Pittsburgh, built in the 19th century as an industrial city making glass out of sandstone, steel out of iron ore and coal, and fuel out of oil and gas, has always needed to get workers from home to factory and back. Interstates, cars and suburbs from hills to mills would come in the second half of the 20th century.
In the beginning, there were steps.
And while almost all the smokestacks are gone, the steps are still here, over 700 staircases, crawling through the city, cutting through ivy, creeping up and down hills like veins on a giant blob of alien life. Pittsburghers still use them, to go bird-watching, get to work, shortcut down to the South side for beers, or run up for exercise. Police train to ride their bicycles down them.
A new guide, City Steps of Pittsburgh, written by Laura Zurowski, Charles Succop and Matthew Jacob, and published by The History Press, a division of Arcadia Publishing, chronicles the story of Pittsburgh’s steps, and offers walking guides for anybody who wants to explore. It’s all the best kind of local history; complete, accurate, and passionate. Zurowski is the author of a blog about visiting Pittsburgh’s steps. The forward is by Bob Regan, a pioneer in counting the steps and the author of City Steps of Pittsburgh, a book published in 2004 and republished in 2015.
The city built the first steps after the Civil War, in the 1870s, before the invention of cars and paved roads. Steel-making companies were throwing up factories along rivers and hiring men by the thousands. People needed to get to work. Starting in 1870, the city started authorizing steps cutting up Pittsburgh hills. Some were lit by gas lamps.
Charles “Teenie” Harris, the famed 20th century African-American photographer, captured the steps in images. In 2014, the Wall Street Journal published my front-page story about the steps on its front page.
Pittsburgh is one of the hilliest places in America. As the coal, steel and glass industries flourished here in the late 19th and early 20th century, its workers built houses in the hills rising above the flat riverbanks that were lined with factories. City officials and residents built steps, first of wood, then concrete, so people could descend to work, creating a place, journalist Ernie Pyle wrote in 1937, “that looked like it was laid out by a mountain goat.”
“The well-to-do people drive to work,” Pyle explained. “The medium people go on street cars and “inclines” – that’s what they call them cable cars. And the poor people walk up the steps.”
There are lots of interesting tidbits in the book. The first public playground was built in 1896. There are now 196 parks in Pittsburgh’s 90 neighborhoods. In 1914, the city council officiallly changed the name of every “alley” to “way.” That’s why the steps are called Ways. As in “Romance Way” or “Highnote Way.” In 1935, a madman installed a “robot gun” on Doak Way in Brighton Heights. It was triggered when somebody stepped onto the stairs. An 18-year-old named Colletta Madl was shot in the leg and rushed the hospital. Thankfully, she survived, and no more robot guns were found on any other staircase.
Until World War II, Pittsburgh’s steps were built out of wood. Starting in 1945, the city took public moneys to refurbish American infrastructure and spent it on renovating Pittsburgh’s steps and converting them to concrete. They suffered from neglect for a while, but activists successfully pushed back inertia. It’s now clear the steps are here to stay.
In 2021-2022, the book reports, Pittsburgh allocated around $4 million of federal funds to replace and repair steps. The following year, former congressman Mike Doyle and Senator Bob Casey steered $7 million in federal funding to replace the steps. That money doesn’t go as far as you might think. It costs between $500,000 and $1.5 million to refurbish a flight of steps.
But the steps endure, because they work, and because they’ve become, as City Steps of Pittsburgh, reminds us, one of the city’s treasures.
John W. Miller
Wow, this is a fascinating review, John!