Dec. 10, 1969: Three Rivers Stadium’s steel

Forty-five years ago this week, if you stood about where Heinz Field’s north endzone seats are and looked toward Downtown Pittsburgh, you would have had a striking view.

In the foreground, a crane operator placed the last of 65 “C” frames.

Behind it, you could see U.S. Steel’s headquarters, rising to dominate the city skyline like no building before or since.

A symbolic juxtaposition, and it was thoroughly Pittsburgh.

The parts for those steel frames were manufactured at the vaunted Homestead Works. They were shipped down the river to Neville Island, where the Pittsburgh Des-Moines Steel Company’s assembly shop put the frames together.

They were forty-seven feet high.

They were 43 tons each.

And they were sent on barges — 400 tons at a time — from Neville Island up the Ohio River to the North Side construction site.

(And they came down in a heap in 2001, along with the concrete that ended up in places like Leetsdale and the Braddock Dam.)

Construction often ran behind schedule, and there were few Pirates and Steeler fans who truly loved Three Rivers Stadium’s design during its 30-year existence.

But if you look back at the era and what went into its making, it’s difficult not to pause at the work that made Pittsburgh’s finest steel and concrete donut.

—Ethan Magoc

If you wander through Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Schenley Park this season to admire the holiday trees, plants and decorations, consider the odyssey of Henry Phipps Jr.

The quiet philanthropist gave the elegant, lush greenhouse to the city of Pittsburgh in 1893.

Born in Philadelphia in 1839, he was the son of immigrants who came to America from Shropshire, England. His father was a shoemaker and, in 1845, moved the family to Old Allegheny, now Pittsburgh’s North Side.

There, the teen-aged Henry Phipps met and befriended Andrew Carnegie, a young Scotsman. The two men became business partners in Carnegie Steel. An excellent financier, Phipps was the company’s second largest shareholder.

He sold his shares in 1901 to J.P. Morgan for more than $50 million. He also was a successful real estate investor and, like Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, built a fashionable mansion in New York.

Mr. Phipps believed in the power of philanthropy. He funded the Phipps Institute for the Study, Treatment and Prevention of Tuberculosis at the University of Pennsylvania. He also gave about $1.8 million to a psychiatric clinic at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In 1905, he established a $1 million fund to build housing for the poor in New York City. Mr. Phipps died in 1930.

—Marylynne Pitz

1942:  The simple artistry of the lowly umbrella

Ah, the poor umbrella. Drab, brought forth with a curse on dreary, wet days. Even the name is rather ugly, the “u” hacked up from the back of the throat before the tongue is forced to stumble over unlovely consonants. It is so unlike its flashy and colorful sibling, the poetically named parasol, gaily twirled over the shoulders of young women on sunny days.

And so it was until 1952, when a young man from East Liberty did the unthinkable. Gene Kelly grabbed a mundane black umbrella in the movie “Singing in the Rain” and turned it into a dance partner possessed of stunning grace, elegance and playfulness.

Most of us, though, simply use the device to stay dry.

Oddly, a file folder named “Umbrellas” resides in our archive. It contains an eclectic set of images. The most striking shows a man holding an umbrella at a train station glistening on a raining night. It’s a haunting and mysterious picture. We have no idea where it was taken. Written in pencil on the back of the print is the year: 1942.

Another picture is equally mysterious. In this one,  a sea of people protected by umbrellas occupies what appears to be a stadium. Nothing is written on the back of the print. We’re guessing the picture was taken in the 1930s. One staffer suggested the location may be the South Park Fairgrounds, but we’re uncertain.

In 1945, The Pittsburgh Press published a story about an “umbrella doctor” named Sam Cohen, who had a shop on Sixth Avenue. Accompanying the story was picture of Mr. Cohen sitting at a sewing machine. A woman behind him brandishes a massive and obviously damaged umbrella. In those days, people were sentimental about their ribbed canopies. Mr. Cohen said they were often passed down from generation to generation. He claimed to repair about 10,000 each year.

