Celebrating a Spirit of Steel

Out there somewhere, I suspect, is a rule book for Pittsburgh diner waitresses.

In it, one could find the precise procedure for taking an order:

1. With left hand, retrieve order pad from apron pocket.

2. With right hand, take pencil from behind ear.

3. Touch pencil point against tongue; prepare to write on pad.

4. Say, “Yinz ready, hon?”

Variations are permissible, but Step 4 is mandatory. All customers are to be greeted as “hon.” Old friend, complete stranger, Al from the parking lot, the monsignor--they’re all “hons.”

I’ve been a hon many times. I worked in Pittsburgh for 10 years and attended law school here; my wife, Janice, grew up just outside town. We come back often to visit her family, but this summer we decided to pretend we were tourists and to view this all-American city through a visitor’s eyes.

One look and it’s clear that ‘Da Burgh is back. Again. And that’s partly what makes it so appealing: It’s been down, but it’s never out. Rebirth is its specialty, and it has found strength in diversity.

Resting near the feet of the Allegheny Mountains in the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, population now 335,000, proved well situated for the production of steel. In the mid-19th century the growing nation needed railroads, bridges and factories, and they, in turn, needed iron and steel. Western Pennsylvania was rich with coal; the iron ore was easy to obtain by rail and river. Soon blast furnaces and Bessemer converters filled Pittsburgh’s air with smoke and soot and colored the clouds red in the reflected glow of molten steel. A reporter once called it “hell with the lid off.”

After World War II, the Pittsburgh Renaissance was launched, a process of smoke control and urban redevelopment intended to make the city more livable. Gradually the air became clean, the neighborhoods more pleasant. But then, in the 1980s, the ailing American “Big Steel” caught pneumonia. Mills closed, taking with them thousands of jobs.

Fortunately, Pittsburgh had other strengths to exploit. Its universities and teaching hospitals gave the town depth in technology and medicine. The powerful banks that developed during the Industrial Age adapted to a new era. Pittsburgh had more than a strong back; it had a quick mind and artistic hands. The buildings were sandblasted and steam-cleaned. Salad bars replaced lunch pails.

Now all that remains of Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead Works is a row of chimneys; the steel mill itself has been replaced by a shopping mall. The old “Hot Metal Bridge,” which carried rail cars of glowing hot steel from Jones & Laughlin’s Eliza furnace across the Monongahela to its Southside rolling mill, soon will carry pedestrians between two office parks where the mills used to be.

Welcome to Pittsburgh, the Reinvention.

The view of downtown Pittsburgh entering from the south can make a visitor gasp. We drove in through suburbs that could belong to any city. We wound down a long hill, then entered a long, dark tunnel. Just as we were feeling claustrophobic, we burst into the light.

We were in midair (or mid-bridge) over the Monongahela River, a few yards from the point where it joins the Allegheny to form the Ohio. Ahead was a green triangular park commemorating Pittsburgh’s birth 250 years ago as France’s tiny Ft. Duquesne. Behind that were skyscraper office towers, and behind the towers were the hills that once were home to the various ethnic communities that provided the labor for the mines and mills, first from Western Europe, then from the Mediterranean and Slavic countries, and then from the American South.

To our left were two new stadiums. And below us, pleasure boats shared the river with cruising islands of barges. It reminded me of Portland, Ore., or Hong Kong.

The scenic hills and rivers that made Pittsburgh one big photo op had another, societal effect: They made ethnic enclaves slower to give way to homogenization. On a Saturday in Squirrel Hill, men in sober hats walk home from the synagogue. In Bloomfield, guys in T-shirts yell Italian insults at one another. Onion-like steeples evoke images of Greece or Slovakia.

Sadly, each new generation seems less linked to its ethnic heritage. Foreign-language Masses are harder to find in churches. In Cannonsburg, hometown of Perry Como and Bobby Vinton, my favorite polka radio station has been converted to Radio Disney. And is it just me, or was Janice’s late grandmother the last person who knew how to make really great pirogi? (This is a great sorrow, for pirogi--butter-drenched Eastern European dumplings filled variously with potato, sauerkraut, cheese or fruit--can be exquisite when done well, deadly when inexpertly rendered.)

