Looking Back Archives - Pittsburgh Quarterly

Perched atop a network of stairs, photographer Jack Delano captured this snow-dusted Hazelwood scene in 1940 for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). A Russian native who settled in the Philadelphia area around age 10, Delano studied art and music at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Known primarily for his dramatic images, Delano, who …

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History

Beechwood School Garden, 1916

by Jennifer McNulty

Over the past 10 years, school gardens have been cropping up across the Pittsburgh region. Spurred by chef-activist Alice Waters’ 1995 Edible School Yard, the school garden movement has been praised for yielding both a harvest bounty and hearty educational benefits. In these outdoor classrooms, students learn about everything from summer squash to science to …

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History

South Park Cascades, Circa 1931

by Jennifer McNulty

South Park, a 2,013-acre Allegheny County Park in the South Hills has all the features one might expect: trails, picnic groves, ball fields, and even a golf course. In more recent years, modern updates have included a wave pool, ice skating rink, skate park, nature center and a dek hockey rink—expanding the recreational offerings. However, …

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History

New Housing, 1951

by Jennifer McNulty

Photographer Clyde “Red” Hare moved to Pittsburgh in 1950 to work on the Pittsburgh Photographic Library, covering the city’s Renaissance I, with noted editor Roy Stryker. Hare had his own car and camera and Stryker offered to pay him $50 a week to photograph the city. During that time, Hare made this photograph of new …

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History

Molded Tooth Staggered Gear and Worker, 1913

by Jennifer McNulty

The Mesta Machine Company churned and smoked on more than 20 acres of land along the Monongahela River. Though its central product was steelmaking equipment—supplying some 500 mills around the globe—Americans had Mesta’s 3,000 employees to thank for their working cars and refrigerators, ship hulls and power plant turbines. During the Depression, then-president Lorenz Iversen …

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History

Oakmont Camping, circa 1910

by Jennifer McNulty

For Pittsburghers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Oakmont offered the next best thing to paradise. During the summer months, while the city baked in heat and soot, visitors set up camp on the banks of the Allegheny River, relaxing in the fresh air and making merry on the water. Oakmont boasted a …

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History

Mount Oliver Incline, Circa 1895

by Jennifer McNulty

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 …

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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 …

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History

Home Library Group

by Jennifer McNulty

Coke oven smokestacks loom as members of a boys’ reading club pose in an what is likely a factory slum along the Monongahela where workers lived to be near their jobs at the Jones & Laughlin Steel Mill in Hazelwood. Six years earlier, steel titan Andrew Carnegie, himself a self-educated working boy who found inspiration …

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History

Heinz, 1903

by Jennifer McNulty

The H.J. Heinz company was founded in 1888, and by the turn of the century had a vast processing plant on Pittsburgh’s North Side. Known for progressive employee benefits—especially those for women—Heinz offered free medical care, a swimming pool and gymnasium, weekly manicures, a reading room, classes and lectures. Occasionally, workers enjoyed carriage rides through …

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