Cultural District, Pittsburgh
The Cultural District is a fourteen-square block area in Downtown Pittsburgh, USA bordered by the Allegheny River on the north, Tenth Street on the east, Stanwix Street on the west, Liberty Avenue on the south. The Cultural District features six theaters offering some 1,500 shows annually, as well as art galleries and retail shops, its landmarks include: Allegheny Riverfront Park, Benedum Center, Byham Theater, Harris Theater, Heinz Hall, O'Reilly Theater, Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts School, Three Rivers Arts Festival Gallery, Wood Street Galleries, the August Wilson Center for African American Culture. Major arts organizations based here include: Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, Pittsburgh Dance Council, Pittsburgh Opera, Pittsburgh Public Theater, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Bricolage Production Company, Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company; the cultural district was the brainchild of H. J. Heinz II, known as Jack Heinz, is managed by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust was formed in 1984 to realize Jack's vision of an entire cultural district for blocks of the Penn-Liberty Avenue corridor, a blighted area. Built as the Loew's and United Artists' Penn Theatre, construction of the building was completed in 1927. Motion picture business magnate and pioneer Marcus Loew engaged the architectural firm of Rapp & Rapp to design the movie palace; the Grand Lobby was impressive, with its 50-foot -high vaulted Venetian ceiling, massive ornamental columns, marble staircase and crystal chandeliers and silk drapes. Like many 1920s-era film palaces, Loew's Penn Theatre fell on hard times in the 1960s. Competition from television and suburban theaters along with high maintenance costs put a squeeze on profitability; the theater was scheduled for demolition. Henry J. Heinz II and Charles Denby, President of the Pittsburgh Symphony Society, together with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Allegheny Conference and the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh, purchased the site and rescued the theater for the purpose of creating a new home for the Pittsburgh Symphony.
Jack Heinz and others, including his son, United States Senator from Pennsylvania John Heinz, William Rea, began the changes that would follow in the district with the purchase and renovation of the former movie palace, Loew's Penn Theater, transformed into the opulent and newly renamed Heinz Hall. This magnificent concert hall reopened after a complete restoration in 1971 as the new home for the Pittsburgh Symphony; the current seating configuration is 2,676. Heinz Hall is operated by the Pittsburgh Symphony Society; the Trust's first major project was the restoration of another visually stunning former movie palace, the Stanley Theater. The Stanley Theater was designed by the renowned theater architectural firm of Hoffman & Henon and opened on February 27, 1928. At the time, it had the distinction of being the largest theater in Western Pennsylvania, was known as "Pittsburgh's Palace of Amusement". After a $43 million restoration returning it to its original splendor, it reopened in 1987 as the newly renamed Benedum Center for the Performing Arts, is able to host about 2,885 people.
The Benedum Center is operated by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. The Byham Theater, a landmark building at 101 Sixth Street in Downtown Pittsburgh, was the second major theater venue restoration project of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. Built in 1903, the called Gayety Theater was a stage and Vaudeville house, it featured stars such as Ethel Barrymore, Gertrude Lawrence, Helen Hayes, it was renamed The Fulton in the 1930s. In 1990, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust bought the theater and refurbished the Fulton as part of its plan for the Cultural District; the Byham family of Pittsburgh made a major naming gift for a 1995 renovation, it has been the Byham Theater since. The current seating configuration is 1,300; the Byham Center is operated by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. Today the 14-square block area continues to transform and flourish from a red-light district with only two cultural facilities—Heinz Hall and the Convention Center—to a dynamic arts and residential neighborhood with more than fourteen arts venues, including the Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts School, public parks and plazas, new commercial development.
