The reputation of Pittsburgh

[DBR96A]

We have a "reputation" thread for Atlanta, and considering that I've lived in Pittsburgh and near Atlanta during different points in my life, I'm interested in finding out the rest of the country's ideas of what Pittsburgh is as well, but this time without the influence of sports. (I know exactly what people think of Pittsburgh's sports teams and fans, so I don't need any regurgitation there.)

You can be honest, though, about your impressions. Even if you hate the place, I seriously doubt you'll say anything that I haven't heard from, say, a Philadelphia, Cleveland, Cincinnati or Seattle (these days) sports fan. *lol*

[Segun]

I couldn't really say what impression it has across the country because it falls under the radar, but it has the most dramatic topography of any city I've ever visited and it looks older than it is.

[JManc]

i grew up thinking pittsburgh was a rundown cesspool chocking on its own pollution.

i went there in 2005 only to see this:

[holladay]

Hrmmmm.... Well, I haven't been to Pittsburgh so I hardly think my opinions are of value. But here goes : the housing market is really affordable and it's really easy to get a great old house or row; from the pictures I've seen I think proportionally more Pittsburghers (Pittsburghites?) drive American cars than in any other US city; the neighborhoods are often built on grids which are incongruent with surrounding grids because of the pattern of land-development and the topography; there is a great variety of rowhouses across the city; the freeways are generally narrow (4-6 lanes) because of the hills and tunnels so the city is not heavily reliant on them as arteries to the same degree as Sunbelt cities; the population is generally still very blue-collar; and the last thing i can think of is something I hear often (though don't necessarily believe) - Pittsburgh is the poster-child for the rust-belt because it has never gotten over the loss of the steel industry.

[tdawg]

My impression is that it's a center of research and higher education, high quality of life, tough winters, fantastic skyline and dramatic scenery.

[brickell]

http://www.spdconline.org/history/Ga...oalMine31.html

[galaca]

I'd live there.

[LordMandeep]

steel, Steelers...

[Mr Roboto]

To me was that it had an awesome skyline when I'd go through there in the 90's. I took buses through there when I'd go from DC to chicago and back, to visit family, as a kid. The downtown was dense and pretty tall for a city that size. I thought there was a lot of trees there and that the whole 3 rivers thing was unique.

Also remember in the 80's it was supposed to be one of the best places to live. So thats one of the things I remember.

[tackledspoon]

I lived and went to school there for a year. My impression was less than fantastic, but I was also extremely depressed during the period that I was living there and a lot of my gripes had to do with the people who I came into contact with every day, rather than the city itself.
That said, here's my lists of pros and cons:
Pro: Lots of great neighborhoods; beautiful, affordable housing stock; active political community; good colleges; good public transportaion; great music scene.
Cons: Shit weather, limited cultural opportunities, poor traffic patterning, a general feeling of disconnectedness between neighborhoods and large swaths of abandoned and uninhabitable housing.

Edit: It's important to note that my only standard for comparison is New York and, if my list of pros and cons makes it sound like a bit of a backwater, it's because I tend to hold other cities to impossibly high standards.

[LostInTheZone]

Pittsburgh- I'll try and be fair, because Evergrey and Hero are two of my favorite forumers and they try to be nice to Philly.

"The Paris of Appalachia"- we have that other thread asking about the definitive city of each state, and Pittsburgh is an extrapolated version of every small town in Pennsylvania, with all the good (19th century vernacular architecture, history) and bad (postindustial garbage, HICKS) that comes with that. If I were to sum it up, I'd say that parts of Pittsbugh have a lot of potential, and I will live to see it become an attractive place to live. There's some good real estate there and it can't stay cheap forever.

the good:
-spectacular natural setting,
-the port-cochere on the PRR station is one of the most original things Daniel Burnham ever designed
-the cultural center in Oakland has some spectacular buildings, even if it's pretty anti-urban. My favorites are the Heinz Chapel and Cathedral of learning.
-beautiful 19th century architecture- I love seeing pics of the Mexican War Street area on here, and I saw some great victorians in Shadyside.
-Oakland is nice, as a 'college town'.
-I liked the south side, it reminded me of South Street in Philly, especially the 90s version I remember so well.
-a Primanti sandwich sounds gross when you describe it, but they're delicious when you eat them.
-the bridges.
-universities- you have internationally famous Carnegie-Mellon, they practically invented the internet, and some other good schools like Pitt and Duquesne, both of which I looked at going to.

