Category Archives: Arts & Culture

Duquesne Incline Museum Poster

Duquesne Incline Museum: 140 Years of Engineering History for $0.50

UPDATE 8/13/2019 – Visit Very Local Pittsburgh for an updated guide to the Duquesne Incline Museum.

Photo credit: Councilwoman Kail Smith.

I have been saving this post about the Duquesne Incline for May 20. Today is the actual birthday of the Duquesne Incline, 140 years ago (May 20, 1877) the Duquesne Incline opened to the public. The Duquesne Incline as well as the Monongahela Incline are both still operate daily. Riding the incline and viewing Pittsburgh from Mt. Washington are staples on things to do when you visit Pittsburgh lists the incline image is one that is frequently featured in Pittsburgh photos.

I’d like to think I know about some of the best place to see in Pittsburgh but nothing quite compares to the view from the incline. When a friend comes to visit Pittsburgh from out of town, I take them to breakfast at Pamela’s or lunch at Primanti’s followed by a trip to the Duquesne Incline. And even though I have done this tour of Pittsburgh many, many times, riding up the incline from Station Square and looking down on the point never gets old. (Turns out the Steelers give their new players the exact same tour.)

The incline ride is worth it for the view of the city. The collection of post-cards, photos and newspaper articles on the walls of The Duquesne Incline’s visitors center is probably the best was to get a sense of 140 years of Pittsburgh in one room.

David H. Miller Working Museum at the Duquesne Incline

But there it one reason why I always take folks on the Duquesne Incline – the museum. The museum at the top of the Duquesne Incline is one of my favorite places to visit and I am surprised that there is no mention of the musuem on the Duquesne Incline website.  For $0.50, and you need to have exact change, you can take a self-guided tour of the machine room below the visitors center on Mt. Washington.

The poster that describes the inner workings of the incline is one of my favorites, I never seem to visit when the gift shop is open, but it is one of the Pittsburgh things I would like to have framed for my wall.

Here is a video tour of the Duquesne Incline Museum from the blog Phenomenal Place:

The Society for the Preservation of the Duquesne Heights Incline

The other impressive thing about the Duquesne Incline is that it has been operated by the The Society for the Preservation of the Duquesne Heights Incline since 1964. After the Duquesne Incline closed in 1962, a group of neighbors formed to reopen and operate the incline. The incline is actually owned by the Port Authority of Allegheny County and leased to the The Society for the Preservation of the Duquesne Heights Incline for $1 per year.

Ride the Incline & Visit the Duquesne Incline Museum

The Duquesne Incline is open 365 days a year.

Monday through Saturday: 5:30 a.m. to 12:30 a.m.
Sundays and Holidays: 7:00 a.m. to 12:30 a.m.

Follow the Duquesne Incline on Twitter @DuquesneIncline

Do you know more about the history of the Duquesne Incline?

Given that the Duquesne Incline has been run by a nonprofit for over 50 years, I am surprised that there is not more information about the preservation efforts online. Do you know more about the incline? Are there books one should read? If you are so inclined, please share links to more info in the comments. Thanks!

 

Pittsburgh Speakeasy

You Can Now Legally Drink at the Speakeasy in the William Penn

This is one of this historic things about Pittsburgh that I think is so fascinating that I assume everyone knows. But I am amazed how many people don’t know that the new(ish) bar in the basement of the William Penn Hotel which is named Speakeasy, really was a speakeasy back in the day.

I love old hotels. I love visiting old hotels. I love the book “Eloise,” which is about a girl who grew up in the Plaza hotel in New York city. I love the stories about the New Yorkers who lived in the Plaza hotel for years. (Check out the story of Fannie Lowenstein, who lived at the Plaza for 35 years and has been described at the Eloise from hell.) A few years ago, I drove cross country with a friend who was moving back to Pittsburgh from San Diego. Each day of the trip as I routed our stops to conveniently be at grand old hotels. The first time I set foot into an Ace Hotel was on the advice of a Twitter follower to visit the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs. So of course I love the William Penn Hotel and not just because it has some of the cleanest bathrooms in all of downtown Pittsburgh. If I have to wait for someone Downtown, I will almost always suggest the lobby of the William Penn Hotel.

The prohibition era speakeasy at the William Penn, reopens as “The Speakeasy”

Pittsburgh Speakeasy

 

The Speakeasy is underneath the lobby, if you are entering from William Penn Way, instead of going up the stairs to the reception/Starbucks area, go down the stairs and to your right. After prohibition, the space was used as storage for a number of years. The hotel renovated the space and reopened it to the public as a bar/lounge on December 5, 2012, which was the 79th anniversary of the repeal of prohibition.

From the Trib’s article on the grand opening of The Speakeasy in 2012:

A rear exit opens onto a warren of hallways that led to Oliver Avenue. In the event of a police raid, customers could beat a discreet retreat, Page says.

