Clean and Green

Friday, June 25, 2010 Road Junkies 0 Comments

EAST COAST ROAD TRIP, Chapter 57:
IN WHICH WE RECOGNIZE OUR ERROR
  
Day 56:  Pittsburgh, PA.  True confession time.  Mired in distant history, we were among so many others who assumed that Pittsburgh was a gritty steel town smothered in industrial smoke and fumes.  We certainly had no intention of visiting the city on this trip. 

We were wrong!  Pittsburgh has cleaned itself up from the pollution of the steel industry days.  In fact, one of the first words that comes to mind in describing today's Pittsburgh is green.
  
Green in both its appearance and in its forward-thinking energy efficiency, Pittsburgh has shed the steel dust and developed a reputation as one of the nation's "most livable" cities, based on factors such as environment, health care, culture and education.  High tech industries have replaced the steel mills and the medical field is one of the city's largest employers.
  
Entering Pittsburgh
A monolithic illustration of this shift in industrial focus is the UPMC tower.  Built by U.S. Steel, the 64-story building is the tallest skyscraper in Pittsburgh.  USS no longer owns the building, although the company still maintains offices there.  When the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center leased several floors for the institution's headquarters, permission was obtained for 20-foot "UPMC" letters to be installed at the top of the building.

We visited a couple of parks in the city today and plan to see some of its many bridges tomorrow.
  space
FRIDAY, 25 JUNE 2010