Pittsburghers are slow to give up their ghosts. Rusted skeletons of industrial mills and rail depots line the rivers, corroded reminders of a city’s past forged in steel; churches built in the nineteenth century by devout East European immigrants now stand desanctifi ed and decayed; structures that once epitomized the pinnacles of science, commerce, transportation, and manufacturing are empty reminders of how
Pittsburgh earned its name as “The Steel City.” Often named “the most livable city” in the U.S., with a stunning skyline framed by soaring bridges (more than any other city in the world) and its magnifi cent three rivers, Pittsburgh retains reminders of its historic past that live on beside the gleaming new skyscrapers.
From the steel-plated inferno of Carrie Furnace and Duquesne Steel Works to the holy shadows that inhabit St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church,
Abandoned Pittsburgh: Steel and Shadows points a lens into these darkened, forgotten places where a haunting beauty still exists.
| BOOK ISBN |
9781634990455 |
| FORMAT |
6 ¾ × 9 ¾ inches |
| BINDING |
Paperback |
| PAGES |
128 pages |
| PUBLICATION DATE |
15 May 2018 |
| TERRITORY |
World |
| ILLUSTRATIONS |
250 colour photographs |
Chuck Beard is founder of the Abandoned Pittsburgh Gallery, which opened November 2016 in Pittsburgh’s historic Homestead Municipal Building. He is art director at Pittsburgh Magazine and a prolific photographer in artistic and journalistic media. His ongoing Abandoned Pittsburgh project has led to research into and exploration of twenty-plus historic locations in the Pittsburgh area, including Carrie Furnace, Westinghouse Atom Smasher, Duquesne Steel Works, Overholt Distillery, and the Western Pennsylvania Penitentiary. The project documents the Steel City's forgotten industrial and community sites where "beauty in decay" still exists. He lives in the North Hills of Pittsburgh.
