Surprising Pittsburgh

If Pittsburgh had always been like this, Mr. Warhol might never have left. -The New York Times

Practical Pittsburgh

Depending on your viewpoint, Pittsburgh remains a manageable big city or a sophisticated small town. The overall MSA population tops 2.4 million, but just over 300,000 residents live in the city proper. More impressive than size is scale. Enough Old World attitudes, flavor and architecture survive to give Pittsburgh an overall calming effect.

Places Rated Almanac ranks Pittsburgh as the nation’s second best city for getting around—based on public transit, commute times, and air, rail and highway access. Escape, found in or out of town, is always an option and it won’t drain your wallet or time bank.

Click here for more on living, working and growing in Pittsburgh.

Affordable Pittsburgh

The Utne Reader called Pittsburgh “the affordable San Francisco.” You have basket full of other choices about where and how to spend limited resources. Pittsburgh, never one for conspicuous consumption, loves a bargain.

From a great loaf of sourdough to a hilltop view, Pittsburgh supports good taste on a meager budget. Take housing, for instance. The average price of a home or a month’s rent here is half of what you would pay in Washington, D.C., and far less than most other cities.

Click here for a Cost of Living Calculator.

Safe Pittsburgh

Century 21 Real Estate designates Pittsburgh the safest city in the U.S. (population greater than 1 million) and Money Magazine ranks property crime here lower than any other city in the Northeast. The latest FBI Uniform Crime reports support those rankings, listing Pittsburgh as one of the five safest large cities in the U.S.

Click here for a list of relocation resources.

Entertaining Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh knows how to balance work and play. And thanks to the generosity of its founding industrialists, and a strong preservation community, no city its size can boast as many great theaters and other entertainment venues.

Museums
During its first renaissance (1890-1920), wealthy Pittsburgh business leaders lavished Oakland with monumental public buildings and elegant private mansions. Today, students can stroll over to The Carnegie Museums, 13-acres of fine art, sculpture and other cures for the overworked mind. Across the bridge in Schenley Park stand The Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, home to calming Japanese, tropical and other exotic gardens.
http://www.carnegiemuseums.org/carnegie/index.htm

Did you know that many of the first plants to take root inside Phipps Conservatory were purchased at Chicago’s 1893 Columbian Exposition? Click here to read more about how this gathering shaped American culture and consumer society much as television and the internet would generations later.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA96/WCE/legacy.html

Performing Arts
In recent years, that same old money has transformed a blighted downtown area into the 14-block Cultural District, home to four beautifully restored theaters, a fifth brand new facility, and some of the world’s most respected opera, ballet, theater and symphony companies. Add to that the city’s rich tradition as an incubator for jazz music and musicians, and a growing contemporary music scene, and you have your pick of performances.
http://www.pgharts.org/index2.cfm

Student’s Top 10 Art Scenes

Two Andy's From Pittsburgh

Aside from their signature shock of white hair, Andrew Carnegie and Andy Warhol would seem to have little in common. But Carnegie Magazine Editor R. Jay Gangewere finds some fascinating parallels in the lives of these two men in his article from the May/June 1994 issue, which marked the opening of The Andy Warhol Museum.

Click here for back issues of Carnegie Magazine.

Click here to read more on the life and art of Andy Warhol.

Warhol, father of “pop” culture, once said that everyone should be famous for 15 minutes. Click here to read about Pittsburgh people who enjoyed at least that much notoriety and more.

Student’s Top 10 Rush Tickets

August Wilson and the American Dream
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson left high school at 15, and spent most of his time in one of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Libraries. Today, he is considered one of, the great American playwrights of our time.

Click here to learn more about Wilson’s decade-by-decade chronicle of life in Pittsburgh’s Hill District neighborhood.

Sports

Just across the river from downtown, two new sports facilities house the baseball Pirates (PNC Park) and football Steelers (Heinz Field). In the mid-town Civic Arena, hockey fans continue to marvel at the skills of former Penguin player-turned-owner turned-player Mario Lemieux. And professional soccer—in the form of the Pittsburgh Riverhounds—has found a loyal following.

Click on any of the following to learn more about Pittsburgh's beloved sports teams.
Pittsburgh Penguins
Pittsburgh Pirates
Pittsburgh Steelers
Pittsburgh Riverhounds
Pittsburgh Panthers

Extra, Extra

What makes Pittsburgh so sports-crazed? Success certainly plays a part. The Steelers were the first NFL team to win four Super Bowls. The Pirates, one of baseball’s oldest and most storied franchises, wave five World Series flags. And the Penguins, one of the NHL’s expansion teams from 1967, skated to back-to-back Stanley Cup Championships in 1991 and 1992. Those teams also produced some of sports most memorable plays and players: “Mean” Joe Greene, Jack “Splat” Lambert, Roberto Clemente, Willie “Pops” Stargell.

Click here to see why The Sporting News routinely ranks Pittsburgh among the nation’s Best Sports Cities in its annual poll.

Fallen Star
Although records were loosely kept in the Negro National League, historians believe that catcher Joshua Gibson... more

QB HQ
Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania has produced more NFL quarterbacks than any other region or city in the USA, ... more

Yankee Stew
Only once did a player hit a walk-off home run in a seventh game of the World Series. Pittsburgh Pirate Bill Mazeroski... more

Dining

Pittsburgh offers the kind of dining variety and quality you would expect from a major metropolitan area, with a bit of an Old World twist. Sure, you can get Thai, Indian and other Pan-Asian favorites, along with Caribbean, Tex-Mex, and Cuban. But some of Pittsburgh’s best dining centers around the tastes and traditions of northern Italian cooking. It seems that a small band of immigrants, all from the tiny village of Santa Allessio on the outskirts of Lucca, settled here in the years before World War II. Names such as Tambellini, Barsotti, Poli and others have become synonymous with fine Pittsburgh cooking. Mangiare!

Click here to read why Lidia Bastianich opened Lidia’s Pittsburgh, just the third restaurant in the nation opened by the star of the PBS hit, Lidia’s Italian American Kitchen.

Click here to sample restaurant reviews for every type and style of Pittsburgh dining.