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust applies a holistic approach and vision to urban redevelopment: streetscaping programs, facade restorations, new cultural facilities, public open spaces and art projects. The Cultural District's transformation is praised and serves as a model for urban redevelopment through the arts. Brendan Lemon of The New York Times wrote, "To describe Pittsburgh's unconventional, un-Disneyfied remodeling of its Cultural District... is to explore how theater can help transform urban identity". The Cultural District is home to the Pittsburgh Film Office, a non-profit organization that markets the greater southwestern Pennsylvania region as a great location for movie and commercial productions. Since its inception in 1990, the PFO has assisted more than 102 feature films and television productions to southwestern Pennsylvania to generate an economic impact of more than $575 million for the region. Benedum Center Byham Theater Harris Theater Heinz Hall O'Reilly Theater The August Wilson Center for African American Culture The Cabaret at Theatre Square Bricolage Production Company Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company
Downtown Pittsburgh
Downtown Pittsburgh, colloquially referred to as the Golden Triangle, the Central Business District, is the urban downtown center of Pittsburgh. It is located at the confluence of the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River whose joining forms the Ohio River; the "triangle" is bounded by the two rivers. The area features offices for major corporations such as PNC Bank, U. S. Steel, PPG, Bank of New York Mellon, Federated Investors and Alcoa, it is where the fortunes of such industrial barons as Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, Henry J. Heinz, Andrew Mellon and George Westinghouse were made, it contains the site where Fort Duquesne, once stood. In 2013, Pittsburgh had the second-lowest vacancy rate for Class A space among downtowns in the United States; the Central Business District is bounded by the Monongahela River to the south, the Allegheny River to the north, I-579 to the east. An expanded definition of Downtown may include the adjacent neighborhoods of Uptown/The Bluff, the Strip District, the North Shore, the South Shore.
Downtown is served by the Port Authority's light rail subway system, an extensive bus network, two inclines. The Downtown portion of the subway has the following stations: T Stations Station Square on the South Shore in the Station Square development First Avenue near First Avenue & Ross Street, Downtown Steel Plaza at Sixth Avenue & Grant Street, Downtown Penn Plaza near Liberty Avenue & Grant Street, Downtown Wood Street at the triangular intersection of Wood Street, Sixth Avenue, Liberty Avenue, Downtown Gateway Center at Liberty Avenue & Stanwix Street, Downtown North Side near General Robinson Street & Tony Dorsett Drive on the North Shore Allegheny near Allegheny Avenue & Reedsdale Street on the North Shore Downtown is home to the Pittsburgh Amtrak train station connecting Pittsburgh with New York City and Washington, D. C. to the east and Cleveland and Chicago to the west. Greyhound's Pittsburgh bus terminal is located across Liberty Avenue from the Amtrak Station, in the Grant Street Transportation Center building.
Major roadways serving Downtown from the suburbs include the "Parkway East" from Monroeville, the "Parkway West" from the airport area, the "Parkway North" from the North Hills, in Downtown Pittsburgh. Other important roadways are Pennsylvania Route 28, Pennsylvania Route 51, Pennsylvania Route 65, U. S. Route 19. Three major entrances to the city are via tunnels: the Fort Pitt Tunnel and Squirrel Hill Tunnel on I-376 and the Liberty Tunnels; the New York Times once called Pittsburgh "the only city with an entrance," referring to the view of Downtown that explodes upon drivers upon exiting the Fort Pitt Tunnel. Traveling I-279 south and I-376, the city "explodes into view" when coming around a turn in the highway. Downtown surface streets are based on two distinct grid systems that parallel the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers; these two grids intersect along Liberty Avenue. Furthermore, the Allegheny grid contains numbered streets, while the Monongahela grid contains numbered avenues. And, in fact, there are cases where these numbered creating some confusion.
This unusual grid pattern leads to Pittsburghers giving directions in the terms of landmarks, rather than turn-by-turn directions. Pittsburgh is nicknamed "The City of Bridges". In Downtown, there are 10 bridges connecting to points south; the expanded definition of Downtown includes 18 bridges. Citywide there are 446 bridges. In Allegheny County the number exceeds 2,200. Downtown Bridges Fort Pitt Bridge carries I-376 between Downtown and the Fort Pitt Tunnel Fort Duquesne Bridge carries I-279 between Downtown and the North Shore Smithfield Street Bridge carries Smithfield Street between Downtown and the South Shore Panhandle Bridge carries the city's light rail transit system between Downtown and the South Shore Liberty Bridge connects the Liberty Tunnel to I-579 Downtown Roberto Clemente Bridge connects 6th Street Downtown to Federal Street on the North Shore at PNC Park Andy Warhol Bridge connects 7th Street Downtown to Sandusky Street on the North Shore at the Andy Warhol Museum Rachel Carson Bridge connects 9th Street Downtown to Anderson Street on the North Shore Fort Wayne Railroad Bridge carries freight and Amtrak trains from Downtown to the North Shore Veterans Bridge carries I-579 from Downtown to the North Side Bridges of Expanded Downtown West End Bridge carries US Route 19 from the West End/South Shore to the North Shore/North Side just west of Downtown 16th Street Bridge carries 16th Street from the Strip District to Chestnut Street on the North Side West Penn Bridge is part of the Three Rivers Heritage Trail connecting the North Side to Washington's Landing on Herr's Island 30th Street Bridge connects River Avenue on the North Side with Waterfront Drive on Washington's Landing at Herr's Island 31st Street Bridge connects PA Route 28 on the North Side with 31st Street in the Strip District 33rd Street Railroad Bridge connects the North Side to the Strip District and crosses Herr's Island South 10th Street Bridge connects the Armstrong Tunnel at Second Avenue just east of Downtown with the South Side at South 10th Street Birmingham Br
United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the United States, including its insular areas and associated states. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution; the U. S. Mail traces its roots to 1775 during the Second Continental Congress, when Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general; the Post Office Department was created in 1792 from Franklin's operation. It was elevated to a cabinet-level department in 1872, was transformed by the Postal Reorganization Act in 1970 into the USPS as an independent agency; the USPS as of 2017 has 644,124 active employees and operated 211,264 vehicles in 2014. The USPS is the operator of the largest civilian vehicle fleet in the world; the USPS is obligated to serve all Americans, regardless of geography, at uniform price and quality. The USPS has exclusive access to letter boxes marked "U.
