News Around the Neighborhood

Friday, October 4
10:00 am – 12:00 pm

$25 per person

This tour is limited to 20 participants.

Tickets will not be available after 11:30 pm on October 3.

In the 1890s, so many wealthy industrialists and merchants, built mansions in a section of what was then Allegheny City that one of the streets there was nicknamed Millionaire’s Row. Men with familiar last names of Jones, Laughlin, Phipps, and Kaufmann hired well-known architects to build their mansions and churches. A variety of Victorian architectural styles — Colonial Revival, Richardsonian Romanesque, Italianate, Second Empire, and Greek Revival — filled the streets. Many of the structures still stand in the area that is the destination of this tour: Allegheny West.

Stroll along with our docents through Pittsburgh’s smallest neighborhood as they talk about the area’s affluent past, its prosperous present, and the buildings’ architectural details. Highlights will include the house where America’s Agatha Christie began her career, the birthplace of a famous ex-pat writer, and the home where the Steelers’ Art and Dan Rooney lived. You also will learn how residents banded together in the 1960s to prevent urban renewal from altering their neighborhood’s ambience.

Friday, September 26
10:00 am – 11:30 am

$25 per person

This tour is limited to 20 participants.

Tickets will not be available after 11:30 pm on September 25.

The original headquarters of the Aluminum Company of America has been an extraordinary presence on Downtown’s landscape ever since rising from its site between 1951 and 1953. The world’s first building clad in aluminum, it is literally a skyscraper-size advertisement for the material: staircases, light fixtures, elevators, mail chutes, and even sculpture were fabricated in aluminum. It was designed by Harrison & Abramovitz, the same New York City firm that brought to Pittsburgh the U.S. Steel Tower and several other buildings in Downtown.

The Alcoa building has experienced two changes in ownership since 1998 and is now owned by a Philadelphia company that carried out a comprehensive renovation of the building and converted part of it from offices to apartments. Recognizing the building’s significance, it named the apartment section The Residences at the Historic Alcoa Building. Our tour will be led by a principal of Strada, the architectural firm that designed the renovation and conversion.

Friday, September 19
10:00 am – Noon

$25 per person

This tour is limited to 20 participants.

Tickets will not be available after 11:30 pm on September 18.

The Penn-Liberty corridor in Downtown Pittsburgh was an important retail, commercial, and entertainment center in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Historic District —designated as such at both the City and Federal levels in 1987 and later expanded — encompasses a large section of the Penn-Liberty corridor, including the Cultural District. It features outstanding examples of historic buildings ranging from early skyscrapers to more modest cast-iron-front buildings to spaces that offered vaudeville shows, many of them designed by the area’s most significant architects.

Following a decades-long period of decline in the mid-20th century, the district has experienced substantial revitalization in the last 30 years, thanks in large part to historic preservation. Tour participants will see great architecture, learn about the district’s history, and understand the crucial role of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and PHLF in bringing the district back to life.