My former Pitt colleague and dear friend Mark Magalotti recently gave me an old magazine full of things he knew would interest me. It was the September 1956 edition of Greater Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh’s Business Magazine, published monthly by the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, a “focal point for action in government, transportation, and education”. I remember the magazine as an excellent source of business information and was sorry to see the Chamber cease its publication in 1991. Mark knew I would be interested in a special feature article by Sun-Telegraph Editor William Lampe discussing the newly announced Interstate Highway System, authorized by Congress three months earlier. As an example of what we could expect of the system, the photograph on the cover of the magazine was of a lightly travelled Parkway East just west of the Squirrel Hill Tunnel with no vehicles whatsoever on the infamous Beechwood Boulevard on-ramp. I was indeed interested in the article as well as in several other relevant ones, including a photo-essay on renovation of the Lower Hill District. This prompted me to dig out Stefan Lorant’s magnificent cocktail table book, Pittsburgh, the Story of an American City.
Published in 1964, Lorant’s book is a love letter to the people guiding Pittsburgh’s Renaissance, the people dedicated to “saving their city from decay”. They had already cleared the smog-choked skies and initiated flood control, and planned to eliminate river pollution, to demolish slums, to provide better housing, and to construct new buildings, parks, and highways throughout the city. Chronologically the book traces the city’s fabled history from colonial times up to the euphoric era following World War II. It is indeed constructive to re-read information about Pittsburgh’s noble ambitions for the future and reflect on what actually has transpired. The final chapter of Lorant’s book was written by David L. Lawrence, then Governor of Pennsylvania. His pride in what had already been accomplished is exceeded only by his optimism about Pittsburgh’s future.
The partnership of Lawrence, perhaps the most effective politician Pittsburgh has ever seen, and Richard King Mellon, easily Pittsburgh’s most powerful business leader, is credited with the Pittsburgh Renaissance. Following World War II, this “odd couple” decided to renew Pittsburgh, to eliminate its image as “Hell with the lid off” (Lincoln Steffens) and its nickname, “Smoky City”. First, flood control dams were constructed by the Corps of Engineers on the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers and their tributaries. The Smoke Control Ordnance in 1946 forced the conversion of residential coal-fired furnaces to natural gas, dramatically clearing the air. The construction of the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority’s state-of-the-art sewage treatment plant was a major step toward cleaning up the rivers. Blighted areas in the fabled Golden Triangle were the next target. Thirty-six acres of industrial sites were acquired by eminent domain by the State of Pennsylvania for about eight million dollars and converted into the very popular Point State Park, with its iconic fountain celebrating the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers.
Next in the sights of the developers was the Lower Hill District, “an economic and social eyesore”, far too close to Grant Street to be ignored. In the 1950s it was home to about 8,000 people crowded into ninety-five acres, easily the most densely populated neighborhood in the city. It is estimated that the majority of these people were African-Americans, with perhaps one thousand of them being Italian, Jewish, and Syrian. About four hundred businesses were relocated, (including my favorite Syrian restaurant – Samreny’s, which ended up on Baum Boulevard). According to the Chamber magazine, the Lower Hill residents were happy to be relocated to low rent housing in the new Pittsburgh Housing Authority projects, “Whatever we get is better than we got”. As it turned out, eventually many of them preferred the diverse squalor they had left to the regimentation of the projects. Once the blighted buildings had been demolished, ambitious plans were announced for a civic center featuring a new home for the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera and a magnificent Center for the Arts, which would include a 2,300 seat Symphony Hall, an exposition hall, a museum of modern art, a restaurant, an apartment building, and a large parking garage. The Renaissance architects had other grand plans as well, hoping to replace blight wherever they found it with shiny, modern buildings. A prime target was a 26-acre site on the Northside that the developers planned to acquire and convert into an inner-city mall, to be called Allegheny Center. A similar plan was proposed for East Liberty. Pittsburgh’s position as a major national city was destined to be enhanced.
The Pittsburgh Renaissance Era was the zenith of the city’s trajectory. In 1950 Pittsburgh was the twelfth largest city in our nation, with a population of 676,806 residents; today its population of about 300,000 earns it a rank of number 68, (between Saint Paul, Minnesota and Greensboro, North Carolina). How successful was the renewal initiative? Were Davy Lawrence and Dick Mellon saviors? … or failures? The air is certainly orders of magnitude cleaner, except for the Clairton area where infrequent problems at the coke plant exceed allowable levels. The rivers are certainly cleaner, except when we get an inch of rain and the city’s antiquated combined sewer system discharges untreated sewage into them. Point Park and Gateway Center are large successes. The Lower Hill Renewal is now acknowledged to be a failure; the inner-city malls at Allegheny Center and East Liberty failed miserably and have gone out of existence. The developers’ attempt to stamp out blight has generated pockets of blight in nearly every neighborhood. The City Government of Pittsburgh is heading toward bankruptcy and future oversight by a State Board, largely because of its shrinking tax base. The complementary problems of homelessness (900 persons) and vacant condemned houses (7,000) appear to be unsolvable. Somehow, the well-meaning efforts of the leaders of the Pittsburgh Renaissance have not produced a positive result.