Visiting The Past

Let's climb into our time machine and travel back into the Pittsburgh that existed in 1986.  These pictures, taken 37 years ago, back in the last century, show some things that have changed in the ensuing years. So often the things we take for granted are just wrinkles in the fabric of time.

    The first is on the 6^th Street Bridge, which is now called the Roberto Clemente Bridge. Do you remember when the city had life preservers mounted on the bridge? I didn’t. If you look at the background buildings, you will see a billboard for Horne’s Department Store. Both the store and the billboard are now gone.

    Who doesn’t remember Gimbel’s? There were some scattered around the Three Rivers area but the main one, was in downtown Pittsburgh. I can remember going to see Santa and visiting their Toyland when I was a kid. I also seem to remember a noisy, narrow wooden escalator going down into the basement. (?)

    The stores were all over the country, originating in Indiana in 1842. The Pittsburgh store opened in 1914 and lasted until the company went out of business in 1986-87. The building later housed the first Barnes and Noble Bookstore in the city and was added to the list of historical landmarks in 1997.

    All the buildings in this block, Liberty and William Penn Place, are no longer standing. The White Tower, Jack’s Sport Haven, The Nixon Hotel, The Liberty Tavern, Mary Ryan’s and the Palace Burlesque Theatre, no doubt all assets to the community, have disappeared.  The August Wilson African American Culture Center resides here now.

    Back in “those days”, Pittsburgh had quite a smorgasbord of adult venues on Liberty Avenue. The vast majority, if not all of them, have disappeared.

    The Art Cinema has been cleaned up and now shows art films in Pittsburgh’s Cultural District. (Once called Pittsburgh's red-light district) In 1995 the cinema was renamed The Harris Theater.

    The circus used to come to town yearly, traveling from town to town on the railroads. At one time, unloading their cargo in the strip district and parading the animals up to the Civic Arena for the show. In 1986, they had moved to the rails behind the Pennsylvania Station to park their trains while the show was in the city.

    One morning I was driving through the city before work, looking for a picture or two when one showed up right in front of me. I pulled up at a stop light and there it was, right in the back of a truck!

     The circuses have shut down, their railroad cars sent to museums and the Civic Arena has been torn down so they, as Joni Mitchell would say, could “put up a parking lot”. Looking closely at the picture, you’ll see it was taken in front of a Bell Telephone Company Building, there’s another thing that’s gone! And then, there is that Pittsburgh Press newspaper dispenser...

    We will end with one last picture from the North Side before we return to the present day. The building is still there but the business is gone. Located on Chestnut Street; the sign didn’t last very long, maybe only a month or two. Why…I really can’t imagine.

    So, whenever you’re out and about, keep your camera (or cell phone) near-by. You never know when the things you’re seeing… might disappear!