Strip District:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Point State Park:

 

 

 

 

Gateway Transit Center (Downtown):

 

 

North Side:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Took an awesome tour of the old Carrie Furnace, which closed in 1982. Our tour guide was a guy that worked there until it closed and then stayed on for a few extra years while they scrapped most of the facility. Efforts are currently underway to save the one remaining blast furnace and turn it into a museum and park:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Checking out a brewery in nearby Homestead, PA:

 

 

Mt. Washington (top of the inclines):

 

 

 

 

 

 

I didn't get as lucky with the sunset this trip. Here's a shot from my previous trip in 2013:

 

Nice pics.

 

I always found it sort of comical when people from Cincy or Pittsburgh hated on the other city and badmouthed it. You can easily look at a pic from either and mistake it for the other. Far more similar than natives to either want to admit.

 

I need to get back to Pittsburgh. I haven't been there since 2002. My good friends are moving there in March so I'll have to plan a trip.

Pittsburgh is still an underrated city, even with all the various NYT articles on it being "the next _____."  It's a great city.

Pittsburgh seems like Cincinnati on HGH

^ It's an example of how state policy in Ohio differs from Pennsylvania. If the Ohio government supported its cities over the decades like Pennsylvania did. Instead, Ohio favored the sprawl builders.

^ It's an example of how state policy in Ohio differs from Pennsylvania. If the Ohio government supported its cities over the decades like Pennsylvania did. Instead, Ohio favored the sprawl builders.

 

I think Pittsburgh's compactness has more to do with its topography than government policy.  Hills do focus development.

Yeah, in some ways Pittsburgh feels like a bizarro Cincinnati. They're pretty similar except that some different decisions were made along the way. We scrapped our historic streetcar system and they turned theirs into a modern light rail system. We scrapped our inclines and they kept theirs around as tourist attractions.

Oh that certainly helps, but Cincinnati's got hills as well. Columbus has quarries and flood plains.

Yeah, in some ways Pittsburgh feels like a bizarro Cincinnati. They're pretty similar except that some different decisions were made along the way. We scrapped our historic streetcar system and they turned theirs into a modern light rail system. We scrapped our inclines and they kept theirs around as tourist attractions.

 

I never understood why Cincy got rid of the inclines and tore them completely down... I  never looked it up though either.  Anyone have any details?

 

The hills also look a bit taller and steeper than Cincy, is that the case?  I've never been but want to go sometime.

^ It's an example of how state policy in Ohio differs from Pennsylvania. If the Ohio government supported its cities over the decades like Pennsylvania did. Instead, Ohio favored the sprawl builders.

 

I think Pittsburgh's compactness has more to do with its topography than government policy.  Hills do focus development.

 

The hills and odd interstate system definitely impact how development occurs in Pittsburgh.

 

I've heard the PA-OH state policy comments before, but I've never seen any evidence of specific policies from state government. I do get a sense in some communities that there is more of an openness and/or appreciation to urban or historic environments, but that is more cultural than policy driven. A number of PA cities topped out in population in the 30's and 40's and started to decline, while Ohio cities tended to hold off until the 60's and 70's, so I am sure that has had an impact as well.

 

Just as an observation, PA core cities seem to have grabbed less of their regional land/population than Ohio cities. That might have caused different decisions about where and how to invest in the core.

Cincinnati's inclines were basically just a platform that a regular streetcar would drive onto and get carried up the hill. So once we scrapped the streetcars, the inclines made no sense. Pittsburgh's inclines were a separate system with their own passenger cabins, so it was no problem to keep them operating.

Yeah, in some ways Pittsburgh feels like a bizarro Cincinnati. They're pretty similar except that some different decisions were made along the way. We scrapped our historic streetcar system and they turned theirs into a modern light rail system. We scrapped our inclines and they kept theirs around as tourist attractions.

The hills also look a bit taller and steeper than Cincy, is that the case?  I've never been but want to go sometime.

 

Significantly. 

Yes the hills in Pittsburgh are a bit higher and steeper than Cincinnati's.  They are also a different type of rock.  The big difference is that some are actual ridges whereas in the Cincinnati the "hills" are all plateaus. 

 

Another difference is that the rock and other local materials cause buildings of the same style to look a bit different.  Most of Cincinnati's stone foundations are made of the same crumbly whitish rock that slides down the hillsides and onto city streets.  Pittsburgh's rock is harder and darker.  The bricks are darker and harder-looking and more like the brick in St. Louis. 

