Making Industrial Pittsburgh Modern: Environment, Landscape, Transportation, and Planning

by Edward K. Muller, Joel A. Tarr

Overview

Pittsburgh’s explosive industrial and population growth between the mid-nineteenth century and the Great Depression required constant attention to city-building. Private, profit-oriented firms, often with government involvement, provided necessary transportation, energy resources, and suitable industrial and residential sites. Meeting these requirements in the region’s challenging hilly topographical and riverine environment resulted in the dramatic reshaping of the natural landscape. At the same time, the Pittsburgh region’s free market, private enterprise emphasis created socio-economic imbalances and badly polluted the air, water, and land. Industrial stagnation, temporarily interrupted by wars, and then followed deindustrialization inspired the formation of powerful public-private partnerships to address the region’s mounting infrastructural, economic, and social problems. The sixteen essays in Making Industrial Pittsburgh Modern examine important aspects of the modernizing efforts to make Pittsburgh and Southwestern Pennsylvania a successful metropolitan region. The city-building experiences continue to influence the region’s economic transformation, spatial structure, and life experience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822986997
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	12/03/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	464
File size:	23 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Edward K. Muller (Author)
Edward K. Muller is professor emeritus of history at the University of Pittsburgh and former director of the university’s Urban Studies Program. He focuses on the history and geography of North American cities, particularly Pittsburgh. He is coauthor of Making Industrial Pittsburgh: Environment, Landscape, Transportation, Energy, and Planning and Before Renaissance: Planning in Pittsburgh, 1889–1943, among other books, and editor of An Uncommon Passage: Traveling through History on the Great Allegheny Passage Trail and DeVoto’s West: History, Conservation, and the Public Good, among other books.

Joel A. Tarr (Author)
Joel A. Tarr is the Caliguiri University Professor of History and Policy at Carnegie Mellon University where he has taught for over fifty years. He is the recipient of CMU's Robert Doherty Prize for "substantial and sustained contributions to excellence in education” (1992), the Leonardo da Vinci Medal of the Society of the History of Technology (2008), the American Environmental History Association Distinguished Service Award (2015), and the Founders Award, National Council on Public History (2018).

Table of Contents

Contents Introduction I. The Industrial Foundation 1. The Interaction of Natural and Built Environments in the Pittsburgh Landscape 2. Pittsburgh’s Industrial Corridors 3. Industrial Suburbs and the Growth of Metropolitan Pittsburgh, 1870–1920 4. Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers II. Transportation and the Rise of the Modern City 5. The Omnibus, Commuter Railroad, and Horsecar 6. The Cable and Electric Streetcar Networks 7. The Automobile Comes to Pittsburgh, 1910–1935 8. Skybus III. Energy, the Environment, and the Modern City 9. Pittsburgh as an Energy Capital 10. Boom and Bust in Pittsburgh Natural Gas History 11. Searching for a Sink for an Industrial Waste Iron-Making Fuels and the Environment 12. The Metabolism of the Industrial City IV. Planning the Modern City 13. The Olmsteds in Pittsburgh 14. “‘In spite of the river’ ought to be a Pittsburgh town-slogan” 15. Downtown Pittsburgh 16. Preserving Industrial Heritage Landscapes and Community Revitalization List of Additional Works on Pittsburgh by Edward K. Muller and Joel A. Tarr Index

Interviews

Urban and industrial history scholars, Pittsburgh and Southwestern PA regional interest. 

Editorial Reviews

Joel Tarr and Edward Muller are the two finest and most prolific living historians of the Pittsburgh region. Readers will find each essay in this volume useful, thorough, timely, and original.”  —John M. McCarthy, Robert Morris University
 

“This book is highly recommended. The case studies are rich and meaningful, demonstrating lessons to be learnt from past fallacies and how legacies of environmental neglect will impact future decision making.” —Technology and Culture
 

From the Publisher