Pittsburgh is a city of about 350,000 in Southwestern Pennsylvania, although the population of its metropolitan area is about 2,000,000. It is situated at the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers, which meet to form the Ohio River. Pittsburgh has a rich history and for its size an unusual array of cultural treasures. The main reason for this abundance is the wealth that was generated when Pittsburgh was the hub of the steelmaking industry. During the civil war the city was known as "the armory of the Union" and this began a sharp escalation of industry, particularly iron and steel, but also glass. Andrew Carnegie lived in Pittsburgh (in the then city of Allegheny as a matter of fact, now the North Side) where he began the Carnegie Steel Company which grew to be the largest steel company in the world. It eventually became USS, the United States Steel Corporation which, when first formed at the turn of the twentieth century, was the largest corporation of any kind in the world, and it made Andrew the richest man in the world, the Bill Gates of his time. It is still headquartered in Pittsburgh as is Alcoa, the largest aluminum company in the world. A number of other Fortune 100 companies once called Pittsburgh their headquarters as well. All this affluence helped fund a world class museum, theaters, universities, and of course the Carnegie Library, which has branches in cities all across America. At the height of this industrialization Pittsburgh was notorious for its severe air pollution. One journalist descriptively dubbed it, "hell with the lid off". White collar workers came home in the evening as brown collar workers. Frank Lloyd Wright, the noted architect, when once asked what to do to fix Pittsburgh famously replied, and with characteristic frankness, "Raze it." Today it is a model of cleanliness due to the remediation of the polluting industrial plants in the late 1950s, and also, unfortunately, due to the gradual migration of the mills to other cities and countries. There is now only one operating steel mill in Pittsburgh, Carnegie Steel's venerable Edgar Thompson Works, now a USS, state-of-the-art integrated steel mill.

Like most old cities it was the rivers that made the city. It is said that Pittsburgh has more bridges than any city in the world and, while this claim may be apocryphal, it certainly has a lot of bridges, many of quite unusual design--steel bridges, of course. The many locks and dams on the rivers still support extensive barge traffic. Point Park, or simply, The Point, so named because it is the delta where the Allegheny and the Monongahela rivers join to form the Ohio river, was the site of Fort Pitt, once known as Fort Duquesne and, as one might expect with a name change like that, a famous battle was fought there in pre-revolutionary times. The demand for labor, so-called "millhunks", was so strong in the late 1800's that immigrants flocked to Pittsburgh from all over Europe, but mostly Central and Eastern Europe, especially: Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), Lithuania, Serbia and Croatia. All these countries provided laborers for the mills, and later many engineers immigrated from these countries as well. They brought their families, their languages, their churches--and their heavy drinking traditions too. Pittsburgh is known as "a shot and a beer" town. Steeples and the bright copper onion-dome churches of the Eastern Orthodox tradition dot the old parts of town. Unusually, there is also a beautiful Hindu temple as well, built later for the many engineers and doctors from India that came to the city in the second half of the twentieth century. Pittsburgh truly was a great melting pot, and the tradition continues: Pittsburgh is home to thousands of foreign students that attend the many universities in the city, including, most notably, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Today these schools are among the city's largest employers. Pittsburgh is unique in other ways. It had the first Big Mac (wow), the first pull-tab on drink cans, the first commercial radio station (KDKA, still operating), the first U. S. public television station (WQED, still operating), the first gas station (1912, bit the dust), the first baseball stadium (Forbes Field 1909). Check out the other Famous Pittsburgh Firsts listed by the Greater Pittsburgh Convention and Visitors Bureau. Many of them will surprise you.

Drink

Pennsylvania generally still has a number of conservative laws on the books; all liquor stores are state-run. The quality of these vary widely. To find liquor stores, visit the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board .

Beer lovers should check out the Penn Brewery, the Sharp Edge and the Church Brew Works . The Penn Brewery is a microbrewery and tavern located on the North Side featuring authentic German food and award winning beers, the Sharp Edge offers a wide selection of beers of all nationalities, and the Church Brew Works lives up to its name, as it's located in a lovely old church and serves brews created by the resident brewmaster. The food is good, though a bit on the pricy side depending on your budget.

Pittsburgh has some delightful places to enjoy coffee of tea. Among them, Kiva Han, an artist friendly coffee shop with two locations in Oakland.