I drove through Pittsburgh a couple summers ago on my way to Kennywood. One of the tunnels under the river was closed for construction and there was an accident in the other so everyone was detoured off the highway. The route that everyone was following was obviously the one the GPS / Google Maps thought was best to get back to the highway but there were several major intersections also closed for construction on that route which complicated things.

 

Instead of getting annoyed I just drove in the general direction of Kennywood and wandered a bit since we had time to kill before the park opened. That random wandering made me realize how much larger and steeper Pitt's hills are than Cincy's. There were times where my little Fiat struggled to maintain speed going up them.

 

Exaggerate Cincy's hills by 2 or 3 times and continue them much further away from the river (since these are actual hills, not scarps) and you have the terrain of Pittsburgh.

The entire city is basically Mt. Adams except for parts of the East End and their "Basin" (Downtown/North Shore/Southside/Strip District).

 

Pittsburgh's hills are way more dramatic and brutal than all but a few streets in Cincinnati. I think the other big difference is that Cincinnati's density drops off pretty significantly on the hilltops whereas Pittsburgh's "upper" neighborhoods like Shadyside and Oakland are all still pretty tight, with a mixture of Cliftonesque brick foursquares and Philadelphia-style townhouses. Most of Cincinnati's upper neighborhoods are still fairly walkable, but because most of them developed as wealthier neighborhoods relatively early in the city's history, there's more of a prevalence of random mansions and large(er) lawns, compared to the amount of stuff crammed into the basin. Pittsburgh also has some sizeable business districts outside of downtown that are effectively laid out in a grid as "mini-downtowns" that help make the city feel a lot larger than it is (I'm looking at you, East Liberty). Cincinnati's NBDs are mostly a few blocks long along a major street and are basically linear for the most part. I've always summed it up as "Cincinnati's a 'charming' city, but Pittsburgh is a 'grand' city". Both may be river towns, but Cincinnati is more of a southern belle compared to Pittsburgh's brawny rust belt swagger.

Pittsburgh also never lost rail transit.

Pittsburgh also never lost rail transit.

 

But it does not link the Downtown to the #2 or #3 area.  From Pitt and eastward about 2 miles seems to be just about the densest not-downtown area of any city I'm aware of that doesn't have a subway.  It seems like it has the density of Cambridge, MA or East Boston, but each of those neighborhoods have rapid transit lines. 

 

Some of Cincinnati's more "Pittsburghesque" features have been lost.  The inclines are obvious, but with the loss of the westside C&O line went the dramatic trestle over South Fairmount and its three crossings of Glenway Ave.  Today the corner of Bridgetown and Glenway/Race is a nondescript place with a CVS but when I was a kid it had a crazy old riveted railroad bridge with traffic signals bolted to it, legs in the middle of the street, and a corner bar (the famous Wagon Wheel -- home to a wheel commandeered from Morgan's Raiders) abutting it.   

 

NKY has a few Pittsburgh-type features...the railroad grade crossings in Covington, Newport, Bellevue, and Ludlow are all pretty bootleg-looking.  Lots of rivets and poor visibility.  The Pike St. underpass and eastern-looking but not eastern churches + odd intersections + drugged-out people hovering around.  If you take Amtrak out of Cincinnati, the viaduct approaches to the C&O bridge are the most dramatic parts of the trip between the New River Gorge and Chicago. 

 

Cincinnati almost had quite a few more tunnels and dramatic neighborhood bridges.  For example, the tunnel that was never built from the end of the 8th St. Viaduct up to St. Lawrence in Price Hill.  Of course the loss of the Rapid Transit Loop was something that would have put Cincinnati in a league of its own among mid-size cities and something Pittsburgh couldn't touch.  Cincinnati also has a much more impressive train station than Pittsburgh. 

Argh, I used to have dreams that Columbus had that kind of stuff when I was little but then I realized that was St. Louis. I have never been to St. Louis. Somehow I pictured that one crazy abandoned bridge they have being on 315.

The inclines are awesome--no doubt--but inclines do not a city make. They are a unique feature and highlight just like, say Union Terminal (of which Pittsburgh doesn't necessarily have a direct equal) is for Cincinnati.

 

Pittsburgh had a very similar area to Over-the-Rhine with the historic core of Allegheny City (annexed into Pittsburgh), but leveled the entire area in the 1960's. The surrounding neighborhoods like Mexican War Streets, Allegheny West, Manchester, etc. have very dense housing, but are mostly residential like the side streets of OTR, Pendleton, or the West End. So, as decisions go, Pittsburgh leveled their commercial/mixed-use OTR while Cincinnati leveled their (still dense and incredible) Mexican War Streets/Allegheny West/Manchester, etc. equivalent with Queensgate.

