City By The Rivers: Vintage Pittsburgh

Below are several photographs from my father's side of the family, and a few from my mother's. I wish I could credit all the photographers, but unfortunately that information is lost to time.

Background

My grandmother Betty Lou had a gift for music and writing. She graduated from Carnegie Mellon University--then known as Carnegie Tech--in the 1950s. I've posted a creative writing assignment of hers circa 1946. In it, you can see that she mentions Fifth Avenue. If you're not familiar with Pittsburgh, this is a street near Chatham University. It's the same street I walk down nearly every day.

In addition to steel mills and old Pittsburgh universities, my family also has ties to some of the land around the city. My paternal grandfather was responsible for much of the development in the North Hills, and, I am told, the use of the monstrosity known as the pre-fab house in that area (though I am not sure if that part is true). My uncle learned to drive in a tractor, and watching the development of the North Hills is what sparked my dad's interest in electricity--he'd go on to become an electrician and electrical inspector.

Aurora Drive, a street in the North Hills, got its name from my aunt--Sleeping Beauty was one of my her favorite stories. After my father's family moved from Aurora Drive to the city of Pittsburgh, they lived for a time in a house on Tennyson Avenue in Oakland. The house looked like something straight out of The Great Gatsby. (My dad likes to joke that instead of going from rags to riches, he went from riches to rags.)

The last photograph is of my sister, my great uncle Bill, and me. My mom grew up in Knoxville, in a crumbling Victorian on Rochelle Street. She lived there with her siblings, my grandma Sarah Eileen, and my great uncle. "Unc," as he was called, worked in the steel mills. My mother told me that she will never forget the day the mills closed. She found my uncle hunched over the table in their kitchen and he said to her, "What now?"