Fortunately, I can travel to the University of Pittsburgh and visit the Nationality Rooms in the Cathedral of Learning. At the base of this 42-story academic building are 26 classrooms, each decorated to celebrate the traditions of a particular culture. Their textile art, carved wood, stained glass and cultural exhibits demonstrate our fascinating differences but show us also how much we share. The rooms are specially dressed during holiday seasons to reflect the respective festive customs of the people represented there.

Da ‘Burgh is more cosmopolitan than it gives itself credit for, though. Consider this excerpt from the roster of famous Pittsburghers: Martha Graham, Gene Kelly, Andy Warhol, David O. Selznick, Mary Cassatt, David McCullough, Errol Garner.

And at a TV station over in the Oakland section, 33 years ago Fred Rogers created his “Neighborhood.” A principal element of the program has a Pittsburgh antecedent: The trolley to the “Neighborhood of Make Believe” no doubt was inspired by the trolleys that still run along Pittsburgh’s hilltops.

Like good tourists, Janice and I used the real-life trolley system. Its downtown section has been converted into a small subway that took us at no charge across Pittsburgh’s “Golden Triangle” business district. At each of the three downtown stations, we stopped, went upstairs and admired the city’s architectural smorgasbord. PPG Industries’ corporate headquarters looks like a Gothic cathedral made of smoked glass. The USX Tower was built in 1970 when the company was called United States Steel, and at 64 stories is the tallest building in town. Then we used to call it “Big Rusty” because of its self-generated protective coating. The Union Trust Building, built in 1917 by steel tycoon Henry Clay Frick, has, instead of penthouses, little chapels that appear lifted from the French countryside.

Over by the Wood Street subway station we could see an unremarkable glass office tower--unremarkable until we walked back up Liberty Avenue a few yards and saw reflected in its side the Baroque cupola of the apartment tower across the street.

The steel barons who turned Pittsburgh into a smoky, gloomy place where street lights sometimes burned at noon also left more pleasant legacies. The name Andrew Carnegie, for example, is found on a university, neighborhood libraries and a new science center. At the Carnegie Museum, one of the nation’s first museums of modern art, generations of schoolkids have also gawked at dinosaur skeletons and trembled before an Egyptian mummy. People whose mill-hand grandfathers used to spit when they uttered the word “Carnegie” now enjoy seven floors of Andy Warhol’s pop art at the Carnegie-sponsored museum that bears Warhol’s name.

We toured the small art museum on the grounds of the Frick family’s Victorian mansion in the Point Breeze neighborhood, but for me the primary attraction there was the car-and-carriage museum. Among others, we saw a spit-shined Stanley Steamer, an American Bantam (a cartoon-like car built in Butler, Pa.) and an electric auto once owned by Thomas Edison. They look as they must have in their respective showrooms decades ago. (If you’re nice to the docent, he’ll let you sound the “whonk-whonk” rubber bulb horn on one of the roadsters.)

About two miles away, just off the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University campuses, we rediscovered the ultimate bad-weather-day escape. Phipps Conservatory, the creation of Henry Phipps, another steel baron, is a series of connected Victorian greenhouses. It was summer butterfly season, and we could see the new butterflies crawl out of their cocoons and make their first flights, sort of like watching kids at a middle school dance. The greenhouse rooms are filled with orchids and ginger plants, palms and cactus, hibiscus and frangipani. It’s a lovely, colorful place in which to spend a rainy afternoon.

And so is the National Aviary, on the north shore of the Allegheny. It provides a series of simulated habitats for flamingos, exotic owls, birds of prey and lots of things that chirp, squawk, trill and yodel. We found feeding time fascinating too, though somewhat disturbing in the birds’ choice of menu.