 

I'm not trying to say one city tops another, but I don't want Cincinnatians to hand the award to Pittsburgh just for inclines. There are awesome attributes to both cities such that both rise to a level where we should respect personal preference.

^I've always felt like what Cincinnati does is what Pittsburgh could learn from and vice versa. Pittsburgh does a great job with dense residential neighborhoods within the valleys and going up the hills where Cincinnati's hills are very low density dividing lines and Cincinnati has really dramatically improved its connection to its riverfront Downtown whereas Pittsburgh could use some "highway diet" love to better connect to its.

 

The two cities really should team up with brainstorming ideas of how to mutually benefit each other and create economic connections. Pitt has great economic connections to the East Coast and Cincy has great economic connections to places further into the Midwest and into the south and the link could / should be Cincy-Pitt.

Bbbbbut... football!

Pittsburgh seems like it has more areas where the row houses actually abut one another, which in the 1800s was a significant fire hazard.  So like if all the Clifton Heights homes didn't have 60" spaces between them.  But the individual homes tend to look smaller and shoddier. 

 

I suspect that the East Liberty grew into a mini-downtown because physically getting to the real downtown from points east of East Liberty took too long.  But now the neighborhoods east of East Liberty have seen mass demolitions. 

 

You can sense the overall decline of Cincinnati in and very close to the downtown and around UC (Corryville and Walnut Hills and Avondale) whereas Pittsburgh managed to keep its downtown and the areas around Pitt and Carnegie-Melon better intact.  So the areas of heavy deterioration seem to be further out. 

 

To outsiders of both cities, though, Pittsburgh has a worse reputation that Cincinnati for being melted down. Probably since Pittsburgh had terrible air pollution during the mid-20th century.

Cincinnati was always much bigger than Pittsburgh until 1890.  Between that year and 1920 Pittsburgh blew past Cincinnati in size (as did Cleveland, Detroit, etc.).  That's why Pittsburgh has somewhat more of a "big city" feel in parts because it was much bigger.  But it and Cleveland stalled in the postwar years and Cincinnati's slow but steady growth has now caught up to them. 

 

The shortage of flat land in Hamilton County is part of the reason why Cincinnati has sprawled in some directions to an extreme extent.  But at least the space for the big single-floor warehouses exists in the Cincinnati metro.  All of that low-wage junk like Amazon fulfillment centers can't easily locate near Pittsburgh.  I also think they made a mistake by redeveloping the steel mill brownfields as big-box retail.  Should have saved that space for big-box warehousing.  The big boxes inevitably erode neighborhood business districts there as they have in Cincinnati. 

 

Pittsburgh had a very similar area to Over-the-Rhine with the historic core of Allegheny City (annexed into Pittsburgh), but leveled the entire area in the 1960's. The surrounding neighborhoods like Mexican War Streets, Allegheny West, Manchester, etc. have very dense housing, but are mostly residential like the side streets of OTR, Pendleton, or the West End. So, as decisions go, Pittsburgh leveled their commercial/mixed-use OTR while Cincinnati leveled their (still dense and incredible) Mexican War Streets/Allegheny West/Manchester, etc. equivalent with Queensgate.

 

 

 

I didn't know about this, so I looked it up and...wow. Here's a comparison between the area in 1957 and today

 

 

 

The shortage of flat land in Hamilton County is part of the reason why Cincinnati has sprawled in some directions to an extreme extent.  But at least the space for the big single-floor warehouses exists in the Cincinnati metro.  All of that low-wage junk like Amazon fulfillment centers can't easily locate near Pittsburgh.  I also think they made a mistake by redeveloping the steel mill brownfields as big-box retail.  Should have saved that space for big-box warehousing.  The big boxes inevitably erode neighborhood business districts there as they have in Cincinnati. 

 

And pump up places Groveport where I live. Warehouses everywhere, almost all built since the late '90s. And powder-keg male warehouse employees buzzing too fast around town in their noisy cars.

 

 

 

I didn't know about this, so I looked it up and...wow. Here's a comparison between the area in 1957 and today

 

 

This is the area directly across from downtown Pittsburgh.  It would be like if the IRS + fast food district was built right in the middle of Covington where Pike meets Madison.  They basically walled off a business park with parks built in place of the original business district. 

 

 

twincinnati