Old City of Immigrants

Census data above from 1910, in "The Challenge of Pittsburgh" (1917)

Immigrants were the first Pirate fans down at the old Exposition Park.

Old Man River

Miracle of Pittsburgh

Old Bucs

Old Ballpark Blues

Old Crossing

When Detroit Made Postcards of Pittsburgh

Is that the Strip to Hill incline way off in the distance? (click to enlarge)  I still think we could build a 21st century green incline to reconnect the old arena site to the Strip.  Put a grocery store up there, and ask the hip flatlander residents of the strip to go up the hill for groceries. 

And if there's still any talk of burying the crosstown, we should just replace the Igloo with a big mound of green and recreate Grant's Hill a couple hundred yards to the east...as a common space like days of old (way, way old). 

Old Writing Machine

Simplicity is superiority!

Old Pittsburgh Gas?

Below is an excerpt from "The Story of Gasoline" (1927) produced by the Bureau of Mines "Pittsburgh Experiment Station."  This clip is about 3 minutes, with ragtime music added.  The entire film is 43 minutes.

I wonder if the filling station in this clip is the Pittsburgh original -- the world's first?  It doesn't match the image from 1913, but that one doesn't look like it would have lasted into the 1920s, and this one is similar in terms of the orientation to the road.  

Did a trolley once run up Baum?

Here is the entire 43 minutes on YouTube. Worth making the kids sit through.

Old Europe

My friend Bob's color photography...Europe in the early 1950's:

El Retiro is my favorite...it's as though one of the guys sitting on the top row just said something funny, and the others are looking back to laugh with him.

Almost looks like these guys are checking their phones.

Here's the car he drove all over Europe...when he wasn't flying Bob Hope and Danny Kaye and various ingénues around as head of entertainment for the US Army over there. 

Ghosts in the Old Poetical Machine

Hard to believe it has been almost six years since Billmon's old Whiskey Bar closed. Thought of it for some reason while reading sketches of old Pittsburgh men for clues to questions of the day.  The individual sketches appeared in The Pittsburg Leader on a regular basis, and were compiled into a book in 1892.                     (click to enlarge if need be)

Reading through them, I'm struck by how many of the men profiled (all men of course) were born elsewhere, back in the last era when Pittsburgh had positive net domestic migration!  

Which one to share first?  In honor of the Sharp Edge putting out a shingle downtown, how about an old bartender?

  

 

Pull up a stool, there are about 150 to share.  The Sharp Edge should line its walls with them for conversation starters.

Old Trolley Time

Old River Footage

Old Smokey Burgh

From a July 1949 National Geographic feature on Pittsburgh titled, Workshop of the Titans.  The accompanying text reads: 

"These city inspectors study heavy clouds billowing from a steel mill's chimneys.  Smoke is viewed with special glasses and through a hole in a Ringelmann Chart.  Density is graded by matching it with shades ranging from light gray to black on the card."

Here's a vision for the Point in the downtown Horne's display window:

"At Pittsburgh's Mellon Institute a researcher prepares to feed contaminated air to an assistant, Nancy Butler, in an iron lung.  Plastic bags collect the air mixtures.  Results are registered on an ingenious guage.  Careful control of the flow protects Miss Butler from danger." 

Old Allegheny Arborists

This is a great story about 15 volunteer crews helping to heal trees on the old Allegheny Commons. 

They're carrying on a tradition of public stewardship going back 140 odd years.

Old Spicey

Here are a few ads for newspapers in an 1887 illustrated guide to Pittsburgh and Allegheny cities:

Then there's this one from the Centennial History of Allegheny County (1888):

Arriba!

Are there any baseball monuments in Pittsburgh featuring a player fielding a ball? Where is our appreciation of the glove?

Could it be created so his lit form completes a sun dial on the street?

Old Pride in Pittsburgh

Olé @ PNC Park

Someone at Microsoft must think watching the Bucs at PNC Park is like watching a bloody bullfight -- either that or they're nostalgic for Three Rivers.  

Here's how the park appears from 250 feet up in Bing Maps:

Meals on Wheels in the Pittsburgh Snow

Back in the early 90s (the 1990's), my time volunteering as a runner for a Meals on Wheels program in Oregon helped inspire my passion for gerontology and what has come to be known as "aging in community."  

Today, six days into a prolonged snow event in Pittsburgh, I engaged the 21st century and volunteered to deliver Meals on Wheels in the East End...Lincoln-Larimer to be specific.   I partnered with a regular volunteer named Nick who knew the route.  His regular partner didn't have a 4-wheel drive vehicle.  I was able to borrow one from my sister and brother-in-law. 

I did the driving, and Nick did the work of running the meals through the slush ridges and up snow covered steps. 

 

Below is the old Lemington Center nursing home, closed since 2005 (we delivered to the Eva P. Mitchell residence for independent elders, next door). 

Available for $2 million 

When I was working at Brown and my colleagues and I published an article in Millbank Quarterly about the plight of nursing homes like the Lemington Center ("Driven to Tiers: Socioeconomic and Racial Disparities in the Quality of Nursing Home Care" - full article available for free at link), we received an e-mail from the Lemington administrator saying she was using it to describe their situation to all who would listen.

I found this interesting history of Lemington Elder Care Services and its founding on July 4, 1883 on the African American Registry.  

 

Parking chair at Eva P. Mitchell residence.

We delivered 17 meals to 14 different residences, took about an hour and a half.   East End Cooperative Ministries is a good place to volunteer.