Top picture: Interior of Wild Sisters, a restaurant and bar for women located on the South Side at 27th and Jane streets. (Post-Gazette photo)

1978: UFO sightings

Photographs aren’t the only items enclosed in the Post-Gazette’s archived folder labeled “Unidentified Flying Objects.”

Hundreds of tiny rocks lay at the bottom of this manilla folder, their origins unknown.

Maybe they’re space rocks. After all, Pittsburgh has a history of supposed “out of this world” encounters.

While all of the encounters produced different descriptions of aliens, spacecrafts, and even kidnappings, each reporter had one thing in common: all were positive that what they saw was real and (truly) out of this world.

Some reports remain more believable than others. Take Jane Allyson - a visiting New York UFO lecturer - for example, who claimed that she kept in contact with Cytron, a leather-skinned man who lives on the sun. Cytron, she reported in the 1980, could predict future events for planet earth such as global warming and warned about the dangers of nuclear devices. Allyson claimed that Cytron was right in his predictions “about 90 percent of the time.”

And then there were those with tangible proof of outer space visits. Elgar Brom of McKeesport reported in 1980 that “very tall, cinnamon-skinned humanoids from beyond Jupiter” made contact with her 42 times in the span of six years and left behind “blue dust” and undecipherable scroll.

Even “down-to-earth” types were questioned and absolutely swore by their stories. In 1968 a World War II veteran described a spacecraft swooping over a parking area in the middle of the night near his home in Carnegie. In response, he was mocked with questions such as, “Did the little green men wave back at you?” and “Where can I get some of that LSD?”

Both Allyson and Brom shared their stories at the First North American UFO & Space Expo at the Downtown YMCA. Pittsburgh was host to several major UFO conferences, lectures, and organizations in the 1970s and 1980s aimed at better understanding outer space encounters happening in both in the area and throughout the country.

Local scientist Stanton T. Friedman founded the downtown-based UFO Research Institute of Pittsburgh in 1968. The institute, which had more than 120 members in its inaugural year, served the purpose of researching any UFO sightings in the area, and challenged claims against studies that questioned the reality of UFOs.

Another Pittsburgh-based organization was the Westmoreland UFO Study Group, founded in 1970. It later expanded to the Pennsylvania Center for UFO Research, but was best known in the Pittsburgh area for its investigation surrounding both UFO and Bigfoot sightings around 1973.

Looking at the National UFO Reporting Center index (http://bit.ly/Xlis9h), UFOs continue to be reported on a daily basis in and around Pittsburgh to this day. In fact, there have been 65 reported UFO sightings in July 2014 in Western Pennsylvania.

However, just as reporting remains constant, speculation does as well.

—Emily Kaplan

August 1947: One murder, one body, two identities

Members of the Yocobet family were attending a wake for their murdered 14-year-old daughter when reporters burst in and told them there had been a terrible mistake. The body lying on a cold slab at the Allegheny County Morgue was not their beloved Betty Jane, but a 22-year-old woman named Julia Fesko.

Mr. and Mrs. Yocobet immediately rejoiced and offered prayers of thanks. Suddenly there was hope for their daughter, missing 10 days.

Meanwhile, the Fesko family huddled together in mourning at the morgue and wondered how poor Julia, who went to church every Sunday and “didn’t go out much with boys” ended up with a .32 caliber bullet in her head. Her nude, battered body had been found five feet from a lonely “Lover’s Lane” in Versailles Township.

Julia was a factory girl who lived in McKeesport. After her shift at the Westinghouse Airbrake on Friday night, Aug. 29, 1947, she bought a train ticket to Johnstown so she could visit her sister the next day.

She never showed up in Johnstown and her family became concerned — especially after reading newspaper descriptions of the body found in Versailles Township. It was that of a “chunky” young lady with dark hair, weighing 160 pounds.

Julia’s family arrived at the morgue minutes before the body was to be removed for burial. Members of the Yocobet family had earlier signed statements swearing that the corpse belonged to their daughter, but authorities figured it wouldn’t hurt to allow Julia’s family to take a peek.

