site at www.pittsburghvoyager.org

Gary Dundas, a butcher from Nottingham, England was a recent visitor to the city. He toured with a group of friends from England. Many back home were surprised they chose to visit Pittsburgh. Dundas himself was astounded by the city.

“The rivers amazed me. I thought the city would be more industrial and perhaps not as clean as it is. Pittsburgh is not that well known, but it will be when we get back. We’ll be shouting pretty loud.”

That sentiment pleases, but doesn’t surprise Ellis from the Visitors Bureau. “Each person who comes here and discovers what we have to offer takes that story back, and they tell two friends, and they tell two friends. It’s kind of like a victory each time.”
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