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Old 01-16-2015, 11:13 PM
 
14 posts, read 25,752 times
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Hiiiii

I'm new to the forum and I've actually joined cause I have some questions about Pittsburgh. I'm a young writer (fresh out of high school to be exact)....currently making my first novel attempt.

Its a fiction story set in Pittsburgh in 1975 and kicks off in the month of April.

I’ve already done a lot of research from trying to get interviews with people, scouring the internet and asking older family members.

Next up is the library but figured this couldn't hurt in at least making me even more familiar with city during that period.

Soooooo

I'm gonna throw some questions and hope you all respond

What were some of the bad neighborhoods during that decade (same ones now?)

What are some important ways the city differed? (As I didn't grow up in the period I'm of course worried about getting things wrong.....most of all geography related things)

New Kensington would have mob turf back then.....correct? (Already had this question answered but wanted it cleared again)

And just any general information you all can throw?

Anyway looking forward to answers and thanks!!
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Old 01-16-2015, 11:34 PM
 
Location: Pittsburgh
6,782 posts, read 9,526,963 times
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In 1975, people in Pittsburgh drank really bad domestic, mass-market beer and liked it. Plus, they never bothered with college. Somehow, for reasons nobody bothers to specify, this makes them better than me.
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Old 01-17-2015, 05:18 AM
 
Location: About 10 miles north of Pittsburgh International
2,458 posts, read 4,184,165 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Moby Hick View Post
In 1975, people in Pittsburgh drank really bad domestic, mass-market beer and liked it. Plus, they never bothered with college. Somehow, for reasons nobody bothers to specify, this makes them better than me.
Yes it does.
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Old 01-17-2015, 06:48 AM
 
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Bad neighborhoods back then were the Hill, Homewood, Manchester, Central NS, parts of East Liberty, and the various projects. Lawrenceville and the South Side weren't dangerous, but were places where you could get your ass kicked if you didn't watch your step. Currently dangerous places like Beltzhoover, Knoxville, and Mt. Oliver weren't dangerous at all. Knoxville and Mt. Oliver were both quite nice, and Beltzhoover was still pretty solid. The collapse of steel in the early 80's hit all of those places very hard, but it was the entrance of crack cocaine later in the decade that sent those places off the rails.
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Old 01-17-2015, 07:33 AM
 
Location: A coal patch in Pennsyltucky
10,271 posts, read 10,508,856 times
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I agree with what Herodotus said. Many of the bad neighborhoods haven't changed but many neighborhoods have declined since 1975 because of the decline of the steel mills. You no longer have the mill towns and the ethnic neighborhoods. The worst in this regard are McKeesport, Braddock and Duquesne. The biggest change has been on the South Side. This was an area of steelworkers, shot and beer bars, and small grocery stores. It was not an area that outsiders went to go barhopping or to restaurants.

Homestead was similar to the South Side in 1975. In both areas, many men walked to the mills, and walked to a local bar after their shift. Private social clubs such as the Elks, Eagles, Sons of Italy, VFW, American Legion, Slovak Club, Polish Falcons, Hungarian Club, etc., also played a major role.

McKeesport and New Kensington had large downtown shopping districts. New Kensington and McKees Rock had a reputation as Mafia towns.

I would suggest getting access to the Pittsburgh Press and Post Gazette newspaper archives and reviewing the news from that time. The newspapers in 1975 provided much more extensive and detailed local news coverage.
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Old 01-17-2015, 07:45 AM
 
Location: Pittsburgh
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Downtown is the Liberty Avenue corridor was the region's mecca for smut back in those days- people couldn't go on to craigs list or the internet for their prostitution and pornography needs- the area was really buzzing with hos, pimps, peep shows and other dubious activities.

Places like North Fayette and Cranberry were still basically agricultural lands. Journeying out to points north in particular was a real trek as 279 wasn't built yet- but the East Street valley was still decimated, the purchase and destruction of properties was already coming down in anticipation of the current highway.