Recognizing the disfigured face proved difficult. Then the coroner displayed rings found on the body’s fingers and the family members burst into tears. To make certain of the identity, investigators summoned Julia’s dentist, who recognized his dental work.

Julia’s murder and the subsequent mix-up were front-page news. Detectives scrambled to solve the now high-profile case and, in the next several months, interviewed more than 150 people. They investigated Julia’s private life and were surprised to learn of her “amazing trail of romantic interludes,” reported The Pittsburgh Press. Shockingly, the newspaper wrote in gasping tones, Julia had “at least 10 male friends. Several were married.”

Police questioned several suspects: a truck driver, a Westmoreland County farmer, a few of her co-workers at Westinghouse. Nothing panned out.

In June 1948, detectives got a big break. An Army deserter and car thief named Frank Ringler confessed to the killing.

Ringler agreed to travel to the crime scene and recreate the murder for a police photographer’s movie camera. A secretary from the district attorney’s office played the role of Julia.

Police gave Ringler a .32 revolver. The suspect then mugged for the camera and put his arm around the secretary. “Apparently enjoying his antics,” a newspaper reported, Ringler then climbed into the back seat with the secretary and described how he pawed his victim, shot her behind the left ear, stripped her and dumped the body.

Near the bizarre re-creation’s end, however, Ringler suddenly recanted. He didn’t kill Julia after all.

Why’d you confess, then? police asked.

“Because I wanted to,” Ringler replied.

He was promptly sent to Western Penitentiary to serve time for armed robbery, auto theft and morals violations.

Months passed, then years. Each Labor Day, Pittsburgh newspapers published short stories reminding readers that the case remained unsolved. Those stories disappeared in the early 1950s.

And what happened to Betty Jane Yocobet? In early October, more than a month after the murder, she wrote to her family that she was alive and happy and living in Hood River, Ore. She planned to marry a merchant seaman named Al — as soon as he returned from a voyage to Rio.

“Mom, I seen all the clippings about me,” she wrote. “I think it is silly of them to think of me as shot.”

—Steve Mellon

Top photo: Family members identify the body of Julia Fesko. (Pittsburgh Press photo)

1970s: Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre takes to the streets

Not much to say about these photos, except that we’re glad they exist.

The first — Andy Starnes’ 1975 Pittsburgh Press capture of a Grandview Park performance against the skyline — is simply magnificent.

In digitizing the Post-Gazette’s photo library, we came across the massive (nearly a foot thick) file of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre images. A majority are all too bland and similar: indoor theater performances or rehearsals in studios lined with railings.

Not all that exciting when you realize there are upwards of 500 of these.

But these six stood out because of the settings.

Unfortunately, the outdoor ventures seemed to tail off after the 1970s.

—Ethan Magoc

(Editor’s note: The goose in the second image was enhanced during a time when photojournalists did not have as strong a code of ethics as today. Charlie’s feathers were painted on a little too thick.)

1940: Water towers of all shapes and sizes

After our unexpected and tedious aquatic encounter last week at “The Digs,” you might think we would never want to write about water again.

You would be wrong.

We stumbled across a folder in the archive labeled “Water tanks & towers,” which contains about a century of Pittsburgh water storage history.

Not interesting on its face, perhaps, but the variations do tell a few stories.

There was, for example, the Public Works Administration storage tank in the Lincoln Avenue District — near Bellevue — that The Pittsburgh Press featured in 1940. The newspaper decided to check in that year on PWA projects in Pennsylvania, which totaled $309 million — $61.6 of which were in Allegheny County.

That shiny tank, which looks something like a kitchen flour container, cost $3 million to build in the 1930s.

A similar-looking tank was built in West Mifflin on Session Street. The view captured by an uncredited newspaper photographer is not dissimilar to one seen today in Google Street View. It would give residents there, The Pittsburgh Press wrote, “stronger pressure and a steadier flow from their taps.” Such infrastructure improvements were key to that era’s postwar growth.

