The Steel City

There's a reason why the city's NFL team is named the Steelers, why its tallest building was until recently known as the US Steel Building, and why the mention of the "steel city" evokes black-and-white images of thick smoke above bricked streets in downtown Pittsburgh. From the 1860s through the Carter administration, Pittsburgh was the most productive steel producer in the United States. During World War II, more than half of the country’s steel was produced along the city’s three rivers. Hundreds of steel mills were notorious for coughing a thick fog of soot toward the city and anywhere else nearby.

Steel mills were notorious for coughing a thick fog of soot toward the city

That soot sometimes forced the city to keep downtown streetlights illuminated in mid afternoon, and it made the city’s rivers look like sludge. But it also gave generations of blue collar workers the ability to make excellent wages and comprise one of the strongest economies in post-war America. So the pollution was tolerated. But as with most US industrial cities, Pittsburgh went through decades of decline in the late 20th century. Raw materials became scarcer and, as steel companies looked for ways to cut costs, most moved their operations to other parts of the world. As a result, almost all of the city's steel mills closed and the unemployment rate skyrocketed. By 2000, the population of Pittsburgh was almost half of what it had been in 1950.

While Pittsburgh's economy took a major hit from the death of steel, its environment thrived. Though seemingly nothing could generate revenue like the steel industry did, education and medical industries served as its replacement. Eventually, the city’s rivers no longer resembled open sewers. The sky was no longer constantly overcast. Over the course of a couple decades, Pittsburgh went from a deeply polluted industrial center to a city with blue skies and greenery-covered hills.