Finally, we found a picture from 1979 showing umbrella-carrying pedestrians at a Downtown intersection. The image is shot from above by Darrell Sapp, a PG staffer who continues to delight readers with his dramatic photographs of the city. Like Mr. Kelly, Mr. Sapp used the lowly umbrella to create a form of art. Hmmmm. Now we’re wondering if our Mr. Sapp can dance.

— Steve Mellon

Top picture: Man at a train station, 1942. (Pittsburgh Press photo)

"Black Fridays of the past"

Long before Macy’s and Walmart, many years prior to Twitter ads, Facebook promotions and cyber Mondays, there were Gimbels, Kaufmann’s, Gee Bee and Murphy Marts. And there were Black Fridays — well, that part hasn’t quite changed. 

Those days after Thanksgiving when Pittsburgh shoppers race to get best deals were in business at least 50 years ago. The testimony is a thick pile of folders titled ‘SHOPPERS’ which resides in our photo archive, most of them are filled with photos of crowds and crowds and crowds of people with boxes and plastic bags, shopping carts, standing impatiently in lines, their faces, frustrated and at times, exhilarated, their hurried gestures forever frozen by the photo lens. 

Black Fridays of the past, based on the photos we found, looked suspiciously civilized. It turns that for many Pennsylvanians it had a cozy spirit of tradition — to go shopping the day after Thanksgiving without shoving people because of that last TV set. Well, that last bit is just a hypothesis. 

Because only in America, , as one wise person put it, people trample others for sales exactly one day after being thankful for what they already have ( these days, to be precise, it’s even less than one day — some stores are opening as early as the evening of the Thanksgiving Thursday).

But back to cozy traditions,  in the 70s and 80s, folks from Coraopolis, Aliquippa, Gettysburg and other smaller towns in Pennsylvania came to Pittsburgh on Black Fridays for shopping and also the animated store fronts that could not be found in smaller towns. 

"Our kids’ eyes are this big," said Amy Patterson of Scranton demonstrating the size of a basketball with her hands. She was quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1989. She brought her kids to see the holiday sights in Downtown Pittsburgh, just as her mother had done when Patterson was a child. 

Jody Stouck, whose two daughters snapped pictures of Kaufmann’s windows with their Instamatic (not to be confused with Instagram) cameras, said that visiting the windows had been a tradition for 10 years. Instamatic cameras, dear modern reader, were easy-to-load cameras introduced by Kodak in 1963. 

"Seeing them through their eyes is so much better, said Stouck, who used to visit the windows at Kaufmann’s, Horne’s and the old Gimbels store as a child. 

To good old days, folks… Happy Thanksgiving!! 

—Mila Sanina

Pitt-Cuse, then and now: Pitt took on Syracuse Saturday, marking the final home game of the season. Not much has changed over the past three decades.

In November 1979, the Panthers defeated Otto the Orange, 28-21. The matchup also marked Pitt’s the last 1979 home game. They maintained a 7-1 record — a little better than this year’s mark. 

While the timing in the schedule is similar, there are a few differentiating details between games.

Instead of taking over Heinz Field, the 1979 team played in Pitt Stadium on the University of Pittsburgh campus. The Panthers switched stadiums in 2000.

Aside from a change in venue, the cheerleading uniforms have undergone significant alterations. That day, the squad sported beachball-sized pom-poms and windbreaker jumpsuits. 

Today Pitt’s cheerleading team has (thankfully) veered away from the puffy ‘80s trend.

—Joelle Smith

Top photo: Cheerleaders charge through Pitt Stadium during the Panther’s last home game of the season on November 4, 1979. (Edwin Morgan/The Pittsburgh Press)

Bob Batz Jr., Pittsburgh Post-Gazette staff writer, described it beautifully back in 1998 when he wrote these words:

"You think putting up your Christmas tree is hard? Try erecting an old artificial tree that rises more than 100 feet in the air and consists of branch sections so big and heavy that they have to be bolted together and hoisted by crane. Then there’s the task of stringing 87 ornaments bigger than your head, plus 2,500 lights and all the attendant connectors and wires and 30 plugs."

