This month's museum pick...

Pittsburgh's Museums

Downtown Pittsburgh at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers.

Pittsburgh has a surprising collection of museums. But, then, the “Steel City” is full of surprises

Pittsburgh is a strange bird. Located at the hill-rimmed junction of three rivers in one of the most beautiful locales of any American city (probably only San Francisco, Seattle and San Diego have more dramatic waterside settings), Pittsburgh is a place that Winston Churchill once described, “If it were located in Europe, people would go hundreds of miles out of their way to see it.” Yet relatively few do.

The town lies closer to Cleveland and Columbus than it does to its same-state sister, Philadelphia, yet it’s geographically eastern, with eastern-style foods, speech patterns and dense neighborhoods. However, visitors say its citizens’ politeness is thoroughly Midwestern.

It’s an up-and-down town, reminiscent of Cincinnati’s Mt. Adams, carved from a hardwood forest. Even the poorest neighborhoods have a view, sometimes very dramatic, of the skyline (so big for a city of only 360,000) or of the rivers and their many bridges, or of adjacent ridges.

Rather than cut through or cut down every natural obstacle that confounded them, the people of Pittsburgh decided years ago that they could live with streets that would almost crest hills but would instead dead-end only yards away from their same-name continuations on the other side. Thanks to their reluctant ancestors, people living in neighborhoods that are within sight and shouting distance of one another across a small valley may actually be miles apart by road.

In some quarters the perception still has Pittsburgh as the smog-bound forge of America, glowing day and night from the hearths of the great steel mills that made Andrew Carnegie the richest man on earth and U.S. industry the most productive. At its height in WWII, the smoldering pall over Pittsburgh was so thick and cast so dark a shadow that the city often lit its streetlamps at noon.

Pittsburgh left that industrial limbo behind years ago, successfully concentrating on becoming a bio-tech and medical center. The days these days are sweet and clear and the city has long since handed its smoggy mantle to Los Angeles, Houston and Denver. But even as heavy industry has abandoned the city, the glorious fruits of the immense wealth it created remain as, thankfully, permanent markers.

Clayton House, the 19th-century mansion on the grounds of the Frick Museum.

For Pittsburgh is the home of several distinguished museums that form an irresistible ensemble: The Carnegie museums of art, science and natural history, the Frick Art and Historical Museum, the Andy Warhol Museum, the Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center, the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum, the James L. Kelso Bible Lands Museum and the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens.

The Carnegie museums feature some of the best natural science exhibits in the country, including a dinosaur exhibit that is considered one of the finest on the planet. The science museum boasts the renowned Buhl Planetarium, whose innovative programs have been licensed worldwide, while the art museum’s Hall of Sculpture is a magnificent room that recreates the Parthenon’s inner sanctuary, the great space where Phidias seated his magnificent 40-foot-high statue of Athena. The natural science museum even has a retired submarine, the USS Requin, open for tours.

The James L. Kelso Bible Lands Museum at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary is one of the most highly regarded archaeological museums in the U.S., specializing in artifacts from ancient Palestine. This is an intimate place, given over more to scholars and enthusiastic amateurs than to casual visitors. But curator Karen Bowden Cooper is very approachable regarding visits. 

The Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens features one of the largest greenhouse complexes in the U.S., as well as outdoor gardens that include herbs, bonsai and perennials. When the great glass conservatory opened in 1893, it was the country’s largest.

Transportation plays a role, too. You can take a ride on a restored trolley and view restorations in progress at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum, 30 minutes south of Pittsburgh in Washington, PA, a town where people aren’t being rude when they speak in a loud voice. It’s pretty hilly around Washington, and pushing your voice a little hard is a good way to make its sound travel over the ridges and around the hollows.

Closer to town, the Duquesne Inclined Railway, which rises at a steep angle just across the river from Pittsburgh’s robust skyline, is a workaday funicular used by far more townsfolk than tourists. As it ascends, you can look out from what many consider to be the best angle for viewing downtown Pittsburgh.

All these sites conjure a great reason to come and explore a little-known U.S. city in the place where rivers with the sweetly poetic Indian names Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio mingle their waters. — Patrick Totty