[PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh 250 (Tongue-in-Cheek Reply)

[Schneider Fred]

> And they turned the block house into the first carhouse.
>
> Dennis F. Cramer
>       Trombone
>
>
> Pittsburgh 250 is about celebrating the Pittsburgh region  
> yesterday, today
> and tomorrow - including our unique, impressive (and sometimes  
> surprising!)
> history.
>
> 250 Years Ago .
> In November 1758, British General John Forbes, Colonel George  
> Washington and
> their British and Colonial troops assumed possession the French Fort
> Duquesne at the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio  
> rivers.
> There constructed Fort Pitt, named after England's Sir William  
> Pitt. Fred
> the Third was born the following week. A month later, the city  
> received its
> first PCC car. The car received its first and only exterior washing  
> a month
> after that.
>
>
> K.



And 200 years later the city received its first exterior washing.....

Really, it was an amazing place.

Hey thanks guys but don't try to make me feel older and more infirm  
than I really am.

Seriously there are a lot more things to see in P-burg than just the  
trolleys and the places they ran.

Have any of you ever considered looking at Clayton, the one time home  
of Henry Clay Frick? After Frick moved to New York City, his daughter  
continued to live there and she insisted upon her demise that it be  
preserved.  There were probably more millionaires living within a  
mile of Frick than there could have been anywhere on the planet at  
that time ... that translates into billionaires in today's dollars.   
His neighborhood included people like George Westinghouse and Andrew  
Carnegie.    There were a lot of other famous names:  Mary Schenley,  
Andrew Mellon, Richard King Mellon, H. J. Heinz, the Mestas, the  
Laughlins, the Jones, the Phipps family, and many others.   There was  
a whole lot of money in Shadyside and Point Breeze at one time and to  
a lesser degree in the old city of Allegheny.   There is a great book  
on the lifestyle of those people called the "Spencers of Ambeson  
Avenue" about a family living within spitting distance of the old  
Pennsy station in Shadyside.   But if you want to know how the other  
half lived at time when we had a two-class society, rich and poor and  
nothing in between, go see Clayton.

http://thefrickpittsburgh.org/home/

If you like looking at fancy pants homes, let me tell you a great  
story about Fallingwater, the home built for the retail entrepreneur  
Henry Kauffman by Frank Lloyd Wright.   I came home one night in the  
1970s and remarked to my mother that I had gone to see her former  
boss's home.   I had known that she had worked in the 1930s for  
Kauffman's store.   What I didn't know was that in 1932 Kauffman  
offered every female graduate of Carnegie Institute of Technology,  
who didn't already have a job, a position in his store.   My mother  
took him up on the offer and worked in the complaint department  
downtown until about 1937.   She also said, "Do you remember my  
friend ______ McConohay?"   I said yes.   Well, it turned out that  
her father was the caretaker for Kauffman's at Fallingwater and my  
mother used to frequently go there on weekends with her girlfriend  
when the Kauffman family didn't go to Fayette County for the  
weekend.    My mom probably knew more legends about it than they ever  
told on the tour.

Well, the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy in Pittsburgh owns the  
house.  It's worth an afternoon tied in with a stop at the  
Revolutionary War Fort Necessity or a whole day between Ohiopyle,  
Fort Necessity and Fallingwater.   Perhaps a whole weekend in  
Fayette / lower Somerset County.

http://www.fallingwater.org/

If you like flowers, go look at Phipps Conservatory in Oakland.     
Henry Phipps, who endowed the Victorian conservatory under glass, was  
a business partner with Andrew Carnegie.   The link leads to a great  
6-minute YouTube visual of the inside of conservatory produced by the  
organization.   Worth looking at.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8Ps2qW1aw8

What else does one do in Oakland?   Don't forget the Nationality  
Rooms in the Cathedral of Learning.

http://www.pbase.com/ralf/nationalityroomsPitt

And don't forget the Carnegie Museum.

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2007-11-09-carnegie-museum_N.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Museums_of_Pittsburgh.   Few  
cities of Pittsburgh's size have world class museums like the  
Carnegie in Oakland.   It may not be what you go to Berlin or  
Washington or Paris or London to see but it is only one step lower.

http://www.carnegiemnh.org/dinosaurs/cam.htm

http://www.carnegiemnh.org/

http://www.cmoa.org/

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/30/arts/rcartcarn.php

And if you are like Fred Schneider, Oakland is a great place to  
explore for ethnic dining.  You can find Thai, Indian, Italian,  
Jewish, anything your little old heart desires.    There is also a  
rather intriguing Polish bar at end of the Bloomfield Bridge on Penn  
Avenue ... rather dumpy but decent pierogies.

http://pittsburgh.about.com/od/restaurants_oakland/ 
Pittsburgh_Restaurants_Dining_in_the_East_End_Neighborhoods.htm

Other things surrounding Pittsburgh ... Kurt Bell has been tipping me  
off to those things within the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum  
Commission which have not been attracting a sufficient number of  
visitors over the past few years and could put their continued  
operation in jeopardy.   I think that two that were on the potential  
hit list might have been the Old Economy settlement at Ambridge and  
the Drake Well site at Titusville.   The former is close enough to  
Pittsburgh to list here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Economy_Village

And you might also like this.....


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2bcSMVSOg4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1Q7HomBkmo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2cwcnTyR2E&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAPMvhD62kA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3riibbH8ASo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgTzfTT2MKI&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrLJAoua0AI&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc_lqdHyNNs&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrzyIxCH0NE&feature=related

So how many of you stuck around long enough to get to this stuff?






>
>