Pittsburgh - geography.

« identity, such as Bloomfield (Italian), the South Side and Polish Hill (Polish), and Squirrel Hill (Jewish).

The eastern neighborhoods of Point Breeze, Shadyside, and SquirrelHill are attractive city living areas, while other sections of the city afford views of the rivers and the Golden Triangle from houses constructed on steep slopes. Pittsburgh’s black population began to arrive far back in the city’s history, but its biggest growth came in the first half of the 20th century largely through migration from theSouth.

Blacks predominate in several areas throughout the city, the largest being Beltzhoover, the Hill, Homewood-Brushton, and Manchester.

The black communitypossesses a rich cultural heritage in jazz and art, as well as having been the sponsor of the two of greatest baseball teams in the former Negro League, the Crawfords andthe Homestead Grays. According to the 2000 census, whites were 67.6 percent of the population, blacks 27.1 percent, Asians 2.7 percent, Native Americans 0.2 percent, and people of mixedheritage or not reporting race 2.3.

Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders numbered 111 at the time of the census.

Hispanics, who may be of any race, made up 1.3percent of the people. IV EDUCATION AND CULTURE Pittsburgh is a major educational center.

The city’s most prominent universities are Carnegie Mellon University (founded as the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1900 byAndrew Carnegie); the University of Pittsburgh (founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787); and Duquesne University (1878).

The Mellon Research Institute, at one time thelargest private industrial research laboratory in the United States, is now part of Carnegie Mellon University.

The University of Pittsburgh campus features the 42-storyCathedral of Learning, the tallest school building in the United States and a major medical center.

Other educational institutions in the city are Point Park College (1960);the women’s schools Chatham College (1869) and Carlow College (1929); Robert Morris University (1921), in nearby Coraopolis; and the Community College of AlleghenyCounty (1966), with branches in the city and suburbs. Pittsburgh has many outstanding cultural institutions.

The Oakland district is where Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh are located.

The CarnegieMuseums of Pittsburgh include The Carnegie Museum of Art (including the Scaife Galleries), which holds a distinguished motion-picture and video collection and a uniquestudy of architecture; the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, which displays an extensive collection of dinosaurs, gems, and Greek and Roman sculpture; the CarnegieScience Center, which includes a planetarium and a submarine from World War II; and The Andy Warhol Museum, which has a collection of works by Andy Warhol, aninfluential 20th-century artist and Pittsburgh native.

The city is also home to the Carnegie Library, one of the nation’s most important, and the Carnegie Music Hall, which isnoted for its opulent foyer. On the city’s North Side, in the old Allegheny city post office, is the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum, and the Mattress Factory, exhibiting contemporary art.

In the PointBreeze neighborhood are the Frick Art Museum and Clayton, the former home and estate of industrialist Henry Clay Frick, now open to the public. A major development in recent years has been the construction of the Pittsburgh Cultural District in the center of the downtown.

It includes the Heinz Hall for the PerformingArts, home of the Pittsburgh Symphony; the Benedum Center, where ballet and live theater are performed; and the Byam Theater, featuring live theater and cultural films.All three theaters are redesigned and redecorated movie palaces from the 1920s.

Other cultural features include the City Theatre (South Side), the Pittsburgh Playhouse(Oakland), the Pittsburgh Public Theater (downtown), the Bach and Mendelssohn choirs, and the Nationality Rooms of the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning. Notable as memorials to men who made their fortunes in Pittsburgh are the Phipps Conservatory (1893) in Schenley Park and the 77-m (253-ft) tall Heinz Memorial Chapel(1938) on the University of Pittsburgh campus. V RECREATION Pittsburgh is home to many professional and college sports teams.

The Pittsburgh Pirates of Major League Baseball play in PNC Park, which opened in 2001.

The PittsburghSteelers of the National Football League play at Heinz Field, which also opened in 2001.

The Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League play in Mellon Arena (1962).All three professional teams have won world championships. The city possesses a number of large parks.

Ball fields and trails can be found in Frick and Highland parks; Riverview Park contains an observatory; and Schenley contains agolf course as well as hiking trails. Use of the rivers for recreational purposes has increased in recent years, and the city has improved river access by building marinas and boat launching sites, convertingformer railroad lines to trails, and sponsoring riverfront housing.

Notable among the developments is Washington’s Landing on a former industrial island in the AlleghenyRiver about 3 km (about 2 mi) from the Point.

Marinas, the Three Rivers Rowing Club, tennis courts, and housing have been developed on the island as well as lightindustry, in addition to the preservation of large natural public areas for hiking and jogging. The Pittsburgh Zoo was rebuilt in the early 1990s and offers a wide variety of animals in natural habitats.

The National Aviary, located on the city’s North Side, has majorbird collections in natural settings. The South Side, a former steelmaking area, boasts a shopping area for arts and crafts and has many restaurants.

Station Square, a rehabilitated railroad station and freightcenter, offers numerous restaurants and shops set on the river across from downtown.

Visitors to Station Square can take one of the city’s two inclined plane railroads tothe top of a bluff, called Mount Washington, that provides dramatic views of the Golden Triangle. VI ECONOMY Because of its location west of the Allegheny Mountains, excellent river transportation, and high quality bituminous coal deposits, Pittsburgh in the 19th century became oneof the nation’s most industrialized cities.

It was best known for its steel production, but it also produced many other products.

Manufactures included aluminum (from theAluminum Company of America, now ALCOA); electrical generators and appliances (Westinghouse Electric); glass (Pittsburgh Plate Glass, now PPG Industries); coke-making machinery (Koppers); railroad cars and locomotives (Pressed Steel Car Company and Pittsburgh Locomotive); coke and coal chemicals (H.

C.

Frick & Company andPittsburgh Coal Company); and food products (H.

J.

Heinz).

Extensive coal mining was also carried on in the Pittsburgh area as well as the processing of coke, essential tothe steelmaking process, from soft coal. By the mid-1980s, however, many of the region’s manufacturing plants had gone out of business or left the area.

The greatest losses were in steel, with the elimination ofover 100,000 steel and steel-related jobs between 1978 and 1983.

By the mid-1990s what once was the world’s greatest steelmaking complex had been reduced to onlyone major integrated mill (the Edgar Thompson Works); a specialty steel plant (Allegheny Ludlum); a strip mill (the Irwin Works); and two plants where coke was producedas a by-product.

A dramatic sight is the empty land lining the river banks in the Monongahela Valley where steel mills formerly stood.

Numerous projects, however, areplanned for these sites.

For example, the Pittsburgh Technology Park was built on a former industrial site on the north side of the Monongahela River. The economy of Pittsburgh is now based on services rather than manufacturing.

The region’s largest employer is the University of Pittsburgh, especially the UniversityHealth Center.

Other universities and colleges, such as Carnegie Mellon University and Duquesne University, are major employers.

In addition, the region’s corporateheadquarters, as well as branch offices of other firms, provide considerable employment.

Pittsburgh also serves as the U.S.

center for a number of foreign corporations.

Theregion’s high-technology sector has grown, as has the number of firms involved either in environmental cleanup or the manufacture of pollution control equipment.

Todaythe number of workers in service jobs far exceeds those in manufacturing.. »