Here is a video tour of the reopened Speakeasy by WESA in 2012:

Pittsburgh Prohibition Cocktail History

Last month, CityLab, the Atlantic’s blog about all things urban published “The Secret Lives of Speakeasies,” the entire article is about Pittsburgh and that the term “speakeasy” was first uttered right here in here in Western, Pennsylvania:

Whisper “speakeasy” into a search engine of your choice and odds are you will stumble across the story of Kate Hester, the Pittsburgh hotelkeeper at the center of the amusing, possibly apocryphal origin story for the word.

Hester appeared in what can only be described as a prototypical trend piece for The New York Times in July 6, 1891. The story goes like this: Hester owned a saloon in McKeesport, just southeast of the city, that sold booze in defiance of a state law that upped the costs of licenses for alcohol so much that it was nearly prohibited. When customers got too rowdy, Hester would hush customers with “speak-easy, boys!” to avoid attracting the attention of authorities; the expression soon spread to the city, and the nation. “Some day, perhaps, Webster’s Dictionary will take it up,” the yarn concludes.

CityLab’s Andrew Small traveled to Pittsburgh to visit our speakeasy inspired bars, including the Speakeasy at the William Penn and Accasia on the southside. Small also met up with John Schalcosky, who updates the Facebook Page, “The Odd, Mysterious & Fascinating History of Pittsburgh.”

New Book Explores Pittsburgh Cocktail History

Local authors, Cody McDevitt and Sean Enright, have recently published a book on the history of cocktails in the steel city, “Pittsburgh Drinks: A History of Cocktails, Nightlife & Bartending Tradition.” You can read an excerpt of “Pittsburgh Drinks” on Littsburgh and listen to an interview with Sean and Cody on episode #80 of the Marta on the Move podcast.

Related articles

Old Allegheny County Jail Museum – Free Tours Offered Every Monday

Old Allegheny County Jail Museum

Photo credit: PHLF

The old Allegheny County Jail building sits are the corner of 5th and Ross Streets was designed by architect H. H. Richardson. This jail and was part of a larger complex designed by Richardson and built between 1884 and 1886. In 1995, Allegheny County built a new jail, (the one over by the Allegheny River that you have probably biked past on the Eliza Furnace trail, which most Pittsburghers refer to as “the jail trail”). After the new jail was built, the old Allegheny County jail was converted to house the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas Family Division.

I know that this building is a great example of H.H. Richardson’s work and a great example of the Romanesque Revival style that Richardson was know for, but what I didn’t know is that there is an Old Allegheny County Jail Musuem in the building that is open for tours. (If you have been following some of my posts about the historic designation for the Albright United Methodist Church building, that church which was built in 1906 is also a Romanesque Revival style building.)

Visiting the Old Allegheny County Jail Museum

The Old Allegheny County Jail Museum is open on Mondays from 11:30am-1pm. Docents from Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation are on hand to tell you about the place and get you started on the self-guided tour.

Open: Most Mondays from 11:30am-1pm (No tours on memorial day, check the PHLF Calendar before you go to confirm they are open.)
Location: Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas-Family Division, 440 Ross Street, Pittsburgh, 15219
Enter on Ross Street or through the great courtyard arch on Fifth Avenue.

Things to know before you go:

  • This is a courthouse, which means you will have to go through the security screening to enter the building.
  • There is no photography allowed in the building.

Learn more about the Old Allegheny County Jail

Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Allegheny County Jail

Pittsburgh Press photographer Michael Chikiris via The Digs, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

 

Jane Jacobs Documentary at Pittsburgh Filmmakers May 12-18

Today’s blog post is a double header, I guess I should say double feature, of historic preservation information. Just in time for preservation month, the new documentary about Jane Jacobs opens in Pittsburgh this weekend and it is screening at one of Pittsburgh’s oldest neighborhood movie theaters.

Last Saturday was the annual Jane’s Walk, a community walk celebrating the work of Jane Jacobs in advocating for walkable communities. Jane Jacobs is the author of the book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” (Amazon affiliate link). The book was first published in 1961 as a response to the 1950s urban planning policies of urban renewal. Many cities took on massive urban renewal projects which dramatically reshaped the urban landscape. The effects of urban renewal are still felt today across the country and right here in Pittsburgh.

Urban Renewal in Pittsburgh

Urban renewal and its impact on both the North Side and East Liberty was the topic of a panel discussion hosted by Preservation Pittsburgh in March.  Past Tense | Future Perfect was moderated by Don Carter who is the director of the Remaking Cities Institute at the Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture and provided an interesting discussion of how preservationists could think about urban renewal and the impact on these neighborhoods today. Yesterday, I wrote about the memorial that Andrew Carnegie erected for Colonel James Anderson. I was surprised to learn that the memorial was moved from it’s original location as part of the urban renewal plan which demolished over 500 buildings to create the Allegheny Center mall and apartments.  The mall closed in the 1990s, the mall building has been used as office space and has recently been rebranded as Nova Place. And today, The Atlantic’s CityLab blog published a post about the response to a proposed fried chicken restaurant in East Liberty, The New Urban Fried-Chicken Crisis. Author Brentin Mock provides some historical context around the fried chicken crisis, explaining that East Liberty was and continues to be impacted by the urban renewal policies:

At one point in the early 20th century, East Liberty was one of the largest commercial corridors in the Allegheny Valley region—a third downtown for Pittsburgh. Then urban planners got all bright-eyed and decided to experiment with the street layout and ended up choking East Liberty off from the rest of the city, killing most of its commercial enterprises off in the process.

