Anyone who has spent any time in Pittsburgh knows something about our city’s booming steel industry. Former Pittsburghers will remember the fiery steel mills along the rivers. Sports fans across the country cheer on the Steelers—6-time Super Bowl champs—who’s mascot is Steely McBeam. And the next generation of Pittsburghers enjoy the redeveloped former steel mill sites at both the Waterfront and SouthSide Works.

For the month of April 2022, each of these episodes will pay homage to the commodity that put Pittsburgh on the map: steel.

To kick things off, I recorded an introductory interview with my friend Bill, who worked at United States Steel (USS) in Homestead from 1965 to 1977. In our discussion, Bill shares his own personal experience working at a steel mill, his thoughts on steel magnates Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, a look at the process of how steel is made, and much more.

View the show notes here.

There are 446 bridges, 19 tunnels, 2 municipal funiculars, and 344 legal streets on which no car has ever driven in Pittsburgh. These streets are really public staircases, dubbed “paper streets.”

This episode is also available as a blog post here.

Funiculars are inclined cable railways that use two interconnected and counterbalanced cars to traverse steep hillsides. The “Mon Incline” is the oldest funicular railway in the country, and Pittsburgh has boasted 22 other funiculars throughout its history.

This episode is also available as a blog post here.

Last week, I wrote about the neighborhoods that make up Pittsburgh. This week, I thought it would be fitting to talk about the most famous neighborhood in Pittsburgh: Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.

This episode is also available as a blog post here. 

“We are a city, but we have 90 neighborhoods and each one has its own character and these are the things that are great about each of these neighborhoods.”

This episode is also available as a blog post here. 

On Monday, February 7, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released a preliminary report on the January 28 collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge. The report on the failure of the not-even-50-year-old bridge spanning Frick Park was unsurprising—but for one particular footnote…

This episode is also available as a blog post here. 

The Pensive Pittsburgher: a 500-word-or-less weekly blog about the things that make one of America’s “Most Livable Cities” one of America’s most riveting cities. I was born and raised in a small steel-town along the Monongahela…

This episode is also available as a blog post here.