"Try putting it all together from scaffolds and bucket trucks on one of Downtown’s busiest corners, buffeted by buses and cars and pedestrians as well as the wind and the rain and the cold," Mr. Batz continued.

An earlier, simpler version of this tree consisted of lights. First erected in 1953 on the exterior of the Joseph Horne’s Department Store, it was dedicated to the young patients at Children’s Hospital. 

In the mid-1960s, the tree evolved to a version with branches and ornaments.

John McDonough, an electrician with Sargent Electric Co., oversaw the tree’s installation for more than 15 years. 

Horne’s departed Downtown in 1995 but the tree remains a harbinger of holiday shopping and part of Light Up Night festivities.

—Marylynne Pitz

1991: Worship at the old St. Nicholas Church

It’s an odd coincidence that on Monday, as officials celebrated the end of construction on Route 28, we found in our archive two strips of misplaced negatives showing the interior of a church that was demolished as the road was being widened.

The negatives fell from a box of 30-year-old prints. They document a 1991 service at the old St. Nicholas Church on East Ohio Street. A sparse crowd of about 35 people sit in the sanctuary of what was the first Croatian Catholic Church in North America. Most likely, the worshippers were gathering to pray for their relatives and friends caught up in the Croatian War of Independence, which had just begun.

St. Nicholas was demolished several months ago. It hadn’t been used in years. In 1994, it was merged with St. Nicholas Parish in Millvale. The church there, also named St. Nicholas, is noted for its stunning murals by Croatian artist Maxo Vanka.

Organizations such as Preserve Croatian Heritage Foundation and Preservation Pittsburgh joined with community members in an attempt to save the historic structure. They convinced PennDOT to alter the design of Route 28 so the church could remain, but in the end the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh determined the church was a financial burden had it demolished.

In an interactive panoramic picture of old St. Nicholas posted on the PG website in January 2010, the church appears somewhat forlorn, its doors and windows covered in plywood. Nearby, traffic can be seen backing up along Route 28.

We certainly appreciate being able to travel more quickly and safely along one of our region’s busiest roads, but we miss seeing the iconic onion domes of the old church at the foot of Troy Hill.

— Steve Mellon

Top picture: A collection plate is passed among congregants during a 1991 service at St. Nicholas Church in Troy Hill. (Steve Mellon/The Pittsburgh Press)

Pie in the Face and Pittsburgh’s crusty ‘hit man’

When was the last time you heard of a pie-throwing battle in Pittsburgh? We remember not. How about a pie in the face story? Hmmm… well, there was Russell Martin’s shaving-cream pie last year but that was expected: when you hit a 14th-inning walk-off for the team with the best MLB record, you get pied by A.J.Burnett — it only makes sense. Right? 

Pittsburgh is not that much into pieing. Days when pieing was big in the Steel City are gone. These days we prefer to eat pies, not throw them around. 

The non-traditional tradition of perusing pies, that is smashing them in someone else’s face, used to be quite popular in Pittsburgh. Pieing was common at fundraisers, at corporate events, at schools, especially among fans of the Three Stooges, the true fathers of pie-throwing. 

Pittsburgh even used to have its own professional pie-thrower. His name was Ross Thorn — the ‘hit man,’ who was never known to miss but always did a ‘sloppy job.’  A talented musician with a degree from CMU, he took up pie-throwing for a defiant cause, as The Pittsburgh Press explained in the 1975 profile of Mr. Thorn. 

"Music is always a shaky business, and I started tossing pies to go along with the act," he explained. For many years, Mr. Thorn adorned faces with pies three nights a week at Bimbo’s, a family-type sing-along pace on Washington Road in Mt. Lebanon. He delivered more than 10,000 pies… in the face. He pioneered a home deliver pie-in-the-face service for special occasions.

Mr. Thorn was the first person to throw a pie on a scheduled airline in November 1963. 

Once, he even suggested pie-throwing as a method to break up street riots, which was timely advice for the 1960s and long before pie-throwing could result in charges of assault and battery in this country. 

