Pittsburgh ambience (Lebanon, Hamburg, Mars: construction, design, housing)

[steelerbuc]

I think it's a feeling of community unique to Pittsburgh and probably to many older northeastern cities.I know down here in Florida there is no "unity in the community".When I was growing up in Pittsburgh and later Rochester NY all the parents knew all the kids in the neighborhood and vice versa.Not like that at all down here.

[guylocke]

I think being on nearly any side of the city and being able to see a large plethora of bridges (that seem to be side by side by side by side) is truly unique.

Lot's of cities have bridges, even beautiful ones, but I've NEVER seen anything like what Pittsburgh has. And our bridges themselves are so interesting, some are gothic, some are intricate, some are new, some are very old, they are different colors and sizes and shapes. And in fact, some are mirror images of one another and are side-by-side which is even MORE interesting.

It's nothing like many modern bridges that are nothing more than concrete being held up by pillars. Pittsburgh bridges TRULY give the city a unique flare.

[dugdogmaster]

Originally Posted by guylocke

I think being on nearly any side of the city and being able to see a large plethora of bridges (that seem to be side by side by side by side) is truly unique.

Lot's of cities have bridges, even beautiful ones, but I've NEVER seen anything like what Pittsburgh has. And our bridges themselves are so interesting, some are gothic, some are intricate, some are new, some are very old, they are different colors and sizes and shapes. And in fact, some are mirror images of one another and are side-by-side which is even MORE interesting.

It's nothing like many modern bridges that are nothing more than concrete being held up by pillars. Pittsburgh bridges TRULY give the city a unique flare.

Indeed sir they do. My favorite is the Clemente with those neat-o blue lights.

[ExPit]

Originally Posted by guylocke

I think being on nearly any side of the city and being able to see a large plethora of bridges (that seem to be side by side by side by side) is truly unique.

Lot's of cities have bridges, even beautiful ones, but I've NEVER seen anything like what Pittsburgh has. And our bridges themselves are so interesting, some are gothic, some are intricate, some are new, some are very old, they are different colors and sizes and shapes. And in fact, some are mirror images of one another and are side-by-side which is even MORE interesting.

It's nothing like many modern bridges that are nothing more than concrete being held up by pillars. Pittsburgh bridges TRULY give the city a unique flare.

Yeah, the bridges! The beauty and the sheer NUMBER of them! Could be because they are so short that they were inexpensive (relative to longer bridges) to construct that they made so many of them. Clemente, 6th, 7th, 9th, 14th, did I miss one? I remember once when I was a kid and we're driving into town on the Parkway East, and were about a half mile out of the Squirrel Hill Tunnels in the middle of an afternoon when the traffic just stopped dead; was stopped dead, we found out, by the police up ahead so that they could demolish an old one over the Mon.

Everybody got out of their cars and stood in the middle of the highway to watch that steel/ stone structure collapse after one big blast and buckle into the river.

[ExPit]

Originally Posted by steelerbuc

I think it's a feeling of community unique to Pittsburgh and probably to many older northeastern cities.I know down here in Florida there is no "unity in the community".When I was growing up in Pittsburgh and later Rochester NY all the parents knew all the kids in the neighborhood and vice versa.Not like that at all down here.

This speaks to that "neighborhood" thing I love about Pittsburgh that I think is a result of its age, topography, and lack of steady redevelopment money. On other threads I have argued against this very thing, stating that the city is in dire need of a giant needle in the arm if it is to grow and survive. But there is always a flip side to every coin, and this preservation of its ethnic neighborhoods is exactly what I love most about Pittsburgh.

[creepsinc]

The things I love about Pittsburgh are the things that make it not for everybody. The feeling of isolation, of being tucked away in the Appalachians in some mining town in West Virginia populated mainly by Slovenians and deer. Even most of the "suburban hell" feels this way. I love that most of the city has escaped gentrification (rarely a good thing) and has remained "real" and blue-collar. Also, what Subdivisions said was right on. It's like a junk/thrift store that hasn't been picked clean by ironic hipsters and keeps the novelty t-shirts and $1.00 paperbacks to a minimum, offering real treasures, which, of course, are always someone else's trash. Which reminds me, the trash is the only real downside to Pittsburgh's ambiance. The rest is priceless and truly unique. Well, I've heard Cincinnati is similar, but I've never been there.