And in addition to the tumbling sequence of a Westinghouse tower tank that was just 11 years old at the time of its demise, another picture that ran in The Press was perhaps most striking.

In the 1960s, a Pittsburgh-based industrial design firm created the water tower of the future. It looks straight out of “The Jetsons.”

Take an elevator up above the water and enjoy the view, those tiny people would seem to be saying.

For some reason, the idea never caught on.

— Ethan Magoc

1969: Vietnam protests in Pittsburgh

A quiet September day in 1969 at South Hills High School turned chaotic when roughly 100 out-of-state “hippie type” girls, as described by the Pittsburgh Press, rolled up in cars to stage a Vietnam War protest.

“Jail break! Shut down the school!” they urged in an attempt to get students to leave class and join the anti-war movement.   

The girls, waving Viet Cong flags, went as far as to punch teachers and run around half naked before fleeing the school grounds.

Twenty teens were arrested, though officials remained unsure why South Hills was targeted for the demonstration.

Pittsburgh’s anti-war demonstrations did not garner the same numbers as those in Washington, New York, or San Francisco, but that doesn’t mean Steel City residents were silent about their thoughts on the war in Vietnam.

Thousands of Pittsburghers spoke out in various ways throughout the 1960s and early ‘70s, organizing marches and protests in downtown Pittsburgh and local college campuses. 

As reflected in letters to the editor printed in The Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh natives serving in Vietnam had mixed reactions to the demonstrations taking place both here and throughout America.

“What has irritated me and many others are Americans protesting against our being here and publicly demonstrating,” PFC Chester Austin Jr. wrote from Vietnam.  He, like other soldiers, commended Pittsburgh for not speaking out against the war as actively as other American cities, but he was still disturbed by American anti-war sentiment.

Not all demonstrators took an anti-war stand. Protesters often found themselves in standoffs with those determined to express their admiration and support for troops abroad.

The largest rallies took place in 1969, where thousands took to the streets Downtown during the evening rush hour with hopes of attracting much attention.

Professors, housewives, students without beards, and veterans made appearances at all of these rallies, showing that young “hippie types” — like those at South Hills High School — were not the only ones spearheading anti-war protests in and around Pittsburgh.

— Emily Kaplan

July 16, 2014:  After a near disaster, saving pieces of history

We faced a crisis Wednesday morning.

A water pipe burst above a small office that is effectively headquarters for “The Digs.” Water poured down on our computers, scanners and hard drives.

Most alarming, however, was the condition of several files of pictures set aside to be digitized. They were soaking in a pool of yellow, brackish liquid.

Immediate panic required action. We sloshed through the flooded room, lifted the files and carried them to safety, leaving a stream of water in our wake.

Then we examined the pictures. About 2,000 were damaged — a small fraction of the estimated 1.5 million images in the Post-Gazette archive that represent more than a century of Pittsburgh newspaper photojournalism.

But, oh, those damaged files. It was heartbreaking to see physical evidence of our city’s history so nearly ruined.

We tried opening a folder labeled “Bradshaw, Terry.” Images documenting the very public life of the former Steelers quarterback had fused into what can only be described as a photo brick. Bradshaw, it seemed, would be forever stuck to all three of his wives.

Dozens of images showing the construction of the Civic Arena were discolored and covered with grit. Among the carnage were pictures of Braddock, Pirates great Max Carey, the Pittsburgh Steel Co., and jazz legends Billy Strayhorn, Lena Horne and George Benson. About 75 file folders had taken a direct hit.

Each picture in the damaged files told a story — a unique Pittsburgh story. Saving them, we realized, would be a difficult and time-consuming task, and it had to begin immediately.

With the help of managing editor Susan Smith, picture editor Kurt Weber and the company’s director of operations Lisa Hurm, we quickly set up a washing station in the newspaper’s platemaking department. We soaked damaged prints, then set them onto tables to dry.

It was a tedious process. Many of the prints were fragile and required great care. But our hearts were lifted by help and support from throughout the newspaper. Editors and managers stopped in periodically to ensure adequate supplies (even a squeegee had materialized by mid-afternoon), as well as to offer advice, memories and documentation of our history-saving assembly line. Several reporters and photographers stopped by between their daily duties to help.

