Making Industrial Pittsburgh Modern

Making Industrial Pittsburgh Modern PDF Author: Edward K. Muller
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 082298699X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
Pittsburgh’s explosive industrial and population growth between the mid-nineteenth century and the Great Depression required constant attention to city-building. Private, profit-oriented firms, often with government involvement, provided necessary transportation, energy resources, and suitable industrial and residential sites. Meeting these requirements in the region’s challenging hilly topographical and riverine environment resulted in the dramatic reshaping of the natural landscape. At the same time, the Pittsburgh region’s free market, private enterprise emphasis created socio-economic imbalances and badly polluted the air, water, and land. Industrial stagnation, temporarily interrupted by wars, and then followed deindustrialization inspired the formation of powerful public-private partnerships to address the region’s mounting infrastructural, economic, and social problems. The sixteen essays in Making Industrial Pittsburgh Modern examine important aspects of the modernizing efforts to make Pittsburgh and Southwestern Pennsylvania a successful metropolitan region. The city-building experiences continue to influence the region’s economic transformation, spatial structure, and life experience.

Making Industrial Pittsburgh Modern

Making Industrial Pittsburgh Modern PDF Author: Edward K. Muller
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 082298699X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 473

Get Book Here

Book Description
Pittsburgh’s explosive industrial and population growth between the mid-nineteenth century and the Great Depression required constant attention to city-building. Private, profit-oriented firms, often with government involvement, provided necessary transportation, energy resources, and suitable industrial and residential sites. Meeting these requirements in the region’s challenging hilly topographical and riverine environment resulted in the dramatic reshaping of the natural landscape. At the same time, the Pittsburgh region’s free market, private enterprise emphasis created socio-economic imbalances and badly polluted the air, water, and land. Industrial stagnation, temporarily interrupted by wars, and then followed deindustrialization inspired the formation of powerful public-private partnerships to address the region’s mounting infrastructural, economic, and social problems. The sixteen essays in Making Industrial Pittsburgh Modern examine important aspects of the modernizing efforts to make Pittsburgh and Southwestern Pennsylvania a successful metropolitan region. The city-building experiences continue to influence the region’s economic transformation, spatial structure, and life experience.

Before Renaissance

Before Renaissance PDF Author: John F. Bauman
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822973057
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
Before Renaissance examines a half-century epoch during which planners, public officials, and civic leaders engaged in a dialogue about the meaning of planning and its application for improving life in Pittsburgh.Planning emerged from the concerns of progressive reformers and businessmen over the social and physical problems of the city. In the Steel City enlightened planners such as Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., and Frederick Bigger pioneered the practical approach to reordering the chaotic urban-industrial landscape. In the face of obstacles that included the embedded tradition of privatism, rugged topography, inherited built environment, and chronic political fragmentation, they established a tradition of modern planning in Pittsburgh.Over the years a melange of other distinguished local and national figures joined in the planning dialogue, among them the park founder Edward Bigelow, political bosses Christopher Magee and William Flinn, mayors George Guthrie and William Magee, industrialists Andrew Carnegie and Howard Heinz, financier Richard King Mellon, and planning luminaries Charles Mulford Robinson, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., Harland Bartholomew, Robert Moses, and Pittsburgh's Frederick Bigger. The famed alliance of Richard King Mellon and Mayor David Lawrence, which heralded the Renaissance, owed a great debt to Pittsburgh's prior planning experience. John Bauman and Edward Muller recount the city's long tradition of public/private partnerships as an important factor in the pursuit of orderly and stable urban growth. Before Renaissance provides insights into the major themes, benchmarks, successes, and limitations that marked the formative days of urban planning. It defines Pittsburgh's key role in the vanguard of the national movement and reveals the individuals and processes that impacted the physical shape and form of a city for generations to come.

Making the Modern

Making the Modern PDF Author: Terry Smith
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226763471
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
Smith reveals how this visual revolution played an instrumental role in the complex psychological, social, economic, and technological changes that came to be known as the second industrial revolution. From the role of visualization in the invention of the assembly line, to office and building design, to the corporate and lifestyle images that filled new magazines such as Life and Fortune, he traces the extent to which the second wave of industrialization engaged the visual arts to project a new iconology of progress.

Pennsylvania in Public Memory

Pennsylvania in Public Memory PDF Author: Carolyn Kitch
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 027106885X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
What stories do we tell about America’s once-great industries at a time when they are fading from the landscape? Pennsylvania in Public Memory attempts to answer that question, exploring the emergence of a heritage culture of industry and its loss through the lens of its most representative industrial state. Based on news coverage, interviews, and more than two hundred heritage sites, this book traces the narrative themes that shape modern public memory of coal, steel, railroading, lumber, oil, and agriculture, and that collectively tell a story about national as well as local identity in a changing social and economic world.

