News Around the Neighborhood
PHLF: Downtown Walking Tour of Bridges and Shores
Thursday, August 11
6:00 pm to 7:15 pm
$20.00 per person
This is an in-person tour and is limited to 20 participants.
(Tickets will not be available after .)
Click here to purchase a ticket.
You will receive a ticket with a QR Code by e-mail. Please PRINT and bring it with you for the tour.
Pittsburgh is a city of bridges: hundreds of them span our waterways, valleys, and ravines. Bridges offer changing vistas of the natural and manmade features of the cityscape, and in Pittsburgh, these works of artful engineering are a source of civic pride. This tour takes us on a loop bounded by the north and south shores of the Allegheny River and by two of the Three Sisters bridges that cross it. Taking in public art and historic buildings along with bridges and the river, this tour reveals the dynamic relationship between humans and nature that characterizes much of Pittsburgh.
Tour Meeting Point: Outside the Renaissance Pittsburgh Hotel, 107 Sixth Street, Downtown
Tour Ending Point: 107 Sixth Street
Please arrive 10 minutes before the start time in order to ensure that the tour gets underway on time. Dress for the weather (PHLF tours proceed rain or shine!), and wear comfortable shoes. By purchasing a ticket for this tour, you acknowledge that you are physically able to undertake the tour, assume all personal risk during the tour, consent to being photographed during the tour, and permit PHLF to use your image in our communications.
This tour is handicap accessible. Please notify us of your needs 2 Business Days in advance of the tour.
Heat of the Moment
Story Club PGH Story Slam:
Heat of the Moment
Tuesday, August 16
7:00 pm
Join City of Asylum and Story Club Pittsburgh for a monthly nonfiction storytelling series, mixing the spontaneity of an open mic with the experience of live theater. Organized and hosted by the former producers of The Moth Pittsburgh.
Every show has both spontaneous tellers and featured performers, all taking the stage to share stories based on a theme. August’s theme is Heat of the Moment. We skip September for LitFest and return in October with the theme of Bump in the Night. Sign up to be in the audience for the August program at the links above. October links are coming soon!
Calling all story lovers!
Featured performers are curated for each show, provide drafts of their stories (on the set theme), work with our producers to refine their tales, and are paid. To be considered to be a featured performer for August or October, email a written or mp3 version of your story to kelly@storyclubpgh.com by August 7 (for the August 16 show). Learn more here.
There will be a few open-mic spots at the show and tellers will then be chosen randomly at showtime. Come prepared with a 5-8 minute story on our theme, if that’s your thing, or just come prepared to listen!
PHLF: Virtual Neighborhood Tour of Western Shadyside
Thursday, July 28
6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
Fee: $7.50
This tour will be conducted via Zoom Conference. Click here to purchase a ticket. You will receive an e-mail with a link to the Zoom event on July 28. (Tickets will not be available after 9:00 am on the day of the event.)
Please log in at 5:45 pm to allow us enough time to let you into the tour.
Shadyside is a veritable museum of the forms and styles of domestic architecture built in Pittsburgh’s East End between the 1860s and 1920s. This tour focuses on the neighborhood’s western part, bounded by North Neville Street and South Aiken Avenue. Learn how innovations in transportation, the growth of the middle class, and the initiative of significant people in local history combined to produce Western Shadyside’s stellar architecture.
Ranging across styles from the Second Empire to Arts & Crafts, the tour explores single-family and multi-family dwellings, individual homes and planned developments, and main streets and cul-de-sacs. A deeper look at a home featured in an early-twentieth-century memoir rounds out our excursion into this lovely neighborhood.
Because this is a virtual event, please disregard the QR code information in the ticket emailed to you.
Award-winning Film about What it Means to Make a Family
Reel Q Film Festival Presents
Venus
Wednesday, July 27
7:00 pm
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll want more of this delightful, award-winning film. Venus (2017), written and directed by Eisha Marjara, received the EDA Award for Best Female-Directed Feature at Whistler Film Festival, Best Feature Film at Cinequest Film Festival, Reelout, MIX Milano, among others.
Sid’s mother has one wish: for Sid to get married and have some kids. Sid’s not opposed to the idea, but to get there…Sid has to introduce their boyfriend to the family and come out as a transgender woman. Oh, and by the way, a fourteen-year-old boy pops up claiming to be Sid’s son. Join us for this heartwarming film that explores what it means to be a family.
Remember you can dine at the in-house restaurant 40 North before or after the show. Please visit Open Table or call 412-435-111 to make a reservation.
Be Part of the Largest Mural in the History of Pittsburgh
PHLF: Walking Grant Street from Sixth to Liberty Avenues
Wednesday, July 13
6:00 pm – 7:15 pm
$20.00 per person
This tour is limited to 20 participants.
