OLDEST WORKING STEEL MILL: Edgar Thomson Plant
The smoky steel days that gave Pittsburgh its less-than-stellar reputation are a thing of the past, but there are still a few working steel mills. The Edgar Thomson Steel Works, opened in 1875, is the granddaddy. (One of the shareholders was a man named Andrew Carnegie, who invested $250,000 in the mill. Wonder what ever happened to him?)
Ground was broken on April 13, 1873, and work began the following month. The first customer? The Pennsylvania Railroad. The profits for the mills' first 16 months of operation were a staggering $190, 433. Edgar Thomson, owned by U.S. Steel since 1901, still occupies 107 acres on the Monongahela River 12 miles above Pittsburgh in Braddock. The mills and working conditions have drastically changed, but the profits are still as rigid as steel.
Above and Below: Oldest Working Steel Mill! Photos courtesy of U.S. Steel Corp.
OLDEST RELIGIOUS CONGREGATION: Smithfield United Church of Christ
The first congregation of any religious denomination was the German Evangelical Protestant Church. This was in 1782, when Pittsburgh was only a small village numbering 250 residents, many of whom were German. The first membership list included 42 men. The church welcomed diversity of opinion and the right of individual conviction and personal conscience. The Rev. Johann Wilhelm Weber became the first minister; he was welcomed there though he was dismissed from a parish near Philadelphia for being "too political."
In 1783, the congregation built a one-room log meetinghouse at Diamond Alley and Wood Street. In the early-1790s, a second church was built along Smithfield Street between Sixth Avenue and Strawberry Way on land that had been granted by the grandson and great-grandson of William Penn. In 1812, the congregation identified itself as the German Evangelical Protestant Church; three years later, the Smithfield Street sanctuary was replaced by a much larger third church. A fourth church was constructed in 1833, a fifth between 1875 and '77. Construction of the sixth building began in 1925, and an "official opening" was celebrated on the congregation's 145th anniversary in October 1927. Known today as Smithfield United Church of Christ, it's readily identifiable by its unique steeple, the first of its kind nationwide made entirely of aluminum, visible from many perspectives in downtown Pittsburgh.
Left: Oldest Carnegie Library! Image courtesy of Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
OLDEST CARNEGIE LIBRARY: Braddock Carnegie Library
The oldest of the nation's 1,679 public libraries built between 1889 and 1919 entirely with funds from Andrew Carnegie, this library was dedicated on March 30, 1889. Carnegie intended that the library be used primarily for the benefit of his employees of his first major steel mill, the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, and their families. New chapters were added in 1892, including a music hall, an octagonal tower, a duckpin alley, an indoor swimming pool and a gymnasium. In 1961, Braddock School District took over operations of the library; by the mid-'70s, it had closed and was abandoned.
The building was saved from demolition by David Solomon, the last head librarian and the man responsible for getting the building placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, a year before it closed. He formed the Braddock's Field Historical Society, which purchased the building from Braddock School District in 1978 for $1. A bargain? Yes, considering the roof leaked badly and the heating system was broken beyond repair. The philanthropic push to re-open the Braddock Library was under way; in 1982, the children's library opened on Saturdays, heated with kerosene in the winter. The David Solomon Reading Room opened four years later. The first-floor restoration was completed in 1989; by 1990 the Charles Van Williams Reading Room, Rotary Reading Room, circulation areas and offices were completed. Although the Music Hall is still undergoing renovations, it was open again for use in 2004.
OLDEST LIVING PITTSBURGH PRIMATE: Zakula, more than 40 years old
No monkeying around when it comes to Pittsburgh's oldest animal. She's Zakula, a Western Lowland gorilla bought from a Canadian trader by the Pittsburgh Zoo in 1986. No one is exactly sure how old the hairy beast is - after all, she was born in the wild, and her birth certificate has long been lost.
The zoo estimates that she's in her mid-40s. After rejecting a series of males, she fell for Mimbo and gave birth, in 1992, to the first gorilla ever born at the zoo. The zoo dubbed the baby Mirithi, Swahili for "prince." Two other babies followed: Kumbuka ("remember" in Swahili) in 1996 and Anju (American Indian for "one that comes from the heart") in 2001. The kids are reared, so now the 300-pound Zakula gets to spend her days lounging and staring back at the people who gawk at her between the thick glass panels. She loves grapes and bananas, takes arthritis medicine daily and drinks prune juice to keep her regular.
OLDEST FORMERLY LIVING THING: Ediacara, 560 millions years old
And you thought Zsa Zsa was old! Slightly older are ediacara, the first known multicellular organisms that lived in the Precambrian seas 560 million years ago. These fossils were first discovered in South Australia in the late-1940s. They now reside, quite quietly and serenely, in Carnegie Museum of Natural History's invertebrate paleontology collection, although they are not currently on display.
OLDEST MENTION OF THE WORD PITTSBURGH (AND WHY THE "H"?): Nov. 27, 1758
The first appearance of the name of the city can be found in a letter Gen. John Forbes wrote to William Pitt on Nov. 27, 1758, two days following the taking of Fort Duquesne from the French. In this letter, Forbes used the spellings "Pittsbourgh" and "Fort Du Quesne." As a Scot, Forbes pronounced the city "Pitts-burro," as in "Edin-burro" for Edinburgh. When the name of the city was incorporated in March 1816, a printer's error omitted the "h," though the original charter included it. (We don't know what happened to the "o.") In 1890, the U.S. Board on Geographical Names decided that the "h" would be dropped from all towns and cities ending with "burgh." Even back then, Pittsburghers were made of steel; they vehemently protested the decision and the board restored the "h" in 1911.
OLDEST BOOK PUBLISHED WEST OF THE ALLEGHENIES: Modern Chivalry
No, it wasn't a Judith Krantz novel or a Jackie Collins potboiler. It was the third volume of Judge Hugh Brackenridge's Modern Chivalry, printed in 1793. Brackenridge - he founded the Pittsburgh Academy, now the University of Pittsburgh - was considered the pop novelist of his day. Modern Chivalry is a rambling satirical novel widely considered the first important fictional work about the American frontier. One critic said the book was "to the West what Don Quixote was to Europe." When the final volume was written in 1815, historian and writer Henry Adams called it "a more thoroughly American book than any written before 1833." The man who printed Modern Chivalry? John Scull, whose name can be found elsewhere in this story since he was both the first postmaster and the printer of the first newspaper.