Twenty-eight hours after the office monsoon, we dried and refiled our final cleaned and restored picture: a group shot of a softball team from the 1983 Dapper Dan Slickest Infield Contest. We passed the image around in celebration and examined it closely.

Alas, we thought, too bad nothing can be done to salvage those ’80s hairstyles.

—The Digs staff

Top photo: Picture files were soaked and covered with grime on Wednesday morning. (Steve Mellon/Post-Gazette)

April 6, 1958: Climbing the ‘world’s largest crane’

Dave Kelly had been working as a reporter at the Pittsburgh Press for only a few months when he got the assignment.

At the time, Pittsburgh was in the midst of a renaissance. Change was everywhere. Acres of the Lower Hill District had been razed to make way for the Civic Arena. Pieces of the Fort Pitt Bridge were being put into place. Three new stainless steel  buildings dominated the Point. And just a few blocks from the newspaper building, workers were busy digging the foundation for a Hilton Hotel. A massive, 333-foot crane had been brought in to assist with the construction.

Newspapers called the crane the world’s largest. It had been delivered in March of 1958, its sections arriving in eight Pennsylvania Railroad cars. Once assembled, the crane’s enormous weight was supported by special tracks laid down around the hotel site.

One sunny day in early April, Kelly was approached by his boss.

“You know that crane at the Hilton Hotel site?” the boss asked. “Well, you go over there and climb it.”

Kelly didn’t warm to the idea. In fact, he wrote that he’d “rather play Russian roulette with a submachine gun” than climb a crane. He expressed his reservations to his boss, but got no sympathy.

“Git,” said the boss. “And take a photographer with you.”

The photographer in this case was Eddie Frank, who faced the awkward and harrowing task of climbing a narrow structure with cameras strung around his neck.

The two walked to the Hilton and signed papers saying that if they fell to their deaths it was nobody’s fault but their own. Then, up they went.

The crane’s steel ladder shot straight into the sky. Once Kelly and Frank reached the first platform, Kelly asked, “Is this thing swaying?”

“No,” said Frank, “but your knees are, and it’s spoiling my focus.”

Pictures of Kelly climbing show him at first wearing a jacket, white shirt and tie. As he neared the top, however, he apparently ditched his jacket, loosened his tie and rolled up his sleeves.

At 145 feet, Kelly and Frank reached the crane’s control shack, which Kelly described as a “panel with four little steering wheels and a pedal of the floor.”

Kelly stepped on a pedal and grabbed one of the wheels. “The thing moved a little and wheezed. Then it stopped.”

“I hope I didn’t break it,” he said to Frank.

At this point, Kelly later wrote, a Capital Airlines Viscount flew by. A lady sitting near a window in the cabin smiled and waved at him. You never know when to take Kelly seriously.

Poor Frank. He needed pictures. So, cameras dangling, he leaned out from the ladder, wrapped one knee around a girder and prepared to take a shot. “Stop squinting,” he told Kelly.

“It’s the sun,” Kelly responded. “It’s in my eyes.”

After a while Kelly had enough — he reported that the “shakes overtook me.” The two headed down.

Halfway to the ground, a gust of wind lifted Kelly’s hard hat from his head. It fell, hit a cement truck and nearly clobbered a construction foreman.

The last picture made that day shows Kelly kissing the ground.

Kelly toiled at the Press for only a few years, then became a news broadcaster. He worked for both KDKA and WPXI.

“He was a pioneer of newspaper men who went into broadcasting,” says Bill Moushey, himself a former reporter at WPXI and the Post-Gazette. Moushey worked with Kelly at WPXI from 1979 to 1984.

Moushey remembers Kelly as a master of the Irish brogue and a supreme jokester and storyteller. He came, Moushey recalls, from a family of funeral directors.

—Steve Mellon

Late 1960s: Pittsburgh’s pawn shops 

The television show called “Pawn Stars” is filmed in Las Vegas.