Imagining the Modern

Imagining the Modern PDF Author: Rami el Samahy
Publisher: The Monacelli Press, LLC
ISBN: 1580935230
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Imagining the Modern explores Pittsburgh's ambitious modern architecture and urban renewal program that made it a gem of American postwar cities, and set the stage for its stature today. In the 1950s and '60s an ambitious program of urban revitalization transformed Pittsburgh and became a model for other American cities. Billed as the Pittsburgh Renaissance, this era of superlatives--the city claimed the tallest aluminum clad building, the world's largest retractable dome, the tallest steel structure--developed through visionary mayors and business leaders, powerful urban planning authorities, and architects and urban designers of international renown, including Frank Lloyd Wright, I.M. Pei, Mies van der Rohe, SOM, and Harrison & Abramovitz. These leaders, civic groups, and architects worked together to reconceive the city through local and federal initiatives that aimed to address the problems that confronted Pittsburgh's postwar development. Initiated as an award-winning exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art in 2014, Imagining the Modern untangles this complicated relationship with modern architecture and planning through a history of Pittsburgh's major sites, protagonists, and voices of intervention. Through original documentation, photographs and drawings, as well as essays, analytical drawings, and interviews with participants, this book provides a nuanced view of this crucial moment in Pittsburgh's evolution. Addressing both positive and negative impacts of the era, Imagining the Modern examines what took place during the city's urban renewal era, what was gained and lost, and what these histories might suggest for the city's future.

An Alternative History of Pittsburgh

An Alternative History of Pittsburgh PDF Author: Ed Simon
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1953368131
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
“[An] epic, atomic history of the Steel City . . . a work of literature, a series of linked creative nonfiction essays, an historical story cycle.” ―Phillip Maciak, Los Angeles Review of Books The land surrounding the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers has supported communities of humans for millennia. Over the past four centuries, however, it has been transformed countless times by the many people who call it home. In this brief, lyrical, and idiosyncratic collection, Ed Simon, a staff writer at The Millions, follows the story of Pittsburgh through a series of interconnected segments, covering all manner of beloved people, places, and things, including: • Paleolithic Pittsburgh • The Whiskey Rebellion • The attempted assassination of Henry Frick • The Harmonists • The Mystery, Pittsburgh’s radical, Black nationalist newspaper • The myth of Joe Magarac • Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington, Andy Warhol, and much, much more. Accessible and funny, An Alternative History of Pittsburgh is a must-read for anyone curious about this storied city, and for Pittsburghers who think they know it all too well already. “[A] rich and idiosyncratic history . . . Even Pittsburgh history buffs will learn something new.” —Publishers Weekly “Simon tells the story of the city and all the changes that made it what it is today in a way that's entirely new, by the hand of someone who is deeply familiar.” ―Juliana Rose Pignataro, Newsweek “A sparkling new take on everyone’s favorite Rust Belt metropolis.” ―Justin Velluci, Jewish Chronicle “A brilliant look at how geology and art, politics and religion, disaster and luck combine to build America’s great cities―one that will leave you wondering what secrets your own hometown might be hiding.” ―Anjali Sachdeva, author of All the Names They Used for God

Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity

Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity PDF Author: Kimberly Elman Zarecor
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 082297780X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
Eastern European prefabricated housing blocks are often vilified as the visible manifestations of everything that was wrong with state socialism. For many inside and outside the region, the uniformity of these buildings became symbols of the dullness and drudgery of everyday life. Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity complicates this common perception. Analyzing the cultural, intellectual, and professional debates surrounding the construction of mass housing in early postwar Czechoslovakia, Zarecor shows that these housing blocks served an essential function in the planned economy and reflected an interwar aesthetic, derived from constructivism and functionalism, that carried forward into the 1950s. With a focus on prefabricated and standardized housing built from 1945 to 1960, Zarecor offers broad and innovative insights into the country's transition from capitalism to state socialism. She demonstrates that during this shift, architects and engineers consistently strove to meet the needs of Czechs and Slovaks despite challenging economic conditions, a lack of material resources, and manufacturing and technological limitations. In the process, architects were asked to put aside their individual creative aspirations and transform themselves into technicians and industrial producers. Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity is the first comprehensive history of architectural practice and the emergence of prefabricated housing in the Eastern Bloc. Through discussions of individual architects and projects, as well as building typologies, professional associations, and institutional organization, it opens a rare window into the cultural and economic life of Eastern Europe during the early postwar period.