They may be the closest thing Pittsburgh has to a tourist attraction, but I love the inclines, too. I watch the Duquesne go up and down all day from where I work, and it gives the city some kind of strange, timeless feeling, like so much else here does.

[ExPit]

Originally Posted by creepsinc

The things I love about Pittsburgh are the things that make it not for everybody. The feeling of isolation, of being tucked away in the Appalachians in some mining town in West Virginia populated mainly by Slovenians and deer. Even most of the "suburban hell" feels this way. I love that most of the city has escaped gentrification (rarely a good thing) and has remained "real" and blue-collar. Also, what Subdivisions said was right on. It's like a junk/thrift store that hasn't been picked clean by ironic hipsters and keeps the novelty t-shirts and $1.00 paperbacks to a minimum, offering real treasures, which, of course, are always someone else's trash. Which reminds me, the trash is the only real downside to Pittsburgh's ambiance. The rest is priceless and truly unique. Well, I've heard Cincinnati is similar, but I've never been there.

They may be the closest thing Pittsburgh has to a tourist attraction, but I love the inclines, too. I watch the Duquesne go up and down all day from where I work, and it gives the city some kind of strange, timeless feeling, like so much else here does.

Yeah, like so many things, everything in fact, you can't have one without the other. The isolation was something that I didn't like as a kid, not that I would have been able to put my finger on it, but now I see the allure. If it were a city on the East Coast or even on the Great Lakes it wouldn't have the same kind of charm. A town in the woods, could be a mirage, is how it strikes me now. For my taste, I would like to see some development. I do believe it has a way to go before it's the urban, over-priced hell that New York and L.A. etc. are to some; but that is for or was of another thread.

I had an apartment on Grandview about a hundred years ago, right across the street from the Mon Incline, and I worked on Smithfield Street. I took the Incline to and from work everyday; it was a different way to commute.

[Agbor]

I would say the Golden Triangle, bridges,Steeler mania..the yinzer accent,friendly people,
Porky Chedwick,the record stores that still sell oldies Stedefords, The Record Attic in Millvale..The Strip with all that Steeler stuff they are selling...Lack of new immigrants on a
big scale like in other cities people from Haiti,Brazil,Eastern Europe (new ones) and Latin
countries..or Somali...that is what makes Pittsburgh unique..

[Canarian]

Originally Posted by lifepgh2op

I love just looking around the city and observing the layout of it all. From the way downtown is packed in between hills and "mountains", to the 3 rivers, and all the bridges that connect one part of the city to another. I know there are other cities with bridges, obviously, but I just love the way it all comes together in Pittsburgh. Of course, there's the view from the Ft. Pitt Tunnels but I also like coming around the bend at night on the Parkway East out of the Squirrel Hill Tunnels. You catch the Birmingham bridge and it looks like it's directly in front of the Downtown skyscrapers and you can see up on Mt. Washington and the incline and it all just looks so lit up and city-like.

There's tons more that I love about the Burgh and things that make it special but I'll just leave it at that for now.

I was told that Pittsburgh is second to Venice for cities with most bridges. I thought that this was an interesting comparison. The bridges of Pittsburgh are definitely amazing. They frame the city core very nicely.

[BrianTH]

The city as a whole is too filled with unique things for me to try to characterize it, so I will instead write just a little bit about Regent Square, my neighborhood.

Regent Square itself is a charming little urban neighborhood, a throwback to the streetcar suburb days--sidewalks and frontporches, a mix of housing from many different decades, a nice little commercial area largely free from chains, and so on. But what really makes it unique is its location in a corner of Frick Park.

Basically, you are walking through this charming little neighborhood, and then suddenly the street you are on comes to an end. Before you is ravine filled with trees. You find a little trail and it starts winding its way down into the ravine. When you get to the bottom you suddenly get a bit of a sense of the scale of the Park--but you still don't really know until you spend hours wandering the trails and climbing the hills, maybe spotting some deer along the way . . . .

So that intimate and practically borderless relationship between a nice little urban neighborhood and this huge urban wilderness park, all about 10 minutes from Downtown, is what makes Regent Square so unique to me.