Even if you don’t care about what restaurants are coming or going, the CityLab article is worth a read, I think Brentin Mock does a good job of explaining what is happening in East Liberty today.

Jane Jacob’s book continues to be one of the key texts around urban planning and creating vibrant communities. I was first introduced to the book in one of my urban planning courses in college. If I had known that after college I would spend years writing about the city of Pittsburgh, I would have majored in city planning.  I went to college at a time when email was so new that we had to take an introduction to email class the first week of school. This was back in the days before cell phones, Facebook and blogging.

Jane Jacobs Documentary Screening in Pittsburgh

Jane Jacobs Pittsburgh

The city lovers and urban planners that I know are quite excited that the new documentary about Jane Jacob, “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City“. Pittsburgh Filmmakers will be showing the documentary at the Regent Square Theater May 12-18, 2017.

You can read Al Hoff’s review of “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City” in this weeks Pittsburgh City Paper.

Showtimes for “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City“ at the Regent Square Theater:

  • Friday, May 12 @ 8pm
  • Saturday, May 13 @ 3:30pm, 5:45pm & 8pm
  • Sunday, May 14 @ 3:30pm & 5:45pm
  • Monday, May 15 @ 8pm
  • Tuesday, May 16 @ 8pm
  • Wednesday, May 17 @ 8pm
  • Thursday, May 18 @ 8pm

You can follow the film on Facebook, Twitter @JaneJacobsDoc & Instagram @JaneJacobsDoc.

The Regent Square Theater

Photo credit: Cinema Treasures.

It seems fitting that a documentary about Jane Jacobs is screening at a neighborhood theater. The Regent Square Theater has been around since 1938 and is one of the last single screen theaters left in the area. The theater was purchased by the nonprofit Pittsburgh Filmmakers in 1998 and continues to operate as a movie theater screening movies 7 days a week. I was hoping to find out some more history about this building. If you know more about the history of the Regent Square Theater, please share.

If you like local movie theaters, check out our Guide to Pittsburgh’s Independent Movie Theaters.

Pittsburgh Independent Bookstores

Independent Bookstore Day & A Map of Every Independent Bookstore in Pittsburgh

UPDATE 4/24/2019:

Please visit Very Local Pittsburgh for an updated Guide to Independent Bookstores in Pittsburgh. 

Info on Independent Bookstore Day 2019 events in Pittsburgh is available here. 

The last Saturday in April is Independent Bookstore Day, the official hashtag for Independent Bookstore Day is #BookstoreDay. The #BookstoreDay hashtag is a great way to take a peak at how folks across the country are celebrating local booksellers. Indie bookshops across the country are hosting parties and inviting customer and friends to buy books from their local booksellers.  If you are interested in learning more about the business of book selling, Kim Lyons wrote a story for the Trib this week, Independent bookshops find unlikely prosperity, that digs into some of the statistics on the brick-and-mortar bookstore trends.

Independent Bookstore Day Events in Pittsburgh

Some of Pittsburgh’s book stores have big plans to celebrate on Saturday. Here are some of the local events for Independent Bookstore Day:

  • White Whale Books
    • 25% off all used books all day long,
    • prizes hidden among the stacks
    • 12-2pm  Baby Loves Tacos pop-up
    • 7-9pm release party for Pittsburgh Poetry Review’s newest issue
  • Nine Stores
    • 20% off store wide
  • City of Asylum Bookshop
    • 11:30am: all-ages children’s puppet show with Felicia Cooper and story hour with Bookseller Jen.
    • 1:00 – 3:00pm: Book signing with City of Asylum Exiled Writer-In-Residence Osama Alomar
    • 1:00pm & 2:00pm: Tours of our Alphabet City building
    • a scavenger hunt for kids
    • raffles and door prizes
    • surprise discounts
    • an exclusive, limited edition chapbook by Michael Chabon

Guide to Pittsburgh Independent Bookstores

Pittsburgh Independent Bookstores

One of our most popular posts on the blog is our guide to independent movie theaters around town. Just in time for Independent Bookstore Day we bring you a guide to local bookshops around town.  In 2015, NextPittsburgh published a guide to independent bookshops in Pittsburgh. In the past two years, Pittsburgh has seen several new bookshops open and we have put together an updated guide to independent bookstores in Pittsburgh which includes a Google map of all 16 shops.