Unlocking the Potential of Post-Industrial Cities

Unlocking the Potential of Post-Industrial Cities PDF Author: Matthew E. Kahn
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 1421440822
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description
How can urban leaders in Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis make the smart choices that can lead their city to make a comeback? The urban centers of New York City, Seattle, and San Francisco have enjoyed tremendous economic success and population growth in recent years. At the same time, cities like Baltimore and Detroit have experienced population loss and economic decline. People living in these cities are not enjoying the American Dream of upward mobility. How can post-industrial cities struggling with crime, pollution, poverty, and economic decline make a comeback? In Unlocking the Potential of Post-Industrial Cities, Matthew E. Kahn and Mac McComas explore why some people and places thrive during a time of growing economic inequality and polarization—and some don't. They examine six underperforming cities—Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis—that have struggled from 1970 to present. Drawing from the field of urban economics, Kahn and McComas ask how the public and private sectors can craft policies and make investments that create safe, green cities where young people reach their full potential. The authors analyze long-run economic and demographic trends. They also highlight recent lessons from urban economics in labor market demand and supply, neighborhood quality of life, and local governance while scrutinizing strategies to lift people out of poverty. These cities are all at a fork in the road. Depending on choices made today, they could enjoy a significant comeback—but only if local leaders are open to experimentation and innovation while being honest about failure and constructive evaluation. Unlocking the Potential of Post-Industrial Cities provides a roadmap for how urban policy makers, community members, and practitioners in the public and private sector can work together with researchers to discover how all cities can solve the most pressing modern urban challenges.

The Workers' State

The Workers' State PDF Author: Mark Pittaway
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822978121
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
In 1956, Hungarian workers joined students on the streets to protest years of wage and benefit cuts enacted by the Communist regime. Although quickly suppressed by Soviet forces, the uprising led to changes in party leadership and conciliatory measures that would influence labor politics for the next thirty years. In The Workers' State, Mark Pittaway presents a groundbreaking study of the complexities of the Hungarian working class, its relationship to the Communist Party, and its major political role during the foundational period of socialism (1944-1958). Through case studies of three industrial centers—Ujpest, Tatabanya, and Zala County—Pittaway analyzes the dynamics of gender, class, generation, skill level, and rural versus urban location, to reveal the embedded hierarchies within Hungarian labor. He further demonstrates how industries themselves, from oil and mining to armaments and textiles, possessed their own unique labor subcultures. From the outset, the socialist state won favor with many workers, as they had grown weary of the disparity and oppression of class systems under fascism. By the early 1950s, however, a gap between the aspirations of labor and the goals of the state began to widen. In the Stalinist drive toward industrialization, stepped up production measures, shortages of goods and housing, wage and benefit cuts, and suppression became widespread. Many histories of this period have focused on Communist terror tactics and the brutal suppression of a pliant population. In contrast, Pittaway's social chronicle sheds new light on working-class structures and the determination of labor to pursue its own interests and affect change in the face of oppression. It also offers new understandings of the role of labor and the importance of local histories in Eastern Europe under communism.

The Age of Smoke

The Age of Smoke PDF Author: Frank Uekötter
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822973502
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
In 1880, coal was the primary energy source for everything from home heating to industry. Regions where coal was readily available, such as the Ruhr Valley in Germany and western Pennsylvania in the United States, witnessed exponential growth-yet also suffered the greatest damage from coal pollution. These conditions prompted civic activism in the form of "anti-smoke" campaigns to attack the unsightly physical manifestations of coal burning. This early period witnessed significant cooperation between industrialists, government, and citizens to combat the smoke problem. It was not until the 1960s, when attention shifted from dust and grime to hazardous invisible gases, that cooperation dissipated, and protests took an antagonistic turn.The Age of Smoke presents an original, comparative history of environmental policy and protest in the United States and Germany. Dividing this history into distinct eras (1880 to World War I, interwar, post-World War II to 1970), Frank Uekoetter compares and contrasts the influence of political, class, and social structures, scientific communities, engineers, industrial lobbies, and environmental groups in each nation. He concludes with a discussion of the environmental revolution, arguing that there were indeed two environmental revolutions in both countries: one societal, where changing values gave urgency to air pollution control, the other institutional, where changes in policies tried to catch up with shifting sentiments.Focusing on a critical period in environmental history, The Age of Smoke provides a valuable study of policy development in two modern industrial nations, and the rise of civic activism to combat air pollution. As Uekoetter's work reveals, the cooperative approaches developed in an earlier era offer valuable lessons and perhaps the best hope for future progress.