Think of it as an Antiques Road Show for the Desperate, Down and Tapped Out.

Long before Pittsburgh residents sold their gold jewelry at Treasure Hunt or sought loans in advance of pay day, people who needed cash wandered into their neighborhood pawn shop.

During the first half of the 20th century, many Pittsburgh neighborhoods included this type of business. In the Hill District, there was Joe’s Pawn Shop on Wylie Avenue. On the North Side, there was Security Loan Co. at 15. Federal Street.

Guy Mitchell, a successful, popular vocalist during the 1950s and 1960s, even recorded a tune with this opening line:  “There’s a Pawnshop On a Corner in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.”

The song (heard above) is about a guy who meets a beautiful woman he wants to impress. After entertaining her with dining and dancing, he runs out of things to hock. 

During the heyday of pawn shops, people could sell cameras, fur coats, jewelry, guns, watches, typewriters, television sets, radios and musical instruments.

To get a feel for that era, check out "The Pawnbroker," a memorable movie made in the 1960s that starred Rod Steiger as a Holocaust survivor who ran a pawn shop in Harlem.

— Marylynne Pitz

1978: Brady Street Bridge blowup

As the Brady Street Bridge approached its 82nd birthday — two years after traffic ceased traversing it — its demolition took a turn for the worse.

Worker Ralph Winner became trapped on May 23, 1978, while cutting steel, forcing a doctor to amputate his leg to free him.

The bridge between the South Side and Uptown was first declared unsafe for heavy loads more than 15 years earlier.

In 1963, PennDOT announced plans for a replacement. And by 1968, it was briefly closed because of growing deficiencies.

So what happened during the next 10 years? Bureaucracy.

The new six-lane bridge (eventually known as the Birmingham) was first targeted to open in 1973.

River piers were driven into the Monongahela that year and land piers built in 1972. Two years passed without work because PennDOT initially marked too many homes and businesses for demolition.

The cost went from $10 million to $30 million between 1967 and 1977.

"All of which illustrates the kind of slap-dash planning that robs Pittsburgh motorists of necessary facilities and wastes the money available for such projects," The Pittsburgh Press editorial board wrote in the early 1970s. The paper made an apt comparison of the project to the Fort Duquesne “bridge to nowhere” of the previous decade.

Winner’s 1978 amputation spooked demolition crews to the point they did not want to announce when the full implosion would take place. They hoped to discourage curiosity seekers.

"The accident was tragic enough," PennDOT engineer David Spagnolli told The Pittsburgh Press. "This is a dangerous job, and we don’t want gawkers in the area."

They also had to make sure it didn’t topple the wrong way — into the $30 million Birmingham Bridge.

After Winner’s accident, a crew used a cherry picker to lower down a man who would cut the steel with an acetylene torch and plant explosives.

It was a delicate process, bringing down an 1895 bridge.

“If she goes, we’re risking the life of only (one) man,” an ironworker told the Press on May 27, 1978.

The bridge came down the next day, ultimately without any damage to the Birmingham, and sunk partially into the Mon. It took about a week, but the river was reopened for barge traffic by June 5.

—Ethan Magoc

1952: Woodville State Hospital’s rise and fall

In the middle of the 20th century, Woodville State Hospital faced a problem.

It was really, really crowded.

The Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph ran a photo in 1952 showing the men’s ward dormitory so full that men had to go to bed in shifts so that staff could squeeze beds together once their occupants settled in for the night.

By the early 1990s, it was an issue the hospital’s management wouldn’t have minded to encounter again. In 1991, Gov. Robert P. Casey announced his plan to close the facility. A year later, it was empty.

There was frequent jockeying in the 1930s and ‘40s over how much state funding the hospital and others like it received. In those days, it — like the County Poorhouse and nearby Mayview — was county owned. Newspaper accounts often referred to its successful management on a “shoestring budget.”

Many of the Woodville staff in that era had long careers. In the late 1940s, when Woodville and Mayview were sold by Allegheny County to the state for $2.5 million, more than 30 employees had been there for 20-plus years, The Pittsburgh Press wrote.