Henry John Heinz started out by selling his mother’s homemade horseradish door to door and grew his company into a multinational purveyor of foods. The Heinz family name in Pittsburgh is synonymous also with culture and community life. The Heinz Endowment saved the Lowe’s Penn Theatre, an old downtown movie palace, and in 1971 opened it as the dazzling Heinz Hall, home of the Pittsburgh Symphony. That building, in turn, has become the anchor of the city’s cultural center, in one of the quieter quarters of the downtown area.

Picking up the pattern, old vaudeville houses and other neglected buildings nearby were reborn as homes of the local ballet, light opera and public theater. Touring companies play these venues, but many of the offerings are by the city’s own performers. Particularly notable have been the powerful dramas of Pittsburgh’s August Wilson (“Jitney,” “King Hedley II”), who writes of life in the city’s African American neighborhoods.

Across the river is the brand new 64,000-seat Heinz Field, where the NFL Steelers and Pitt Panthers play. PNC Park, within field-goal range upstream on the Allegheny, is a classic, new, open-style baseball park that can hold 38,000 fans and is home to the National League Pittsburgh Pirates. We followed the cheers across the Sixth Street Bridge (recently renamed to honor legendary slugger Roberto Clemente) and tried to get a free look at the baseball action. Meanwhile, the folks in the stands enjoyed the play and a fantastic view of downtown.

Pittsburgh’s recreational and cultural opportunities aside, there’s something more basic that usually attracts me: the Strip District. The district gets its name from its shape, a five-block-wide strip of land between the looming hills and the Allegheny River, starting at the northeast edge of the central business district and extending more than a mile. And it appeals not to lust but to gluttony.

For many years known only by patrons of wholesale produce warehouses, the Strip is broadening its appeal to include the rest of us foodies. It’s where I buy my olive oil, fusilli pasta, soppressata (salami) and aged asiago, even though I now live 240 miles away. Sure, they’re available at home, but the cheese clerk at the Pennsylvania Macaroni Co. calls me “dear heart” when I step up to her counter. My coffee comes fresh out of the roaster in the warehouse settings of Prestgeorge or La Prima and is sold to me not by an art history major between gigs but a guy whose life is coffee.

I can buy a fried fish filet sandwich at Wholey’s (which reminds me of European fish markets) or Benkovitz’s (an efficient, well-scrubbed showroom for fish where I smell only a whiff of the sea). I pay less than $5 for a huge “fish on a fender,” which I douse with hot sauce and wash down with buttermilk, and thus continue a personal tradition I started during first-year law school exams.

As we saw, however, there are SUVs parked next to the refrigerated trucks in the Strip now, and there’s a contemporary art gallery at the end of a long row of loading docks, opposite the Pittsburgh Banana Co. Vacant warehouses turned out to be dandy spots for music and dance clubs; Rosebud boasts an eclectic menu ranging from blues to samba; and then there’s the hip-hop and techno place named simply “M.”

But just down the street from the sidewalk table where Janice and I sipped espresso is a reminder of the Strip’s immigrant labor past. The 109-year-old St. Stanislaus Kostka Church is the grandmother of Polish parishes in the area. It recalls days when the neighborhood was filled with mills and shantytowns, when the air was so sooty that housewives who hung out the laundry would have to bring it back in again and rewash it. Its towers are attractively capped in gold, but they are not the originals. A 1936 explosion at the banana warehouse across the street weakened the towers, forcing the removal of their lovely Baroque bonnets. Janice and I went inside to see saints depicted in the stained glass windows: Casimir, Adelbert, Methodius and Cyril. And two saints named Stanislaus, one of them the patron saint of youth.

If I were not fortunate to have in-laws in the Pittsburgh area, I know where I would stay on visits there: the new Renaissance Pittsburgh Hotel, at the downtown end of the Clemente Bridge. “New” refers to its life as a classy hotel. We used to know it as the Fulton Building, just a workaday office complex. But what we didn’t know was that the 95-year-old building had a spectacular lobby with a glass dome and a Hollywood-entrance grand staircase.

