This weekend, we ventured to different parts of Pittsburgh and learned a lot about the history behind it. We started Saturday with a fun visit to the Strip District, where we played putt-putt before heading to lunch. We then headed over to the City Steps, more specifically Rising Main, where we climbed what felt like hundreds of steps. It was brutal in the moment, but once we reached the top, we felt like we accomplished something huge and got to see the beautiful views atop the hill, looking down at the entire city.
From here, we went on a walking tour of the neighborhood, Fineview, and got an in-depth history of Pittsburgh and the steps. We discovered that Pittsburgh and its community had a great sense of adaptability in regard to creating these steps. As we know, the city is a very hilly area, so when people had no means of transportation, the steps were built to embrace the topography. They utilized the natural environment instead of being limited by the number of hills around them. We ended Saturday at the music festival, where there were many vendors, restaurants, and live music down in the North Side. We grabbed Kona Ice and headed back to our dorms before getting a late dinner at Roots.
Today, we got to wake up a little bit later before going over to the Cathedral of Learning to tour the Nationality Rooms. The Cathedral holds 31 rooms of different nationalities, and we only got to visit a few of them, but we learned so much throughout this session. Each room is designed to represent a culture that made Pittsburgh its home, so it, too, creates a sense of community among diverse nationalities. The Cathedral is a living museum of Pittsburgh’s diverse heritage, which is really compelling even coming from around the area. I never knew the history behind the city and found myself really interested in the different ethnic backgrounds it holds. Furthermore, the immigrant populations committees that came together to design each of these rooms had to collaborate immensely, which shows how they came together despite their differences and fostered a great sense of cultural pride and commitment.
Thinking about the City Steps and the Nationality Rooms on a larger scale platform, communities were both physically and figuratively brought together through these efforts. Specifically, the City Steps physically created a stairway between communities, fostering a sense of shared experience and daily interactions. In the end, Pittsburgh is a city that has faced lots of hardships, but through it all, they have a strong sense of community that is supported by its deep-rooted history.