Who was treated there? The aged and mentally ill, as well as stroke victims and those in need of physical rehabilitation from accidents, including paralyzed patients. People entered Woodville in the 1950s with the expectation that they would recover to the point of being able to manage for themselves or with the assistance of family or an aide. In other words, because of the crowding issues, there was an expiration date on their stay at Woodville State.

For many years — until funding priorities shifted in the 1990s and everyone had to move out — it remained a sound strategy.

Today, it’s a redeveloped area. PennDOT built a large office there. The Villages at Neville Park subdivision dominates the former property along I-79 — with placid street names like Juniper Lane and Marigold Court.

And none of it feels at all crowded.

—Ethan Magoc

1907: "The T.J. Keenan Building" 

For utilitarian dwellers, business people and visitors to Pittsburgh’s modern Downtown the 18-story Keenan Building on Liberty Avenue may be associated with the 7-Eleven store that is located on its ground floor.  You know the intersection of Liberty and Seventh Str., right? And you would, for sure, recognize the landmark… Yeees? Let’s just hope you looked up at least once. If not, you should, because you are missing out on the artistry behind the building and a cool story. 

The Keenan skyscraper is one of the oldest among Golden Triangle buildings. 

Constructed in 1907 at a cost of  $2 million, it was the tallest building in Pittsburgh and the shiniest. The dome was ‘crowned’ by the eagle and a series of portraits. The ‘penthouse’ once served as lavish living quarters for Col. Thomas J. Keenan, Jr., the owner of the building AND one-time owner of The Pittsburgh Press.  In those days, as you can imagine, conceiving such a structure was a statement, building it was an accomplishment. Photographs and sketches of Pittsburgh’s “skyscraper with the golden dome” appeared in newspapers and magazines worldwide. In those days, it was Pittsburgh’s counterpart of the Steel Tower in the 1970s and the Fifth Avenue Place branded by Highmark today.

In the early 1950s, the Keenan building housed state offices, commercial firms and a restaurant. 

In the 1960s, the building changed ownership several times. Each and every one of the new owners had undertaken what they called a major rehabilitation campaign “to restore the Keenan Building to its old-time splendor.”

Those promises brought cheer to advocacy groups protecting Pittsburgh’s historic buildings and landmarks at the time. In their view, the Keenan Building deserved a special consideration because of its uniqueness. “The only other important skyscraper n this country, the Spreckels-Call Building on Market Street in San Francisco, was completely ruined by injudicious ‘rehabilitation’ some years ago and that makes the Keenan Building all the more important,” Vice President Trump of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation told the Post-Gazette in 1969. 

Today, the dome is golden no more. New domed skyscrapers, shinier and taller, sprung around the country and around the world. And the Keenan Building carries a far less personalized and far less intriguing name — Midtown Towers.

1950: Murders at Schenley Hotel

“They always made faces at me.”

This was the explanation Dominico Omogrosso provided hours after fatally shooting two and wounding a third while on his night guard shift at the Schenley Hotel in Oakland.

Omogrosso, 58 at the time of the shootings, had immigrated from Naples, Italy, through Ellis Island in 1919. Sick for many years, Omogrosso had difficulty finding work in Pittsburgh and his fear of needles kept him away from the doctor. As a result, he was largely supported by his wife Ema until she got him a job as the Schenley Hotel’s night guard.

His rampage started in the hotel’s basement shortly after midnight on July 12, 1950, where Omogrosso had his sights set on Alfonso Marano, a former friend and baker at the Schenley.

Omogrosso then made his way upstairs to the ballroom, reloading his gun on the stairs. He found his second victim, H.H. Kunde, assistant night manager of the Schenley, relaxing in a swivel chair reading a newspaper. Spinning Mr. Kunde around, Omogrosso shot him twice - in the neck and arm - at point-blank range. Mr. Kunde narrowly survived the incident.

