Meet Me Under the Kaufmann’s Clock: The Store Behind Pittsburgh’s Favorite Landmark
Pittsburgh’s favorite meeting spot grew out of a South Side tailor shop. Here is how the Kaufmann’s clock got its corner, and what became of the Big Store behind it.
The Pittsburgh Neighborhood Demolished to Build the Civic Arena
Before the Civic Arena’s roof opened to the skyline in 1961, about 95 acres of the Lower Hill District were cleared. Here is what stood there, who left, and what the records can and can’t prove.
Squirrel Hill Pittsburgh: History of a Beloved Neighborhood
Squirrel Hill Pittsburgh sits on the eastern edge of the city where the land rises above Schenley Park and the great university campuses of Oakland, a neighborhood of tree-lined streets, brick rowhouses, and a commercial district on Murray and Forbes avenues that locals call “upstreet.” It is the traditional center of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community, and…
Mary Lou Williams: Pittsburgh’s Queen of Jazz
Mary Lou Williams Pittsburgh origins begin with a child sitting at a piano in East Liberty who could play anything she heard before she was old enough to read music. She was born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 8, 1910, but her family moved to Pittsburgh around 1915, when she was a…
Billy Strayhorn: Pittsburgh’s Hidden Jazz Genius
Billy Strayhorn Pittsburgh origins are the beginning of one of the most remarkable stories in the history of American music, and almost nobody outside of jazz circles knows it. The song “Take the A Train” is one of the most recognizable pieces of music the twentieth century produced. It served for decades as the signature…
Martin Delany: Pittsburgh’s Father of Black Nationalism
Martin Delany Pittsburgh history begins with a remarkable fact that most people, including most Pittsburghers, have never heard. In February 1865, President Abraham Lincoln personally commissioned Martin Delany as a Major in the Union Army, making him the first Black field officer in the history of the United States. The two men met in early…
The Pittsburgh Crawfords: Baseball’s Greatest Lost Team
The Pittsburgh Crawfords of the early 1930s were, by most informed assessments, one of the greatest baseball teams ever assembled. Their roster in the mid-1930s included five players who would eventually be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Their pitcher was Satchel Paige, among the most dominant and theatrical hurlers of his era. Their…
Josh Gibson Pittsburgh: The Greatest Hitter Who Never Got His Shot
Josh Gibson Pittsburgh career ended on January 20, 1947, when he died of a stroke at the age of thirty-five. He had been in declining health for some time, his body worn down by years of catching, by a brain tumor, by the specific grief of a man who understood what was being withheld from…
Chipped Ham Pittsburgh: The Isaly’s Story Behind the Icon
Isaly’s Pittsburgh: Chipped Ham, Klondike Bars & a Lost Legacy Chipped ham Pittsburgh style is one of those foods that is almost impossible to explain to someone who did not grow up with it. Order it at a deli counter anywhere outside western Pennsylvania and watch what happens. The person behind the counter will look…
Freedom House Ambulance: Pittsburgh’s Forgotten EMS Pioneers
Somewhere in Pittsburgh’s Hill District in the late 1960s, a young man with no medical background beyond a demanding training course was doing things in the back of a moving ambulance that were then almost unheard of outside a hospital: managing airways, starting IV lines, monitoring cardiac rhythms and defibrillating. The Freedom House Ambulance Service,…