(Tickets will not be available after July 12)
Click here to purchase a ticket.
You will receive a ticket with a QR Code by e-mail. Please PRINT and bring it with you for the tour
This tour covers the northern half of a street the American Planning Association designated one of America’s Ten Great Streets in 2012. From the quintessentially Modernist U.S. Steel Tower to the elegant Beaux-Arts Pennsylvanian (formerly Union Station), and with glorious Art Deco gems in between, this part of Grant Street is populated by outstanding civic and corporate buildings.
Examples of adaptive re-use of historic buildings in this corridor demonstrate the economic value of historic preservation. Tour participants also will learn of the wide influence—sometimes explicit, other times less so—of businessman, philanthropist, politician, art collector, and Pittsburgh native Andrew W. Mellon on this important street.
PHLF: Sewickley Walking Tour
Saturday, July 9
2:00 pm to 4:00 pm
$20.00 per person
This is an in-person tour and is limited to 20 participants.
(Tickets will not be available after July 8.)
Click here to purchase a ticket.
You will receive a ticket with a QR Code by e-mail. Please PRINT and bring it with you for the tour.
Located 12 miles west of Pittsburgh, Sewickley is nestled between hills to the north and the Ohio River to the South. Taking its name from the Native American word for “Sweet Water,” Sewickley was incorporated as a borough in 1853 and dubbed “the Queen of Suburbs” by one writer in 1895.
The tour focuses on the commercial and residential neighborhoods of the Borough’s Third Historic District, in central Sewickley. Here you will see excellent examples of many of the architectural styles popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries, including work by a number of regionally and nationally important architects who lived and worked in the area.
Featuring places of worship, civic buildings, and handsome homes, the tour will demonstrate why this historic community continues to delight.
Keep Quiet or Die: The Struggle for Democratic Change in The Congo
Keep Quiet: The Struggle for Democratic Change in The Congo
Monday, June 27
7:00 pm
In October 2015, a few months before the end of his final constitutional term, General Denis Sassou Nguesso—President of the Republic of Congo—decided to change the constitution to enable his running for another term. After 18 years in power.
Keep Quiet is a feature length documentary film chronicling the struggle of journalists and pro-democracy advocates in their fight against the constitutional change and in favor of democracy in the Republic of Congo.
Following the release of this film, director, and producer Aunel Arneth was persecuted in the Republic of Congo and Senegal. As a result, he went into exile in the United States where he is currently a visiting scholar at the Global Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh and sponsored by the Artist Protection Fund (APF).
This program contains violent materials and may be unsuitable for certain audiences. Parental discretion is advised.
WPA Juneteenth Homecoming Celebration
WPA Freedom Days 2022
Point State Park
Friday, Saturday and Sunday (June 17-19)
11:00 am-9:00 pm
Celebrate the conclusion of Juneteenth with a weekend blowout. The Downtown event, hosted by the city of Pittsburgh in partnership with Stop the Violence Pittsburgh, will feature vendors, musical performances, and activities for everyone to enjoy. This event is free and open to the public.
About Juneteenth
Juneteenth is the celebration of the end of chattel slavery and was first started in Texas in 1865 when the last enslaved people learned that the Civil War was over and that the Union had won the war.
Juneteenth is celebrated in 50 States across America and is the Country’s second Independence Day. Our Festival started in 2013 and this year marks the first Pittsburgh and Allegheny County legal holiday in this region. In 2021, the U.S. Congress declared Juneteenth a Federal holiday.
Register for Friday’s Free “SHRINE” Opening Block Party!
Where: 1400 Block of Monterey Street
Date: Friday, June 17
Time: 6:00-8:00 pm
Price: FREE (pre-registration encouraged)
We invite you to join us on Friday, June 17 from 6-8 PM for SANCTUARY, a free one-day public outdoor event that celebrates SHRINE, an exhibition of new installation works opening the same day at the Mattress Factory Monterey Annex. Featuring more than ten local entrepreneurs and small businesses, SANCTUARY will be located at the 1400 Block of Monterey Street, between Jacksonia Street and Sampsonia Way.
SANCTUARY includes free family artmaking activities in the City of Asylum garden, a Mommas’ Market featuring local artists and vendors, a live DJ set from Pittsburgh-based Yadirtydaughter, free admission to the brand-new exhibition SHRINE in the Monterey Annex, and an opportunity to fellowship with Northside neighbors. Food from soul food favorites Mommalicious and vegan Trinidadian food stand ShadoBeni will also be available for purchase. Local artists and vendors featured in SANCTUARY include Schereéya, Marietta Altenor, Dail Chambers, Nikki Delice, Chere Gordon, Desa Kishar, and Tiara LaShawna.