John S. Harper stood at a telephone receiver just feet away watching the events unfold when Omogrosso turned the gun toward him. Two shots were fired, and Mr. Harper was pronounced dead hours later.

Omogrosso scurried to the hotel lobby, smoke still rising from his revolver. His wife, who heard gunshots from the bakery, approached him in an attempt to stop the shooting spree.

“Don’t touch the gun,” he warned. “I got even with them.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Kunde dashed to the back elevator where he rode up seven floors to a resident physician who called the police and treated him for his wounds.

Omogrosso was soon arrested and questioned by police before unloading on any other workers that night. While questioned, Omogrosso shockingly had no recollection of shooting Mr. Kunde or Mr. Harper.

In court, Omogrosso was described as listless and apathetic. Only when the Coroner’s Jury announced the verdict of homicide did Omogrosso show any interest in the proceedings.

Deemed insane, he was admitted to Farview State Hospital for the Criminally Insane after a judge declared Omogrosso suffered from “delusions of persecution” for almost 40 years.

Whether Omogrosso spent the rest of his life in Farview or prison is unclear, as searches through Post-Gazette and Pittsburgh Press archives, Ancestry.com, and Google News provided no information regarding the later years of his life.

Omogrosso died in 1971.

- Emily Kaplan

December 1959: The hotel that transformed the Point

For some time, “The Digs” staff has been partaking in a Pittsburgh tradition: Watching construction work at the city’s most visible hotel. We’re thrilled that renovations at the Wyndham Grand are finally complete.

More than half a century ago, the hotel was known as the Hilton. And as it slowly rose over the Point, one steel beam at a time, thousands of Pittsburghers stood on sidewalks and craned their necks to watch the progress. One was a Pittsburgh Press reporter named Gilbert Love.

This was in the late 1950s — an exciting time in the city. Love and every other Pittsburgher had fresh memories of the Point as a place of crumbling warehouses, dilapidated brick dwellings, saloons and narrow cobblestone streets.

Then it changed — in dramatic fashion. The Point was cleared, the old buildings demolished. Silver towers named Gateway Center 1, 2 and 3 rose skyward, looking spiffy and modern. Surrounding them were trees and shrubs. Greenery, on the Point! It was barely believable.

Further up Liberty Avenue stood Four Gateway Center, 22 stories of green glass — a mirror, so the new and emerging city could preen itself.

The Hilton would be the gem of the Point. “We intend to build a beautiful structure worthy of its beautiful site,” said the hotel’s director. When was the last time anyone had used the word “beautiful” and Pittsburgh in the same sentence?

But there it was, 24-stories of anodized gold, an exclamation point on the Golden Triangle. Workers wrapped it in a quarter mile of royal blue ribbon — “the world’s largest ribbon and bow,” proclaimed The Pittsburgh Press.

Tanned and dapper Conrad Hilton showed up to cut the five-foot wide strip of cloth. Trailing behind him were a bunch of his Hollywood friends. After opening ceremonies, the sexes parted in typical ’50s style: Women filed inside to attend a fashion show while men sat down to a luncheon.

The city shivered with anticipation of the next day’s dinner and dance, a $75 per person affair open to 1,000 Pittsburghers and 200 special guests of Hilton. “The doors of the largest ballroom in the eastern part of the nation will be thrown open to reveal what promises to be one of the most spectacular scenes of elegance and conviviality ever witnessed here,” gushed the Press.

It was a smashing event. A few days later, Love looked up at Mount Washington and imagined what the new city would look like in the years to come. He could visualize “the crest of the hill lined with restaurants with glass walls overlooking the triangle, and apartment houses with balconies or decks to take advantage of the view. Below them, the hillside would be a hanging garden of blooming plants.”

He imagined pleasure boats on the river, a fountain sending a geyser of water into the sky, walkways along the river.

Visitors, he wrote, “will wonder why this place was ever called ‘The Smoky City.’”

—Steve Mellon

Top photo: The Hilton Hotel, under construction in October 1958, framed by one of the tiers leading to the new Fort Pitt Bridge. (Photo credit unknown)