Pittsburgh’s crusty ‘hit man’ had a lot of great stories. At a banquet one night he was ‘contracted’ to splatter the top executive of a steel firm. He did the job, not knowing what the reaction would be. 

According to Mr. Thorn, “The fellow just leaned back, roaring with laughter and, with pie dripping from his face, he lit up a cigar.”

—Mila Sanina

Top photo: Pie-thrower Ross Thorn serves up his 100,000th pie to face of 6-year-old David Call (6 Oct., 1975, Ross Catanza/Pittsburgh Press)

City within a city: Chatham Center couldn’t have entered Pittsburgh’s skyline with any more fanfare.

"Here we go again, folks!" Gilbert Love wrote Oct. 20, 1964, in The Pittsburgh Press, " …the Pittsburgh renaissance is a lot like a fireworks program. It dies down for a while and you think the spectacular part of it may be all over; then there’s a new display, often more dramatic than anything before it."

Richard K. Mellon himself set off the fireworks from the 40th floor of what is now the Citizens Bank Tower, 525 William Penn Pl., heralding the beginning of Chatham’s construction and, of course, Pittsburgh’s continued renaissance.

The $22 million project was seen as a gateway to a key eastern point. “Before many years,” a Press columnist wrote, “an expanded downtown could meet an expanded Oakland, forming a city center five miles long.”

Not quite.

In spring 1965 after its groundbreaking, it was promoted as “the self-sufficient city within a city.”

Pittsburgh industrialist Leon Falk Jr. and New York realtor Morton Wolf invested in this “bright and sophisticated” part of the Lower Hill-Uptown urban renewal effort. The investment worked for many years, but as Mark Belko chronicled in September, its prospects dimmed considerably as tenants moved out.

Even before UPMC’s recent departure, the building had vacancy problems. Notably, the Chatham Cinema, which went up with the complex in the 1960s, was the first theater to be built in or near Downtown since the Stanley in 1927. After seeing the exquisite drawings, columnist Kaspar Monahan wrote, “I think I’m safe in predicting that the Chatham Cinema will be unique among theaters, not only of the local area but of the entire nation.”

In a way, he was proven correct. It was unique among theaters; there was little free parking nearby.

A 10 percent city amusement tax and suburban competition also doomed the Cinema. It closed in 1985, the fourth to shutter near Downtown since 1980.

Now, One Chatham Center will be sold Jan. 5 at a sheriff’s sale. Sadly, we predict few fireworks.

—Ethan Magoc

Top photo April 14, 1965: From the 12th floor of the Plaza Building, a view of the Epiphany Church and Uptown, where the site of Chatham Center was then being excavated. (The Pittsburgh Press)

The Fulton Theater’s evolution

Actors play many parts and sometimes, theaters have many lives.

A good example is Pittsburgh’s Byham Theater, a Downtown landmark at 101 Sixth Street.

It opened as the Gayety on Halloween in 1904. The Gayety offered its patrons a mix of full-length plays and satirical sketches plus musical revues that often featured a chorus line made up of attractive women with shapely legs. 

The Gayety once showcased a group of international women wrestlers who offered any local woman $100 if she could stay standing for 10 minutes while on stage with the troupe.

Starting in the 1930s, the theater was renamed the Fulton and became a mecca for moviegoers. But by the mid-1980s, the carpeting was threadbare and dotted with pieces of old chewing gum, requiring patrons to step carefully. The ceiling leaked so some seats were roped off. But people still came to see movies, such as “Mommie Dearest.” 

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust bought the 1,300-seat theater in 1988, restored it  and reopened it in 1991. The theater was renamed in honor of generous donors William C. and Carolyn M. Byham. Today, the theater hosts concerts, dance, musicals, films and the well-known storytelling event, “The Moth.”

—Marylynne Pitz

Top picture: In July 1955, the Fulton’s 25-year-old marquee was removed and replaced with a new one. (W.F. Mahon/Sun-Telegraph)

“My goodness, I want that ship”:

This is a Veterans Day story about the USS Pittsburgh. There have been four of them, and one is still in service, but our focus today is on the one that sailed in the 1940s and ’50s.

