Articles Archive - Page 118 of 156 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

2015 Winter

A lens on life

1. An old woman is seated in an upright armchair in a sparely furnished room. 2. A slightly younger man in a suit approaches from a room beyond. He is not perfectly in focus. She does not appear to be aware of him. 3. The man seems to pause and fixes his attention on the …

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Architecture & Neighborhoods

Chronicling the Courthouse

by David Aschkenas

In January of 2013, a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article mentioned money being raised to restore the circa 1888 Allegheny County Courthouse to its former glory. Designed by architect H.H. Richardson, who died in 1886 at the age of 48 and never got to see his masterpiece completed, the building is considered to be one of the …

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Opinion

Sticks & bones

by Terry Miller

I walk along the green grated fence at Frick Park scavenging for tennis balls that found their way to the soft slopes of clay and into the dew covered grass and clover. I smile as I spot each ball, then capture it in the ball shagger. Breathing in the morning’s cool breeze, I delight in …

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Opinion

Pass the adrenaline, please

by Lara Bruhn

You might be tempted to call 911. It’s 2 a.m. and a 40-something woman sitting in her Prius in a public parking lot is pounding her fists on the steering wheel and bellowing to an invisible companion. I confess to being that woman, co-owner of a bakery on one of the biggest days of the …

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Region

As Boomers Age

by Jeffery Fraser

In a few decades, the rest of America will be as gray as Allegheny County, which not long ago stood as one of the oldest counties in the nation. But it won’t be due to a local surge of youth. Aging Baby Boomers, in fact, are driving the county’s older adult population to new heights. …

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Health

Rethinking Depression

by Kelly Casey

Growing up in New Castle, Brenda Weingartner, 53, was a teenager when she had her first of many bouts with depression. “Back then, my parents didn’t have a good understanding of mental illness and what to do for it,” she said. “My mother’s suggestion was to go talk to the minister. That was her generation’s …

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Education

One Pitt, One Planet

by Ben Schmitt

On a muggy September evening, a group of 30 University of Pittsburgh students harvested food on a green patch of land in Oakland surrounded by older brick buildings and urban hubbub. They picked tomatoes, green peppers, raspberries, kale, beets, turnips and grapes, filling large plastic bins in an effort to promote a sustainable future and …

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Region

Growing smarter

by Julia Fraser

When drivers exit the turnpike in Cranberry, they see expansive strip malls, traffic signals and road signs leading to more highways. On its face, it’s a portrait of urban sprawl. But a closer look reveals evidence of the steps the Butler County municipality has taken to make amends for the fragmented development of its past, …

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Profiles

Chuck Bunch

by Evan Pattak

The early 1990s seemed like a halcyon period for PPG Industries, one of Pittsburgh’s most venerable and best-known companies. Its three business pillars—coatings, glass and chemicals—each was producing about one-third of the firm’s revenue, a tried-and-true formula that promised decades of success. Then came the revolution. Thanks in part to market forces that included globalization, …

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Obituaries

Ferguson, Mastiff, Kay, Kalson, Musgrave, Simmons, Guarino, Gallagher

by PQ Staff

Dr. Albert Ferguson Jr., 95 Dr. Ferguson founded the University of Pittsburgh Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, which he chaired from 1954 until he retired in 1986. As a Marine during World War II, he performed enemy surveillance in islands in the South Pacific, surviving a torpedo attack on the boat transferring him to an island …

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Nature

Dutch Hill Forest

by Thomas Saunders

One of the many beautiful areas in western Pennsylvania for hiking or paddling is the Clarion River. Designated a wild and scenic river, the middle Clarion runs along the southern boundary of the Allegheny National Forest and is bordered by many other protected lands—state park land, state forest, game lands and privately conserved areas. The …

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Opinion

Sudden Goodbye

by Douglas Heuck

In 1967, we arrived at our island cottage in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and of course, the first thing we kids did was explore our distantly familiar summer home. On that particular day, we found a bat inert on the dining room floor. “Pick it up, and we’ll show Dad,” said my 14-year-old sister. I was …

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Arrivals

Nicholson, Bullock, Parker, Gee, Holmberg, Walker, Vignali

by PQ Staff

Robin Nicholson will become the third director of the Frick Art & Historical Center. A native of Edinburgh, Scotland, he comes to Pittsburgh from Richmond, Va., where he was deputy director for art and education at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Previously, he was director and curator of the corporate art collection of the …

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Profiles

William E. Strickland Jr., Educator and Activist

by Jeff Sewald

I’m a North Side kid. I grew up in the Manchester section of Pittsburgh and graduated from Oliver High School, where I was lucky enough to meet a person named Frank Ross, who was my art teacher. In several important ways, Frank turned my life around dramatically. I was raised in a small row house …

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Sports

The old college try

by Marino Parascenzo

Every year at this time, as college football arrives, I’m reminded of an old movie that pops up on the classic channels now and then—“The Male Animal.” The tale deals with the two principal functions of the American college: education and football. In that order. Usually. The movie, from the 1940s, is based on a …

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Books

Apocalypse Pittsburgh

by John Allison

Pittsburghers have long boasted that, in the heat of the Cold War, our role as an industrial power made us the Russians’ No. 1 nuclear target. It was a counterweight to our role as a national punchline for being a sooty dump. Thomas Sweterlitsch is not a Pittsburgh native, but he must have absorbed this …

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Birds

Red-bellied woodpecker

by David Liebmann

A tree is a house. it’s not just an isolated organism, but also a host to forms of life from mammals to birds to insects to fungi. A tree is one element of a larger ecosystem and simultaneously a microcosm of it. And you can tell a lot about a neighborhood ecosystem based on its …

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Food & Wine

Fall rising

by Sherrie Flick

An epiphany moment comes when a person bakes bread, waiting forever for its puffy belly to inch up above the bowl. Waiting and waiting until the time comes when it has doubled itself and the baker takes a light fist to its risen center, pushes, and the bread exhales all the air the yeast has …

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Travel

Chagrin Falls

by Barbara Eichenlaub

Sometimes it’s nice to escape to a place with a slower, more relaxed pace—a quaint community that isn’t teeming with chain stores and traffic, where kids ride their bikes into town to have a cone and hang out with friends. There is a town, just this side of Cleveland, that fits the bill—Chagrin Falls, Ohio. …

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Architecture & Neighborhoods

The Enduring Dollar

by Charles Rosenblum

They don’t call it the lion’s share for nothing. Those sculpted felines at Dollar Bank’s Fourth Avenue building have grabbed the limelight. A crowd attended their unveiling last year, with substantial press coverage, because master carver Nicholas Fairplay had both restored the original lions, which were placed inside the Dollar Bank building, and replicated them …

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Homes

In the French manner

by Marylynn Uricchio

Turn onto the discreet drive on a pleasant street in Sewickley and suddenly you feel as if you’re in the French countryside. A long lawn, impeccably maintained and dotted with mature trees, leads to a French manor house that spans nearly the width of the property. It sits regally near the back, surrounded by gardens …

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Travel

Eurotrip revisited

by Tim Menees

Seven months after JFK was assassinated and four months after the Beatles played Ed Sullivan, 100,000 American students (I was one) became the first generation of middle-class American college kids who could afford to travel to Europe. That summer of ’64, thousands of us crossed the pond thanks to larger jets, cheap tickets and Arthur …

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