the bad:
-the industrial landscape: un-adaptable cathedral-size factories, semidetached worker's tract houses no one wants to restore.
-everything is broken up by hills, rail lines, rivers, industrial areas- it's more of a collection of towns than a city. Yet there is no rail system to link them all together, though the tracks sit there, with plenty of extra capacity.
-the locals- yinzers- if america had cockneys, this would be them.
-urban renewal- removed all buildings from the Point and turned it into a rather pretty but very out-of-the-way, underused park with some Radiant-City towers surrounded by grass; the Hill, which could have connected Oakland to Downtown, was all ripped out for highways and the hockey arena.
-though the city is defined by the confluence of the three rivers, almost all of the waterfront is taken up by rail lines and industry.
-unfair and unquantifiable or not, multiple people I know who moved there for school said the whole place has a down, depressed vibe to it.
-downtown is dead, dead, dead, once the office workers go home.
-Harrisburg probably has more gay bars.
-yes, you have universities, but they don't seem to add to the 'cool' vibe, they just attract places that sell pizza and munchies to drunk suburbanites treating college like a perpetual spring break. To be fair, this is what college is like just about everywhere these days.

thats about all I can think of for now. I will say I have a fairly negative impression of Pittsburgh. I wouldn't really choose to move there. But, again, its got way more going for it than the Detroits and Buffaloes of the rust belt, and I think it will improve- parts of it anyway. Much like Philly, there are vast swaths of it that will simply have to be rebuilt from scratch.

[BTinSF]

I have maybe a wierd perspective on Pittsburgh because the one time I was there was to attend the wedding of one of my Med School roomates to a girl whose family must have been pretty wealthy. I remember they lived in a very large modern home with a winding private driveway even though it was in the city somewhere. It was said they had had several of the towering trees in the front yard moved to better set off the front of the house. There were a couple of servants and what looked to me to be some old and original art hanging in the bathroom (hard not to notice sitting on the john). I do know that their daughter, the bride, commanded an unexhaustible supply of cannabis which was freely available to the younger members of the wedding party.

Anyway, during the long weekend I was in Pittsburgh for the wedding, the families of bride and groom pretty much covered all expenses as we bounced around town having rehearsal dinners and batchelor dinners and such. I recall Pittsburgh being very hilly. The rehearsal dinner was in some restaurant on a small mountain on the opposite bank of the Allegheny River from downtown so it had a glorious view of the highrise area (and the conjunction of the two rivers) at night--which, even then (the early 70's) was impressive to me (a suburban kid from a low-rise city, Washington DC).

I do recall seeing some crumbling steel mills or something as we drove into town from the PA Turnpike, but the city itself left a very positive impression although I suspect I experienced the best it had to offer.

[Shawn]

Flashdance and the Steelers. That's about it.

[PhillyRising]

America's Most Livable City in 1985...a time when the region was seeing a mass exodus...the city had a very forward thinking mayor who was planting the seeds for the rebirth in future years. Sadly, he passed away at and early age and his successors dropped the ball and the city stalled.

Rolling hills that make the city interesting to look at...Mt. Washington being one of the great places to catch a view!

The surprise view first time visitors get when they come out of the Ft. Pitt Tunnel coming from the airport.

Free Summer concerts by the Pittsburgh Symphony at Point State Park.

Architecture that would be too costly to replecate today.

Kennywood Park...one of America's great old time amusement parks!

The fact that the inside of Station Square still looks the same as it did 20 years ago!

The fact that the city has so much rail line through it that it never developed a metro wide commuter rail system back when the city had over 600,000 residents.

Affordable, pleasant neighborhoods all over the city.

A downtown that rolls up the sidewalks at night....but has the potential to be a 24/7 neighborhood in the coming years.

