[QUOTE=Jonboy1983;4905227]
Quote:
Originally Posted by zeno3333333
When did construction begin on the US Steel Building? I want to say it began in either 1966 or 1967(?) It's neat that your dad worked for US Steel and that the construction of its new HQ was one of his last projects. I knew that the steel came from the Homestead Works. I heard that the hollow tubes within those massive beams are filled with some kind of fire proofing or ritardant. I think it's a very remarkable building. I wish UPMC didn't lease out the 62nd floor. I wish somebody else could have opened a restaurant or some other tourist attraction atop the building. It would have made the building a little more usable to the public, but that's just my opinion...
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Back in the late 90s I called the management office for the US Steel building, and they said that ground was broken in January, 1967 and it opened for office move-in in October, 1970. I remember in early 1967 my dad and I looking through the peep holes of the wood walls around the large pit in the ground for the foundation....There used to be a Stouffers restaurant on the 62nd floor...my Mom and Dad took me to eat there on my 16th birthday in October, 1973. The express elevator to the top is mighty fast, ones ears pop!! Yes, the slots in the outside beams have an anti-freeze solution in them that would cause the fluid to flow and dissipate the heat in a fire...guess you could call the 841 tall beams the tallest radiators in the world. The building at first was going to be the tallest building in the world, but that would have conflicted with another later US Steel project, the Chicago Sears Tower, and Sears's desire to be in the tallest building, so they scaled back the height of the US Steel building. Until the mid 80s, the Rockwell Int company was HQed there, and they had a large model of the NASA Space Shuttle in the lobby. A Rockwell Int corporate helicopter crashed landed in the icy Allegheny River in the late 80s after taking off from the top of the roof. Maybe that is part of the reason the roof is no longer used as a heliport, not sure.
Back in the mid 70s during Christmas, David Pressau used to play music on a electric organ on the 2nd floor of the lobby. My family and I were very close to David Pressau, and he taught me organ lessons as a teenager back then. He now among many other things, teaches at the high School for the Performing Arts in Downtown Pittsburgh.