Urban Greenways: Stalking the Ruins of Pittsburgh

Nestled within some of Pittsburgh’s many wooded hillsides, or “greenways,” are dark corners that harbor vestiges of long demolished houses, city blocks, and even whole neighborhoods. 

See my photo essay on Belt: 

Urban Greenways: Stalking the Ruins of Pittsburgh

Forgotten Pittsburgh: Ghosts of Neighborhoods Past

Verner was a small factory community below the McKees Rocks Bridge that developed around the long-gone Pittsburgh Forge and Iron Co. . . . All that remains is Verner Ave., which dead ends at a set of jersey barriers. (Time Unkind to Some Pittsburgh City Neighborhoods, by Bob Bauder, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)

Sun sets behind the sewage plant

Exile in America (Part 1): Carnegie/West End

After 25 years in New York, the author moves back to his hometown and discovers a new world lodged in the old one . . . Sometimes the strangest destination is home.




Local wheels



Oh deer


Shopping/Work/Death, a cyclical path (Chartiers Cemetery, Carnegie, PA)


Baby Boy McCartney . . . The saddest stories, buried in the ground


Office park at sundown, highway below gleams up at the empty lot


Exile in America: Introduction

Pressed by circumstances, I returned to Pittsburgh, where I was born and raised. Initially I decamped to the West End, far from where I had grown up. It was like being in a whole new city (except for the Iron City beer everywhere and the bus signs flashing “Let’s Go Bucs!”).

Then I moved closer to the heart of town, which was utterly familiar. Still, there were areas I barely knew, like neighborhoods I had only passed through a few times before. I was compelled to explore these places, camera in hand (which would have never occurred to me before).

Talking with someone in a McKees Rocks bar, I told him I had returned to Pittsburgh after 25 years. “This city’s better than you remember it,” he said assuredly. I won’t dispute it. As to whether “you can’t go home again” (Thomas Wolfe), I still can’t say, but in the meantime there is no shortage of places to walk through and pictures to take, of things new and familiar (or a hybrid of both).


Fracking country! (chemical silos beside tracks)


Meterized hillside


Under the overpass (Noblestown Rd. & Penn Lincoln Parkway)



Satellite image © 2012 Google

A prime juncture for exploring Chartiers Creek, a serpentine swath (52 miles long) that runs through Washington and Allegheny Counties, and discharges into the Ohio River.


Once steel country always steel country




A steep city, a city of hills

Man, these hills! On some, it's like walking through water . . . The flatlands of NYC spoiled me for walking (and where I grew up was hardly the hilliest part of town).


A city inclined (to steep declines)




The view from Overlook Park

Ahh, the classic shot (sort of): Pittsburgh skyline/The Point — where the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers meet; at the confluence, with the bridges like butterfly bandages holding the city together . . . This image is long familiar to me, but mostly from ads and news photos. In person, though, from the heights, it dazzles.



Train through trees from edge of park


A steep city, a city of stairs, etched in hillsides enshrouded by green




Overgrown stairs in the woods off the highway
fade into nature like Aztec ruins

Exile in America (Parts 1-4)

More Images of Pittsburgh (Slideshows)

Exile in America (Part 2): McKees Rocks

After 25 years in New York, the author moves back to his hometown and discovers a new world lodged in the old one . . . Sometimes the strangest destination is home.






Creek Road along Chartiers Creek, under the Wind Gap Bridge

“Road’s End,” as the locals call it, is a leafy patch of light industry, abandoned cars, and (probably) a few misanthropes who want to “get away from it all” while remaining in earshot of the highway above.


Satellite image © 2012 Google


Showing some leg, showing some skull

Road’s End is an intimate nowhere; a woman there will gladly oblige a stranger with a camera who asks her to roll up her short shorts and pose against the bridge.


Vestige: Old brick road peeking up through new one



Slim passage (where Creek Rd. meets Singer Ave., near the tracks)



A sacred aura pervades

McKees Rocks is a lush and rusted jewel on the Ohio, faded but still glimmering, with beautiful churches, streets and vistas that are beyond quaint . . . Through its trove of architecture, local sages, and industrial archeology the history/aura of an old city will survive.


Volume drinking

A 22-ounce beer (~ 2 beers) for $2.50 is not uncommon in Pittsburgh bars (almost like giving it away).


On this day: Grand Opening of Bottom Dollar in McKees Rocks





Pittsburgh takes a good picture

Brooklyn, where I used live, takes a good picture as I’ve often said, but so does Pittsburgh. The hills make for a constant layering effect, plus you can always go higher and get a new perspective.


A trio of churches at twilight seen through the McKees Rocks Bridge


House swallowed by vegetation

Exile in America (Parts 1-4)

More Images of Pittsburgh (Slideshows)