S. Mail" and personal letterboxes in the United States, but now has to compete against private package delivery services, such as United Parcel Service and FedEx. Since the early 1980s, many of the direct tax subsidies to the Post Office, with the exception of subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters, have been reduced or eliminated in favor of indirect subsidies, in addition to the advantages associated with a government-enforced monopoly on the delivery of first-class mail. Since the 2006 all-time peak mail volume, after which Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act which mandated that $5.5 billion per year be paid to prefund employee retirement health benefits, revenue dropped due to recession-influenced declining mail volume, prompting the postal service to look to other sources of revenue while cutting costs to reduce its budget deficit. In the early years of the North American colonies, many attempts were made to initiate a postal service.
These early attempts were of small scale and involved a colony, Massachusetts Bay Colony for example, setting up a location in Boston where one could post a letter back home to England. Other attempts focused on a dedicated postal service between two of the larger colonies, such as Massachusetts and Virginia, but the available services remained limited in scope and disjointed for many years. For example, informal independently-run postal routes operated in Boston as early as 1639, with a Boston to New York City service starting in 1672. A central postal organization came to the colonies in 1691, when Thomas Neale received a 21-year grant from the British Crown for a North American Postal Service. On February 17, 1691, a grant of letters patent from the joint sovereigns, William III and Mary II, empowered him: to erect and establish within the chief parts of their majesties' colonies and plantations in America, an office or offices for receiving and dispatching letters and pacquets, to receive and deliver the same under such rates and sums of money as the planters shall agree to give, to hold and enjoy the same for the term of twenty-one years.
The patent included the exclusive right to establish and collect a formal postal tax on official documents of all kinds. The tax was repealed a year later. Neale appointed Governor of New Jersey, as his deputy postmaster; the first postal service in America commenced in February 1692. Rates of postage were fixed and authorized, measures were taken to establish a post office in each town in Virginia. Massachusetts and the other colonies soon passed postal laws, a imperfect post office system was established. Neale's patent expired in 1710; the chief office was established in New York City, where letters were conveyed by regular packets across the Atlantic. Before the Revolution, there was only a trickle of business or governmental correspondence between the colonies. Most of the mail went forth to counting houses and government offices in London; the revolution made Philadelphia, the seat of the Continental Congress, the information hub of the new nation. News, new laws, political intelligence, military orders circulated with a new urgency, a postal system was necessary.
Journalists took the lead, securing post office legislation that allowed them to reach their subscribers at low cost, to exchange news from newspapers between the thirteen states. Overthrowing the London-oriented imperial postal service in 1774–1775, printers enlisted merchants and the new political leadership, created a new postal system; the United States Post Office was created on July 26, 1775, by decree of the Second Continental Congress. Benjamin Franklin headed it briefly. Before the Revolution, individuals like Benjamin Franklin and William Goddard were the colonial postmasters who managed the mails and were the general architects of a postal system that started out as an alternative to the Crown Post; the official post office was created in 1792 as the Post Office Department. It was based on the Constitutional authority empowering Congress "To establish post offices and post roads"; the 1792 law provided for a expanded postal network, served editors by charging newspapers an low rate.