A skyline that this Philadelphian was jealous of when he was a college student in Western PA in the 1980's. Thankfully...Philly wised up! There are cities bigger than Pittsburgh that would kill for this skyline!

Iron City Beer

Mr. Roger's Neighborhood!

In summary...it's a city that almost anywhere you go...you can see a ornate house..a building..a street...a old factory and think that there is some interesting story behind who lived there...who worked there back in the city's industrial glory years. It feels like a place where things happened that mattered....that the city was the spine of the country during it's industrial heydey. You see the remains of that era everywhere and yet somehow...it doesn't feel like it's a city that has seen better days. It's landscape is more urban than cities far bigger than it...yet it still has enough small town charm to make you feel right at home. I never feel like I'm a visitor when I am there...I feel right at home...and one day I will convert all the yinzers into correctly calling it soda!

[ColDayMan]

Pittsburgh, along with every other rustbelt/northern/non-pop culture media thingie city, has a negative reputation generally. But perhaps that's a good thing for those to be surprised, versus cities that are overhyped. So take your bitchslappings Pittsburgh, you'll be stronger that way.

Or you'll just die, like Youngstown. Either or.

[seaskyfan]

I've heard what's happening now in Seattle compared to what happened a century ago in Pittsburgh - namely the creation of cultural and civic institutions by people who made a huge amount of money and decided to start spreading it around.

I've never been and I'd love to visit. Most of my impressions come from The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and the opinions of a friend of mine who was very active in theater there (he liked it but left to get away from his family).

[Attrill]

I have friends in Pittsburgh, and try to make it there at least once a year. I always look at real estate listings while I'm there, I love old industrial buildings and it blows my mind what is available there.

I avoid the Iron City and stick to the Church Beer Works and Yeungling Black and Tan

[Rufus]

My perception of Pittsburgh:

It is cloudy a lot there, especially during winter. The weather is often extreme (warm one day, cold the next).

The architecture is distinctive; dark and heavy looking. The old buildings tend to be grimey-looking, I think from all the pollution that used to exist in the steel days.

There are large vacant industrial sites.

The topography is so unique among big cities. The hills are actually part of the dissected plateau just west of the Appalachians.

It has a rich history of industry. It built America with its coal and steel.

It has character. I enjoy the yinzer blue collar charm and accent.

It tends to be down on itself, like Philly, but at the same time there is a lot of civic pride.

I love it and plan to move there.

[LMich]

I've only driven through, so my opinion is only based on that, and whatever I picked up through pics, media, and other second-hand sources. BTW, I feel that I have to make the disclaimer to take any any negative things I have to say with a big grain of salt, first, because of my limited contact with the region, and secondly, and most importantly, because I'm orginally from Detroit, and live in Michigan, a city and state currently dogged more than Pittsburgh ever will be.

My general observations:

Pittsburgh looks like a city who's topography has been both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that it makes a very for some great aesthetics and streetscapes, and cut down on the ridiculous types of sprawl in flatter regions. A curse in that it makes it feel very isolated, disconnected, and pocketed, both economically and socially. The rivers help to negate some of this, though.

It seems that it doesn't get anywhere near the national media attention it deserves, to the point of where I'd even say it almost seems as if its been put on some national media black list. I just never here about it, good or bad.

It's a region in which I can't place a finger on why it's stagnated in growth.

I also think of it as an excellent sports town.

Lastly, I see it as a very culturally/socially 'white' city, both of the American and ethnic European variety, with the latter becoming less-and-less prominent.

Really, outside of that, I don't really have any other opinion of it. I really do wish we'd hear more about it in this country. It seems that not only do people not go looking for it, but that the city and region doesn't toot its own horn as much as it should. Really, it seems like a lot of other cities in the Rust Belt in that they don't seem to be that effective in throwing, or even care to throw, off their 1980's image.

[Black Box]

Birthplace of Andy Warhol and August Wilson, maker of ketchup, Carnegie Mellon, three rivers and die hard sports fans. I've only been to the airport in Pittsburgh. It is very green and hilly. Queer as Folk is set in Pittsburgh.