And were I not fortunate to have my mother-in-law to cook for me, I’d eat every day in a different Pittsburgh diner. (Actually, I do anyway.) Primanti’s in the Strip, the joints near the universities--they’re places where the sausages are spicy and no one looks at you funny if you ask for gravy on your French fries.

It’s a cliche, I suppose, but Janice and I ended our stay in Pittsburgh with a trip to Mt. Washington, just across the Monongahela from downtown. We were eye to eye with the skyscrapers and could watch the boat traffic in the foreground. The incline, a sort of cable car, brought another load of visitors up to Grandview Avenue to photograph one another against the dramatic skyline. Just up the avenue we revisited the point where several years ago (she won’t let me say how many) I proposed to Janice. Had my mother-in-law not expected us for dinner, we would have waited for sunset and the nighttime illumination of the fountain at Point State Park.

It’s all part of the new Pittsburgh. Yinz ready, hon?

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Guidebook: A Peek at Pittsburgh

Getting there: From LAX, nonstop service to Pittsburgh is available on US Airways, and connecting service is offered on American, United, Delta, Continental, Northwest, Vanguard and TWA. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $322.

Where to stay: Renaissance Pittsburgh, 107 6th St., Pittsburgh, PA 15222; telephone (412) 562-1200 or (800) 468-3571, fax (412) 992-2010, Internet https://www.renaissancehotels.com. Rates from $109, but check for special promotions. Gorgeous renovation of the Fulton Building on the south bank of the Allegheny is convenient to theater district and, by way of the bridge, baseball at PNC Park.

Westin Convention Center, 1000 Penn Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15222; tel. (412) 281-3700 or (888) 625-5144, fax (412) 227-4500, https://www.westin.com. Rates from $109 weekend, $189 weekday. Modern hotel, convenient to downtown attractions, also is near the Strip District and rail and bus stations.

Sheraton Hotel Station Square, 7 Station Square Drive (off Carson Street), Pittsburgh, PA 15219; tel. (412) 261-2000 or (888) 625-5144, fax (412) 261-2932, https://www.sheraton.com. Rates from $139. Recently renovated hotel on the “Mon” River at base of Mt. Washington, adjacent to elegant old train station converted to restaurants and shops.

Where to eat: Pittsburgh is best at hearty, everyday food. Its upscale dining options are limited, with an exception or two.

Primanti Bros., 26 18th St. (Strip District); local tel. 263-2142. You either love this no-frills diner or hate it; it puts the fries inside the sandwich. Early-morning revelers on their way home eat side by side with cops on their way to work. Less than $5.

Mariani’s Pleasure Bar, 4729 Liberty Ave. (Bloomfield); tel. 682-9603. Lunch and dinner, except dinner only on Sundays. Hearty Italian American; typical entree $10 or less.

Benkovitz Seafoods, 23rd and Smallman streets, tel. 263-3016, closes about 5 p.m. It’s mainly a retail fish market; terrific fish sandwiches and fried clams. Stand-up dining; less than $5.

Original Hot Dog Shop, 3901 Forbes Ave. (Oakland section); tel. 621-7388. A longtime favorite of university students. Less than $5.

Cafe at the Frick, 7227 Reynolds St. (Point Breeze neighborhood); tel. 371-0600. Lunch and late afternoon tea only. Good museum cafe; typical entree $10.

Lidia’s, 1400 Smallman St., tel. 552-0150; dinner only. Good veal and pasta from TV chef Lidia Bastianich; typical entree $20.

For more information: Greater Pittsburgh Convention & Visitors Bureau, 425 6th Ave., 30th floor, Pittsburgh, PA 15219; tel. (800) 359-0758, https://www.visitpittsburgh.com.

Also, Pennsylvania Center for Travel, Tourism and Film Promotion, 404 Forum Building, Harrisburg, PA 17120; tel. (800) VISIT-PA (847-4872), fax (717) 787-0687, https://www.state.pa.us.

-- Jerry Haines