The law guaranteed the sanctity of personal correspondence, provided the entire country with low-cost access to information on public affairs, while establishing a right to personal privacy. Rufus Easton was appointed by Thomas Jefferson first postmaster of St. Louis under the recommendation of Postmaster General Gideon Granger. Rufus Easton was the first postmaster and built the first post office west o
Allegheny West (Pittsburgh)
Allegheny West is a historic neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's North Side. It has two zip codes of both 15233 and 15212, has representation on Pittsburgh City Council by the council member for District 1; the area was frequented by Native Americans until late in the 18th century. In 1787 David Redick began a survey of the area, with land to be given to Continental soldiers as part of their pay for service in the American Revolution. In 1788 lots in the area were auctioned off in Philadelphia. Houses were first built in the district in 1846-47 and streets were laid out about the same time. In the 1860s there was another boom in housing construction. In the late 19th century Ridge Avenue became known as "Millionaire's Row" with mansions built for Henry W. Oliver, William Penn Snyder, Harmar Denny, Alexander M. Byers, others. Lincoln Avenue became known for its mansions. Allegheny Center Central Northside Chateau Manchester North Shore List of Pittsburgh neighborhoods Allegheny West Civic Council Allegheny West Neighborhood
Spring Garden (Pittsburgh)
Spring Garden is a small neighborhood on Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's North Side. It takes its name from Spring Garden Avenue, which follows the floor of the valley that separates the two adjacent hilltop neighborhoods of Spring Hill and Troy Hill. Like those neighborhoods, Spring Garden was settled by the descendants of Germans and Austrians who had emigrated from Europe to East Allegheny in Allegheny City; these initial residents of Spring Garden worked in slaughterhouses, rendering factories, tanneries located in this valley neighborhood. A 1974 report by Pittsburgh's Department of Urban Planning explained that "Historically, this neighborhood because of its location and convenience for industrial expansion out of the valley floor from the East North Side, has been of mixed industrial and residential uses. Today, the industrial uses are becoming marginal due to the lack of room to expand; this has left row type residential uses to survive along the narrow streets on the valley floor and hillsides."
Between 1974 and 2010, the neighborhood's population changed in several respects. In 1974 the neighborhood housed about 2,000 people and about 5% of the houses were vacant. In 2010, the neighborhood's population had declined to about 800 people and about 25% of the houses were vacant; until 1959 the neighbourhood was served by the 1 Spring Garden trolley operated by Pittsburgh Railways. Spring Garden has four borders including the Pittsburgh neighborhoods of Troy Hill to the south and southeast, East Allegheny to the southwest, Spring Hill to the west as well as Reserve Township to the north and northwest. List of Pittsburgh neighborhoods Interactive Pittsburgh Neighborhoods Map
Manchester (Pittsburgh)
Manchester is a neighborhood on Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's North Side. It has a ZIP code of 15233, has representation on Pittsburgh City Council by the council member for District 6; the Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire houses Battalion 1 in Manchester. The neighborhood includes the Manchester Historic District, which protects, to some degree, 609 buildings over a 51.6-acre area. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975; the Manchester Historic District is Pittsburgh's largest historic district under the National Register of Historic Places, preserved for its early 19th century-built Late Victorian-style houses. Manchester was rated as one of the top 10 neighborhoods for "being close to everything" because it's walkable and has easy access to public transportation and major roadways; the Three Rivers Heritage Trail System runs along Manchester. Manchester is exclusively residential; as of the 2010 Census, there were 2,130 people residing in Manchester. According to a report created by the University Center for Social and Urban Research, 46.3% of houses were families while 55.7% were nonfamily households.
The median sales price for homes in Manchester for Nov 12 to Jan 13 was $172,350. This represents an increase of 36.8%, or $46,350, compared to the prior quarter and an increase of 48.6% compared to the prior year. Sales prices have appreciated 94.7 % over the last 5 years in Pittsburgh. The median sales price of $172,350 for Manchester is 29.68% higher than the median sales price for Pittsburgh PA. Average price per square foot for homes in Manchester was $54 in the most recent quarter, 43.75% lower than the average price per square foot for homes in Pittsburgh. Manchester's schools are within the Pittsburgh Public School District. Allegheny West California-Kirkbride Central Northside Chateau Marshall-Shadeland List of Pittsburgh neighborhoods UCSUR's Census Report Interactive Pittsburgh Neighborhoods Map Manchester Historic Society Manchester Citizen's Corporation Mexican War Streets Society Carnegie Science Center Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Manchester Craftmen's Guild City Council District 6 Manchester Youth Development Center
