Joel Rice, a furniture maker, bought a 15,000-square-foot former car dealership that he is converting to a showroom, workshop and home, with a greenhouse on the roof. The building cost $70,000, perhaps a tenth of what he would have had to pay for a tiny shop in Oregon, where he was living.

It will take at least two more years to clear the debris and put in new wiring, plumbing and fixtures. But Mr. Rice, 38, is undaunted. “If all our effort here crashes and burns,” he said, “it won’t be because we held anything back.”

Unlike many stricken steel towns, Braddock never lost its mill. Part of the U.S. Steel system, it still employs nearly a thousand workers. But they no longer live in town, and the stores followed them to the suburbs. Eventually, only the stubborn and those without resources remained.

Image The Carrie Furnace, on the riverbank, operated until 1982. Credit... Lisa Kyle for The New York Times

“Even the bars and liquor stores closed,” said Ron Kutnansky, who was born in Braddock in 1953 and lived there and in North Braddock for decades.

A custodian at the University of Pittsburgh, Mr. Kutnansky finally moved out three years ago, after his home was broken into for the third time. “It’s a fairly big shame what happened to Braddock,” he said. He sold his house for a dollar, no regrets.

As Mr. Kutnansky was leaving, a political novice was starting to shake things up. Mr. Fetterman, now 39, is hard to miss, at 6-foot-8 and 325 pounds, with a shaved head and goatee. He has a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard but came to Braddock in 2001 to work for a county youth program. He won the May 2005 Democratic primary by exactly one vote. (He faced no opposition in the general election.)