Culture Archives - Page 26 of 38 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

When the mount oliver inclined railway was built in 1872, it was Allegheny County’s second incline, and an average one-way ride cost six cents. Its cars traveled from 12th Street, South Side, to its eponymous height— from which this photo was taken—gaining 377 feet of elevation over 1,600 feet of track and depositing riders at …

Mount Oliver Incline, Circa 1895 Read More »

Opinion

A Printing Press for the Future

by Douglas Heuck

During a pre-Sscars movie binge, I recently saw “Spotlight,” the film about the Boston Globe’s investigation into the cover-up of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. Having spent two decades at Pittsburgh’s daily papers, the newsroom scenes brought back the vitality of a great American institution—the newspaper—which sadly appears to be fading into history. And I …

A Printing Press for the Future Read More »

Opinion

Pittsburgh: 200 Years Young?

by PQ Staff

Pittsburgh’s getting younger. you hear it, read about it, and see it any time you’re out on the “tahn.” Even the demographic data back it up. But if you still don’t believe it, consider this: This year—just eight years after the Pittsburgh 250 celebration—the City of Pittsburgh is celebrating its 200th anniversary—proof positive that everything …

Pittsburgh: 200 Years Young? Read More »

Books

Neither, Either, Or

by John Allison

If you want to explore the vexing subject of global climate change, Seamus McGraw is the guy to have as a tour guide. He will not torture your brain with elaborate science, tax your patience with lectures about evil consumer habits, or bash you over the head with partisan arguments. Instead, he takes you to …

Neither, Either, Or Read More »

Architecture & Neighborhoods

The City-County Building

by Charles Rosenblum

Ask people their favorite downtown Pittsburgh building, and many will tell you Henry Hobson Richardson’s Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail. Pittsburgh’s first really famous piece of architecture has been popular consistently since its 1888 completion. But the truly memorable public space is actually right next door, the City-County Building, completed in 1917. The soaring three-bay …

The City-County Building Read More »

Opinion

The Path to Growth

by Lara Bruhn

My 13-year-old son is growing taller by the day. I asked him jokingly when he would stop and he replied “If I had my way, never.” He said it felt good to be achieving “new heights” even if he knew it would come to an end some day. The same seems to be true of …

The Path to Growth Read More »

Arts

The new Westmoreland

by Graham Shearing

Early in October, looking out over the view of Greensburg from the newly reconfigured Westmoreland Museum of American Art, someone remarked that a building’s foundations had been discovered recently in the old parking garage, which is being turned into a garden. In England, such work recently turned up the body of King Richard III, slain …

The new Westmoreland Read More »

Arts

The New Sound

by Douglas Heuck

Steve Hackman, 35, is an emerging phenomenon in the world of music, fusing classical and popular pieces. Hackman is creating and conducting his hybrid concerts with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Jan. 27 and March 9. A native of suburban Chicago, he has an undergraduate degree in piano performance from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and …

The New Sound Read More »

Architecture & Neighborhoods

Life on the Monongahela

by John Beale

In the last Ice Age—10,000 to 110,000 years ago—what is now the Monongahela River flowed north across Pennsylvania into the St. Lawrence watershed. At some point, an ice dam gave rise to Lake Monongahela, which was 200 miles long, 100 miles wide and hundreds of feet deep. Now, a series of locks and dams largely …

Life on the Monongahela Read More »

Opinion

Our New Downtown

by Douglas Heuck

I was dining the other night at Poros, the fourth Downtown restaurant opened by Yves Carreau. The elegant new space connects PPG Place and Market Square, and as I watched passersby outside the wall of windows, I was struck by how much Pittsburgh has changed. Soon the ice rink at PPG Place will reopen and …

Our New Downtown Read More »

Opinion

A New Kind of Volunteering

by PQ Staff

As many consider year-end charitable gifts, one old Pittsburgh company with a new name is spurring new ways to build a better community. Covestro—until this year Bayer MaterialScience—is investing in a new concept called “skills-based volunteerism” designed to benefit nonprofits as well as companies and their employees. The idea is that Covestro, and hopefully other …

A New Kind of Volunteering Read More »