Moreover, this is about a sailor, Richard Pillart. He resides in Florida, but he’s from Polish Hill. And he calls himself “a real Pittsburgh nut. My sister still lives in the house I lived in as a child.”

As much as he loves Pittsburgh, he has an equal interest in USS Pittsburgh history. He would. He served on it.

In 1951, Mr. Pillart quit high school and joined the Navy.

"Just like after 9/11, there was a lot of patriotism then," he said recently. "I wanted to go in and save the world."

Because he was underage, he convinced his mother to sign for him on his service papers. He went from Pittsburgh to bootcamp, then on to electrician mate’s school.

When he finished, the Navy let him pick his next station. He knew he wanted to be in the Pacific. He examined the list of vessels in operation there.

"I saw the USS Pittsburgh and said, ‘My goodness, I want that ship.’"

He was aboard from 1952 to 1954, traveling the world and building lasting bonds.

That is, more or less, how he came to us. For the past 38 years, Mr. Pillart and his surviving shipmates have had a reunion in various cities nationwide. They exchanged memories, produced commemorative coins and, at a 1997 reunion in Greentree, donated a model of the ship to Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall.

In September 2014, the group held its final reunion in Washington D.C., after which he sent the Post-Gazette a Facebook message: “A good time was had by all albeit a bit sad since it was our last reunion after 38 years.”

Many sailors from World War II and the Korean War have “some kind of ailment,” he said, “and they’re all going. We had a memorial service for eight of our shipmates who passed away this year.”

Mr. Pillart made sure to mention shipmate Bob McKnight, a Connellsville native who attended — yes — each of the 38 reunions.

—Ethan Magoc

Nov. 7, 1954: Things get weird at 2153 Brighton Road

The tiny, one-story stone house at 2153 Brighton Road looked like it was stuck in a vise. A three-story brick building pressed in on one side; on the other, a two-story frame structure squeezed in.

A picture taken 60 years ago shows a house that seems ready to pop under the pressure.

Inside, things appeared even worse. In fact, by November 1954, they were downright weird.

William and Theresa Weichel weren’t getting along. The couple married in 1939 and enjoyed a fine relationship for a few years. Then the marriage soured, Theresa said, because William “objected to some of my family.”

Things got so bad that William and Theresa decided to live in separate parts of the little house.

Fine, William said. He was a carpenter by trade, so he got a hammer and nails and pounded some old boards over two interior doorways, thus formalizing the divide. Now the couple could live side-by-side and never have to see each other.

“It’s worse than an iron curtain,” Theresa said.

She and the couple’s 13-year-old son Donald occupied three rooms and a bath. William had two rooms and control of the furnace.

The furnace soon became a sticking point.

When temperatures dropped, the house turned cold. So did the furnace. Theresa claimed William was trying to freeze her out by turning off the heat. She wore a long coat inside the house and “chattered” while she told her story to a reporter.

“We’re all sick,” she said. “Donald has a cold and I have bronchitis.”

Theresa said she tried to get a coal stove installed in an open fireplace in the living room, but William stoppered the chimney with cement and vowed not to turn on the furnace until March.

A few days later, Theresa dragged William before a North Side alderman named William Luther. The charge: Child neglect.

None of the charges were true, William said. The furnace was shut off because he got sick and couldn’t get out to pay the gas bill, he claimed. Payment was late, so the gas was shut off. And, he said, he never closed up the chimney.

“This case is not willful,” William pleaded. He said he’d paid the $50 gas bill and heat was once again flowing from the furnace.

Then, according to PG reporter Alvin Rosensweet, “he said a lot of nasty things about his wife, and she replied in turn.”

William promised to keep the furnace turned on throughout the winter. Luther assessed him $17 in costs and sent the two away into the cold, dark night. At least their house was warm.

— Steve Mellon

Top picture: Theresa Weichel shows one of two boarded-up doors in the house. (Pittsburgh Press photo)

Pittsburgh fall foliage: What we wouldn’t give to have a few of these scenes in color.

