News Around the Neighborhood

Thursday, February 23
6:00 pm to 7:30 pm

$10

This tour will be conducted via Zoom Conference. 

Click here to purchase a ticket. (Because this is a virtual event, please disregard the QR code information in the ticket e-mailed to you.)

You will receive an e-mail with a link to the Zoom event on February 23. (Tickets will not be available after 9:00 am on the day of the event.) Please log in at 5:45 pm so that we can start the tour on time.

The Penn-Liberty corridor in Downtown Pittsburgh was an important retail and commercial center in the 19th and early 20th centuries, featuring excellent examples of early skyscrapers standing cheek-by-jowl with more modest structures. Today, after a decades-long period of decline in the mid-20th century, it is the site of a thriving arts scene, much of it housed in stunning historic buildings that have been restored and creatively repurposed.

In addition to seeing many such examples of historic preservation in action, tour participants will learn of the crucial roles of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and PHLF in creating what has been called the country’s “most impressive and successful” example of urban economic revitalization through the arts.

Saturday, October 29
10:00 am to 12:00 pm

$20.00 per person

This is an in-person tour and is limited to 20 participants. (Tickets will not be available after October 28.)

Click here to purchase a ticket.

Pittsburgh’s East Allegheny neighborhood was nicknamed Deutschtown because most of the area’s early settlers were from Germany. (“Deutschtown” literally means “Germantown.”) Joining them were large numbers from Switzerland, Austria, and Croatia. By the late 19th century, it was a thriving community with established businesses and institutions.  Although a 1970s interstate highway project bisected the Deutschtown area, causing the demolition of buildings and displacement of hundreds of people, the community retains a large part of its historic architectural fabric.

Join our docents as they reveal the rich history of this eclectic neighborhood. The tour will take participants through the Deutschtown Historic District and the E. Ohio Street business district, which lie in the western half of the neighborhood. It includes a wide range of building types, from well-preserved historic homes to old structures repurposed for contemporary uses—and an Elks Lodge that hosts the Pittsburgh Banjo Club every week.

Tuesday, October 25
10:00 am to 12:00 pm

$20.00 per person

This is an in-person tour and is limited to 20 participants. (Tickets will not be available after October 24.)

Click here to purchase a ticket.

The Strip District is a vibrant amalgamation of Pittsburgh’s past, present, and imagined future. It is probably best known locally for food sellers and other businesses that reflect the neighborhood’s long immigrant history. In its 200-plus-year history, however, the Strip has been a site of industry, the region’s wholesale produce distribution hub, a center for nighttime dining and entertainment, and, most recently, home to Pittsburgh’s burgeoning technology sector.

The Strip’s ongoing evolution is mirrored in its architecture. Across a sprawling neighborhood, you will see everything from a small, two-story building constructed as a public bathhouse in 1911 to recent office buildings for the technology companies that have given the Strip a new nickname, “Robotics Row.” Preservation and repurposing of historic buildings have been key to the revitalization of the Strip in the last 20 years, and the tour will center on the historic buildings through which the Strip’s fascinating history is told.