Books

4 reads for the Pittsburgh winter

by John Allison

Theresa Brown, a nurse from Point Breeze, is already nationally known for her 2010 nursing memoir “Critical Care” and years of writing online for The New York Times about her profession. Brown’s new book, “The Shift,” should cement her reputation as a reliable and compassionate explainer of modern American heath care for the general public. …

4 reads for the Pittsburgh winter Read More »

Architecture & Neighborhoods

Monsignor Rice’s trampoline

by Christine O'Toole

To understand how I, a lapsed Catholic from the East, came into possession of a small, slightly cracked trampoline that used to belong to Pittsburgh’s most famous “labor priest,” you must begin, as South Hills summers always do, with the St. Anne’s Fair. Glimpsed from a seat on the outbound Castle Shannon T, the fair …

Monsignor Rice’s trampoline Read More »

History

Light in Darkness

by Steve Hecht

I can’t really say if I found Ernie, or if Ernie found me. When I volunteered for a writing project at the Pittsburgh Holocaust Center in 1992, he was the first person I met. An engaging, bespectacled gentleman in his early 70s, Ernie was one of about 200 Holocaust survivors living here at the time. …

Light in Darkness Read More »

Opinion

Time for a change

by Lara Bruhn

I can see the eye roll coming. How did I become the old shrew? Was it the cumulative effect of all those times I naively worried that an absent employee had been in a car wreck only to have them show up 30 minutes late with a mochachino in hand complaining about the line at …

Time for a change Read More »

History

Wabash Park ice skating, 1917

by Jennifer McNulty

On the wintry afternoon of Jan. 20, 1917, pittsburghers of all ages enjoyed ice skating at Wabash Park in Pittsburgh’s West End. Regularly a grassy swath, it was apparently flooded and frozen for the season. The park is still there, as are a number of the park-facing homes along Wabash Street. An icy Sawmill Run …

Wabash Park ice skating, 1917 Read More »

Opinion

Building a Stronger Region

by Douglas Heuck

Creating a diversity survey for the Pittsburgh region is a tricky business. First, in this day and age, how should we define diversity? There’s racial and ethnic diversity as well as diversity of religion and of sexual preference, which has grown from “LGBT” to “LGBTQIA” (you can look it up). Should women fall under the …

Building a Stronger Region Read More »

Books

The long way home

by John Allison

Lori Jakiela has the essential quality for a memoirist with a tale of trauma to tell: empathy for the reader. She makes her anguish entertaining. But based on the engaging voice, underlying humor and clarity of her adoption memoir “Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe,” I bet she would do the same for …

The long way home Read More »

Arts

Changing times at Frick?

by Graham Shearing

The Frick Art and Historical Center is the creature of Miss Frick (Helen Clay Frick was always called that), the daughter of industrialist Henry Clay Frick, and it sprang into existence after the reclusive 96-year-old grand dame died at Clayton, her childhood home in Pittsburgh’s Point Breeze in 1984. Since 1970, there had been an …

Changing times at Frick? Read More »

Architecture & Neighborhoods

New life in an old neighborhood

by Charles Rosenblum

Polish Hill is one of Pittsburgh’s more eccentric and paradoxical neighborhoods. Its showcase church, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, is especially stately and conspicuous, while the angular streets that weave it to the hillside are suitably European. But the neighborhood suffered acutely in Pittsburgh’s post-war population decline and persisted more as an under-maintained vehicular pass-through. …

New life in an old neighborhood Read More »

Arts

The business of art

by Valentine J. Brkich

It seems as if it should be relatively simple. If you’re an artist, you spend time in your studio, blending inspiration and long hours to create compelling works. When you have a reasonable body of work and the confidence to show it, you contact an art gallery, and voilà—your art hangs on the wall where …

The business of art Read More »

Books

Imagination Motel: Pomes With Many Bags of Buttered Popcorn and Big Pepsis

by John Allison

The word “legendary” was built for Chuck Kinder. The heart and soul of the University of Pittsburgh writing program for years, he entered legend as the inspiration for the main character of “Wonder Boys,” the hit novel by his former student Michael Chabon. He fulfills the legend of the novelist with the story so big …

Imagination Motel: Pomes With Many Bags of Buttered Popcorn and Big Pepsis Read More »