Two seasonally relevant photo folders exist in our archive. One is labeled “FALL.” The other was “LEAVES.” (We merged the two during research for this post)

There were a few dozen photos between the two of them, but these are seven of our favorites. Besides the endearing joy obvious in each pictured child, it’s the subtle details that make a few of these pop.

The cigarette perfectly framed by the swirling leaves.

The perfect backlight on the pair of young leaf rakers.

The child old enough to leverage his frame between two trees while inspecting a leaf — though not quite old enough to tie his own shoes.

And the angle at which the boy and his leaf-mowing tractor were captured.

All of this reminds us at The Digs of why fall in Pittsburgh is a magical season. Even when it’s in black and white.

—Ethan Magoc

Top photo: Nov. 21, 1990: City Parks Department employee Tom Packard battles falling leaves in West Park on the North Side. (John Heller/The Pittsburgh Press)

"Playhouse Performers"

The woman at the center of this picture wears a feathered hand band and leads a dance ensemble at the Pittsburgh Playhouse in Oakland. 

The year is 1989 and she’s playing Velma in the musical “Chicago.”

You may not recognize her face but if you like Broadway musicals, you know her name. That’s Kathleen Marshall and legions of theater fans know her as an outstanding choreographer.

Since 2004, she has won three Tony Awards for best choreography plus two Drama Desk Awards for outstanding choreography. (Her brother, Rob Marshall, won an Oscar for his direction of the movie version of “Chicago.”)

A Pittsburgh native, Ms. Marshall is among a long parade of people who started to learn their craft on the boards of the Pittsburgh Playhouse. The list of people who either studied or performed at the theatrical complex  includes Cicely Tyson, Rene Auberjonois, Sada Thompson, Shirley Jones, Barbara Feldon and George Peppard.

A golden age for the Pittsburgh Playhouse was the 1950s. On Saturdays, teen-agers learned acting, dance and the technical side of stagecraft. The Playhouse School, a two-year program, launched young actors and technicians into professional careers. By the mid-1950s, the Playhouse had two auditoriums, offices, scenery shops, a cocktail lounge and a popular restaurant.

In the 1980s, people flocked to the Playhouse to see classic and foreign movies brought to Pittsburgh by Richard Rauh. His mother, Helen Wayne Rauh, starred in Pittsburgh Playhouse productions for more than 30 years.

Point Park University took over the facility in 1973. Today, the Pittsburgh Playhouse is home to The REP, a professional theater company and plus three student companies.

— Marylynne Pitz

October 1979: Ghosts take center stage

An old tradition dictates that when actors leave the stage, a bare light bulb remains burning in the theater to keep the building’s ghosts company.

Veteran thespians call it a ghost light.

That’s what we thought of when we saw this picture of a ghost hanging over the Pittsburgh Playhouse on Craft Avenue in Oakland.

Back in October 1979, as Halloween drew near, Pittsburgh Press feature writer Barbara Cloud visited the building after midnight, flashlight in hand.

She heard rain on the roof and the clatter of radiators.

“With the energy expelled within the theater’s stages,” Ms. Cloud wrote, “is it any wonder ghosts would be imagined, felt, feared and at times, seen?”

For the record, she did not see any ghosts.

Still, performers have reported hearing footsteps near the men’s dressing room and believe they belong to the veteran actor John Johns, who died of a heart attack at the Playhouse in 1963. Others say they have seen his ghost — and it wears a tuxedo.

A lady dressed in white is supposedly the ghost of a woman who committed two murders then took her own life during the 1930s. That was back when one of the two buildings that were converted into the Pittsburgh Playhouse was a bar.

At night in an empty dressing room, actors have heard the cries of Weeping Eleanor, who perished in a fire in one of the rowhouses where part of the Playhouse now stands.

Whether these spirits are real or imagined, we hope someone backstage leaves the light on for them on this All Hallows Eve.

—Marylynne Pitz

(Top picture: This photo illustration accompanied a story about Barbara Cloud’s ghost hunting adventure at the Pittsburgh Playhouse.)