Posts tagged redevelopment

Room for Romanticizing: What’s in an abandoned building? (Part I)

Recently I had the pleasure of giving a grand tour of Pittsburgh to a couple of friends visiting from Boston.  Although we didn’t make it to Carrie Furnace (sigh), I was sure to show them some key points among the remains of our Industrial past while giving them a personal and cultural thumbnail history as best I could.  While we were walking along the Allegheny near the CMU Robotics building in Lawrenceville, my friend, a fellow fan and student of the old, the rustic, and the abandoned, remarked about a rusted out piece of equipment along the railroad tracks, “This is SO cool.”  Then paused and asked,  ”Do you think we’ll ever be able to stop romanticizing this stuff? Why do we like this?”

Giving the question about same amount of consideration I might have given it if he’d asked me what I wanted for lunch I responded, “Probably for the same reasons we like horror movies.”  He looked at me with a polite look of confusion and we moved on.

I had no idea what I meant by that, really.  But in the days following, the memory of that answer began to haunt me (see what I did there).

What Pittsburgh (Don't Laugh) Can Teach Obama

(a very thoughtful article by Pittsburgh native, Howard Fineman)

I posted a similar article a while back that, while interesting, didn’t quite offer the same sharp understanding that Fineman does here.  I was especially struck by his retelling of the uniquely Pittsburgh story of grit and hard work.

“Simply put, what worked in Pittsburgh won’t work for the auto industry, and what the president wants to do for Detroit isn’t the kind of thing that worked in my old hometown. Pittsburgh’s rebirth is about the grit, sacrifice and hustle of locals—not the sweeping plans and power of federal bureaucrats.”

I was actually a little surprised to see Fineman write this.  I think you even see some of the Pittsburgher in him coming through in this piece!  He’s retelling the story that any Pittsburgher, especially one that was born and raised in the city, knows all to well.

“As the steel industry was dying, no one (certainly no one in Pittsburgh) suggested or would have accepted a federal bailout, let alone a federal takeover. There was and is too much pride and stubbornness; the Whiskey Rebellion was two centuries ago, but the suspicion of Washington’s motives remains.”

But Fineman avoids being reductive of the Pittsburgh attitude as he goes on to explain that it was the city’s ability to adapt this same attitude to new forms of industry and business that led to its success.  The whole thing - and I don’t intend this to be a slam on Fineman - is classic Horatio Alger.

“But the point is that this is largely a local story, not a national one. The lesson for the auto business and the auto-producing regions is not the one that President Obama wants them to hear. It is that the old world will inevitably disappear, and that creating a new one is up to you, not someone else.”

It got me thinking about questions that always seem to come up when we talk about individuals and larger systems, and the binary that we love to create between them.  My impulse is to describe the interaction in terms of an ecosystem, but I’m bothered by this analogy at times in that I don’t think it accounts for individual interaction so much as it does “specie” interaction.  However, I do think the analogy helps us understand ourselves and other systems as connected - a concept I think is especially useful as we ask ourselves where our Pittsburgh myths come from.

The View From the Netherlands

via Mike Madison’s Pittsblog

A video from Dutch national TV highlighting Pittsburgh’s revival - also features a few clips of Mike.  Can someone translate this?

1. Connect and reconnect with the virtual Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh must replicate its famous bridges, by building metaphoric bridges to other countries, states, companies, and groups and above all to the diaspora of people and institutions with historic ties to Western Pennsylvania. We must build a global Pittsburgh.

via Mike Madison’s Pittsblog

I thought it was worth quoting the first of Mike’s seven principles here.  If you didn’t know already, his blog is essential reading for any politically or socially engaged Pittsburgher.

As I was posting videos of the recent implosions in the city, I started thinking about “destruction,” and I guess I’d also say “violence,” and the city’s relationship with these concepts.  I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Pittsburghers are fireworks aficionados.  Most people will tell you we’ve got the best fireworks displays in the country, and every now and then you’re sure to come across a few people who even know the Zambelli family.  I think we pride ourselves on a uniquely Pittsburgh brand of destruction and violence that’s not just a fetish for “disaster porn” (as Max Page might put it), but an appreciation for a form of destruction that is simultaneously a renewal and construction.

Our most beloved sports heroes, and the teams themselves, are emblems of this kind of productive destruction.  Take Jack Lambert.  Known for dismantling opponents offenses, he simultaneously dismantled himself for the sake of the team.  The steel industry itself is a continual process of destruction and production - melting down one substance to create a new form.  These implosions are no different.  The number of videos floating around on Youtube depicting implosions in the city is a testament to our interest in this kind of destruction.  You can hear cheers in the background of each of these videos.  It’s not that we’re mindlessly cheering destruction for destruction’s sake, but rather, we’re cheering in anticipation of what will rise from the ashes of what has been destroyed (see Three Rivers Stadium implosion).

I think fireworks are our homage to this kind of productive destruction - a form of spectacle that simultaneously destroys itself and rises all while dazzling those looking on.

With redevelopment comes implosions.  The old St. Francis Hospital was imploded to make room for the Penguins new arena which will take the place of the civic arena (seen on the left).

Yet another part of Pittsburgh’s redevelopment plan.

Carrie Furnace Redevelopment

If there’s one place I can think of that is quintessentially Pittsburgh, it’s Carrie Furnace.  The site has been abandoned for well over 20 years, and for that period of time it was indicative of the state of the city. But now, as we continue to make the old new again and use those former industrial sites to serve the new service oriented economy, the redevelopment plan focuses on connecting the area to the Water Front shopping center across the river, which was, of course the site of the old Homestead Steel.

The redevelopment plans will supposedly preserve part of the old furnace, though it’s not quite clear to me to what degree.  Click through the link to watch Dan Onorato talk about the plans.

Thanks to Hours of Darkness for this photo.  Check out their photo galleries of other modern ruins.

Going to Church

Ever since the collapse of the steel industry in Pittsburgh, people have been fleeing the city in pursuit of cozy homes in the suburbs.  (Although, it seems like as of late that trend might be slowing down, if not reversing itself altogether.)  So, as people left, so did a lot of other things; and the city was left with a lot of empty buildings - among them, churches.  With such large properties available for relatively little money, a lot of groups like Artists Colonies and even apartment developers, started to buy up these churches. But by far the most talked about and most successful of these holy endeavors has been the Church Brew Works in the Strip District.

I’m still tempted every time I walk through the front doors to dip my hand in the holy water dish, and I occasionally even feel a little guilty about drinking in an old church.  I wonder if an old Heinz plant worker would have the urge to jump back on the assembly line when they walk into the Heinz Lofts?  Maybe not.  But there’s certainly parts of of those old cultural forms that linger on, and I would even say are ingrained in these new redeveloped forms.  What would grandma and grandpa think if we told them fifty years ago that we’d be eating and drinking in church and living in the ketchup plant?

To: Detroit, From: Pittsburgh

This is about a month old, but as a Pittsburgher it’s encouraging especially amidst the financial crisis.