Pittsburgh's numerous bridges are a charming addition to the downtowns. Courtesy Greater Pittsburgh CVB
By Herb Sparrow
Pittsburgh suffers from two misconceptions, according to J.R. Shaw, group sales director for the Greater Pittsburgh Convention and Visitors Bureau. People either think of the city the way it used to be — a dark industrial town filled with smoke from steel mills and factories — or they think they have already done Pittsburgh.
“That doesn’t do us justice,” he said. “People need to rediscover Pittsburgh. If they have done a day trip or a quick overnight, they have not done Pittsburgh. Folks say, ‘We have done Pittsburgh. We have been to the aviary and on a Clipper cruise.’ No, you really haven’t.”
You should visit the congressionally designated National Aviary, with its 600 birds of 250 species, and take a cruise on one of the Gateway Clipper Fleets’ five boats. But there is so much more to do in Pittsburgh and in the surrounding area of southwestern Pennsylvania.
Plenty to do The area has world-class museums and culture, an exciting sports scene, a great variety of ethnic dining options, more than 80 fascinating neighborhoods and an abundance of history and heritage.
And that’s just in Pittsburgh. “There is so much within a hour and a half,” said Shaw. “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, Old Order Amish, covered bridges, outlet shopping, back country roads.”
Pittsburgh has reinvented itself into a clean, service-oriented city with a distinctive and attractive skyline of gleaming skyscrapers. The heart of the renaissance is the compact downtown — roughly one square mile — that is squeezed into a triangle of land between the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers where they join to form the Ohio River.
Shaw said that with the proximity of three major performing-arts venues — Heinz Hall, the 2,889-seat Benendum Center for the Performing Arts and the O’Reilly Theater — arts and culture are hot with groups.
“The Pittsburgh Symphony, Pittsburgh Pops, Pittsburgh Public Theater and a Broadway series are all concentrated in a small three-block area,” he said. “It creates a really dynamic district downtown.
“Others in the area include the ballet, opera and dance theater. When a group is looking for something to do at night, there is pretty much something always going on.”
Appealing heritage Shaw said the area’s heritage also appeals to groups. “The history and heritage of southwestern Pennsylvania spans from the French and Indian War to the Industrial Revolution, and the 20th-century renaissance and reinvention of Pittsburgh out of the Industrial Age into a more contemporary city.”
The Heinz Regional History Center is a good place to get an overview of the area’s history. The center’s Points in Time exhibit traces regional history with interactive exhibits, reconstructed homes and living-history characters; major exhibits trace the area’s glass-making heritage and the history of the H.J. Heinz Co.
The museum’s seven-story building, a former 19th-century ice warehouse, is itself an attraction, with exposed thick wooden posts and beams connected by heavy iron braces, and vaulted brick ceilings on the first floor.
Soul Soldiers: African Americans and the Vietnam Era, on display at the Heinz Center through October, tells the story of the impact of the Vietnam War on African American life and culture.
Another concentration of attractions is located three miles east of downtown in Oakland, the educational and cultural center of Pittsburgh that is home to the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University
The Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History, one of the nation’s largest museum complexes, has more than 5.5 acres under roof.
“There is a flow between natural history and art,” said Tey Stiteler, communications manager for the museums. “Although they are actually two museums, they are in the same space.”
When Andrew Carnegie established the art museum in the late 19th century, he focused on contemporary painters.
“He said that rather than make the museum a collection of Old Masters at the time, ‘let’s collect the Old Masters of tomorrow,’” said Stiteler. “We can arguably say we were the first contemporary art museum in the United States. The strength of our collection is U.S. and European art from 1850 forward.”
The natural-history museum has exhibits featuring American Indians, African wildlife and ancient Egypt, and one of the top gem and mineral collections in the country. However, it is best known for its large dinosaur collection.
Later this year, the museum will complete a $35 million expansion of its 100-year-old Dinosaur Hall, the world’s third-largest repository of dinosaur fossils. The expanded facility will feature a three-story glass atrium and re-creations of rivers, land and vegetation to show dinosaurs in their natural habitats.
“The new hall will not only display them by time period so you can see what plants and animals lived at the same time, but also display them in scientifically accurate action poses,” said Kitty Julian, director of marketing for the museum.
Across Forbes Avenue in front of the Carnegie museums is the University of Pittsburgh’s 42-story Gothic Cathedral of Learning, called the “world’s tallest schoolhouse,” where students study beneath 52-foot arched ceilings in the half-acre Commons Room.
The building’s 26 Nationality Rooms make this a fascinating place to visit. Elaborately and authentically decorated rooms reflect the heritages of the various ethnic cultures that helped build Pittsburgh. The rooms range from a palace hall in Beijing’s Forbidden City to an Asante temple courtyard in Ghana to a room in Athens in the time of Pericles.
Although the 26 rooms are of museum quality, 24 of them are active classrooms where students attend classes daily. Students also lead guided tours of the rooms during the school year.
“They are a jewel and a long-kept secret,” said Shaw.
Also near the Carnegie museums is the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Garden, which is also concluding a massive renovation and expansion.
The new Tropical Forest, a 60-foot-high multilevel greenhouse, opened late last year following the 2005 debut of a new visitors center with a 50-foot dome, a cafe and a large gift shop.
Cool addition In addition to the National Aviary, Pittsburgh’s wild side also includes the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium, one of a handful of zoo-and-aquarium combinations in the country.
And like many of its counterparts, the zoo is completing an expansion that includes Water’s Edge, a new exhibit with polar bears, sea otters and walruses.
Many of the new developments will be just in time for Pittsburgh’s 250th anniversary in 2008.
“There will be a tremendous amount of events taking place throughout the entire year,” said Kristin Mitchell, associate director of communications for the CVB. Shaw said although many of the events will be of local interest, one focus of the celebration is reunions.
“We are trying to bring folks back who had a part in our history, whether from schools to military to professional associations to folks who worked in certain businesses.
“We are looking at this as not just celebrating the past, but the future and the economic development potential and possibilities for southwestern Pennsylvania,” said Shaw. “What can we do over the next 250 years — that is the spin we are looking for.”
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