I recently watched the 6-part biopic on the artist Andy Warhol on Netflix. It reminded me of a trip to Pittsburgh. He grew up there, but he lived most of his life in New York. His museum is in the West End in Pittsburgh close to the sports arenas and other museums. The city hosts five professional sports teams.

Of course, Pittsburgh was built on steel. But the furnaces are gone now, and they are replaced with arts and entertainment venues. At one time the area had more than 300 steel-related businesses and 446 bridges. The downtown sits at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers that form the Ohio River, and the rivers still carry a large volume of barge traffic. Between 1970 and 1990 the population dwindled in half, but then it stabilized as health care, education, and technology companies moved it.

We visited the home and museum of the Frick Collection, the private collection of one of the steel magnates of the 19th Century, known as the Gilded Age. We also visited the Carnegie Museum of Art, which is adjacent to the Carnegie-Mellon Institute. The complex includes two museum and The University of Pittsburgh founded by two other steel magnates.

We drove up for the most recent trip. We flew up for a previous trip that only included a short river cruise prior to a driving trip to upstate Pa. The video is of the Golden Triangle that is viewed from the cable car that climbs up the steep cliff south of downtown. For years that was the only way up to the top.

The East End consists primarily of the former working-class neighborhoods that are still in decline. It included a large segment of European immigrants in the 19th Century. According to Wikipedia, it still has the greatest number of bars per capita in the nation. Since we had only a very brief visit, we didn’t try any of them.

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