Strip of Dreams and Answers

When James Parton coined his famous metaphor in 1868 about Pittsburgh being “Hell with the lid taken off,” he was looking down on The Strip District from the adjoining hills. Pittsburgh’s furnaces symbolized a world roaring toward the future. Today, most of the industrial facilities that spawned this image are museum pieces, but the Strip remains an inferno of a different sort.

The Strip District is justly celebrated as Pittsburgh’s historic market district and a premiere shopping destination.

But there’s a lot more going on in the Strip than just shopping and good food. Less noticeable but equally celebrated are the numerous high technology and professional firms who are locating in the Strip, making it a hub for job growth in the region.

Until recently, the Strip was a great area to work and to play, but a vital component of the triad was missing – a place to live. Very few people lived in the Strip, except for a few scattered row houses along Penn Avenue. Now this dynamic neighborhood has transformed into a commercial hot spot and real estate developers are taking interest.

At times the Strip has almost been a victim of its own success. The area was too constrained to contain all the flourishing enterprises to which it gave birth. Now, that the neighborhood has been reoriented to the service and consumer sales industries, the area is in the middle of a vigorous economic and architectural rebirth. The proposed condominium development at the Otto Milk Building is emblematic of the transformation the Strip is undergoing. The Otto Milk Building was formerly home to Phoenix Brewery and its corner tower still sports a pressed brick phoenix rising from the flames. What better symbol for the Strip than the phoenix a mythical bird that never dies; that flies far ahead to the front, always scanning the horizon and representing our capacity for vision.

Editorial provided by Cynthia Helffrich, Communications Manager, Neighbors in the Strip.