Pittsburgh and particularly Mon Valley and points east and south were still filled with steel workers, the Debartolo Family built Century 3 during that epoch as this is where the money was around here.
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Old 01-17-2015, 08:05 AM
 
Location: Awkward Manor
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There were four department stores downtown: Horne's, Kaufmann's, Gimbel's, and Saks (hm, Saks orignally had a part of a floor in Gimbels, but moved to the corner of Smithfield and Oliver in 1977). Also, there were several 5 & 10 stores: Murphy's, Woolworth's, Grant's, McCrory's, and, hm, Kresge's? Most had doors on both Forbes and Fifth. Murphy's had a grocery at the corner of Forbes and Market Square, the New Diamond Market. Market Square had a lot of seedy bars and street people. This was before PPG Place was built.
Fifth from Wood to Smithfield was lined with shoe stores. Wood to Liberty had men's clothing stores and hat stores and the Gap, when they were a Levi's store, and there was some sort of young person's store, with "cool" clothes. Most stores were open until 9:00 PM Mondays and Thursdays. People still went downtown (or stayed after work) to do shopping. There were a lot of restaurants of all types, from fast food to fancy.
Liberty Avenue past 7th was the red light district.
There were still trolleys, but they only went to the South Hills.
The Strip District was pretty much wholesale only.
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Old 01-17-2015, 08:07 AM
 
Location: Awkward Manor
2,576 posts, read 3,074,186 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Moby Hick View Post
In 1975, people in Pittsburgh drank really bad domestic, mass-market beer and liked it. Plus, they never bothered with college. Somehow, for reasons nobody bothers to specify, this makes them better than me.
Well, that was the only beer there was! And one got actual on-the-job training, and not webinars, either!
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Old 01-17-2015, 08:10 AM
 
Location: Awkward Manor
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Just remembered: this site has a lot of photos of Pittsburgh in the 1970s (not all, though).
The Flickr set.
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Old 01-17-2015, 09:57 AM
 
11,086 posts, read 8,498,033 times
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I turned 21 that year.

1975 was still the old Pittsburgh.

The air was dirty. You could actually see the pollution when you emerged from the Ft. Pitt tunnel onto the bridge. I had a Pavlovian response to this even if my vehicle's windows were closed: my eyes would start to tear just looking at the air that hung over the rivers. The rivers were also incredibly dirty and devoid of most fish, with the exception of catfish which could live in that water.

Unions were big. A good third of the male population belonged to a labor union...maybe more in 1975. They ruled economic life in the city back then.

The eastern european ethnicities that had the big immigration earlier in the century still had their ethnic ties and were a large part of the population. The older generations - in their 60's .70's and 80's by 1975 still had their accents. Their children, in their 40's and 50's, worked in blue collar jobs, often in the steel mills, and had no accents, but were active members of the ethnic clubs - Slovaks, Serbs, Hungarians, Croatians, Poles, Lithuanians... People still used the term 'Hunkie' to describe them. No one seems to know the origin of that word, but it referred to any Eastern European in Pittsburgh.

There had been no immigration to speak of since 1925, so everyone spoke English except for the older immigrants.

Downtown was starting to crack as THE place to go shopping. The streetcars were gone and the malls were on the rise. But there was still Kaufman's, Horne's, Gimbel's, the shops on Fifth Ave that the older generation went to. And there were still restaurants and movie theaters downtown. Back then, the big Hollywood releases ran in the downtown theaters before they were released to other theaters.

There was a serious recession in 1974-5 that put a lot of people out of work, but the recovery started by the end of that year and the steel mills were back at full blast by 1976. They were ubiquitous around Pittsburgh. South Side and Homestead were dominated by them, along with many other neighborhoods near the rivers. Oakland's air was really bad. I remember as a kid in the 1960's coming out of the house in summer mornings of the 60's to find a fine goldish-orange dust on the cars parked on the street in Dormont. We thought it was raining prosperity, but by 1975, people had a sense that this was hazardous.

River barge traffic was as busy as the Parkway.

And then there were the Steelers. That was the era of the steel curtain, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Rocky Bleier, Lynn Swann, John Stallworth, Joe Greene, LC Greenwood, Jack Ham, Jack Lambert, Mel Blount, Donnie Shell... They won the Superbowl in 1975. It's really impossible to say how that affected Pittsburgh. You had to be there.

The suburbs were much less sprawling back then. I retraced a route we used to take in the 70's down towards Venetia and couldn't believe how built up it is now. Back then there were still farms on the outskirts of town.

And cars. There were far fewer cars back then. Except for the richer suburbs, there was mainly 1 car per family in that era. Now everyone over driving age has their own car. That means the traffic was half as bad back then.
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