This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
As a housekeeping matter, I’ve decided to move this out of the CW thread and into its own post. I’ve done this for two reasons: The first is that, while these touch on culture war topics, they have yet to generate the kind of heat that suggests a quarantine is necessary and have taken on somewhat of a life of their own. The second, related, but more selfish reason is that these take entirely too long for me to write for them to be buried when Trump invades Iran or somebody posts about trans people for the 754th time.
Once again, I apologize for the long delay between posts, but this one was a monster. Rather than taking my usual break, I started writing this almost immediately after the last installment dropped, and I hoped to have this out by Christmas, but despite my slowly plugging away at it over the weeks it seemed to grow exponentially, and here we are. Which I guess brings me to a third reason for moving it: The ridiculous length. We’re talking about Oakland, which is a large, important, and diverse part of the city, and while I could have had these out earlier had I divided them up the way I did the Hill District, there wasn’t any way to do so that made sense. So your reward for waiting is what comes out to 30+ pages as written in work, not including links. For both people here who look forward to these, I guess this is your reward for waiting, and for the rest of you, I’ve made these easier to avoid entirely.
Series Index:
- Intro
- Downtown
- Strip District
- North Shore
- South Side
- Hill District: Lower Hill
- Hill District: Middle Hill
- Hill District: The Projects
- The Hill’s Environs: Uptown, Sugar Top, and Polish Hill
9. Oakland: Pittsburgh's Second City
Oakland is the academic, scientific, medical, and cultural hub not just of Pittsburgh but of all of Western Pennsylvania. It is also the third largest business district in the state, behind Center City Philadelphia and Downtown Pittsburgh. Oakland as a whole is bounded on the west mostly by parts of the Hill District, though its main entrance from that direction, so to speak, is from Uptown via Forbes Ave. It follows the hillside from south to north and creeps up the slope to varying degrees until the border with Polish Hill at the Bloomfield Bridge. On the south, the Monongahela River forms a pretty clear boundary, as does Junction Hollow on the southeast. North from there, though, the boundary is somewhat indistinct, as the exact spot where it bleeds into Shadyside is a matter of opinion. The city’s opinion, while official, excludes a number of landmarks traditionally thought of as part of Oakland and not thought of as part of their official neighborhoods, most notably the campus of Carnegie Mellon University, which literally nobody, the university included, considers to be in Squirrel Hill.
The city officially divides Oakland into North Oakland, South Oakland, Central Oakland, and West Oakland. These are only vague guidelines, however, since North Oakland and West Oakland only really include parts of the official neighborhoods, South Oakland colloquially refers to an area that is officially part of Central Oakland. Central Oakland doesn’t exist colloquially; it’s just Oakland, but anywhere else in Oakland can also naturally be described as such, including the parts I mentioned earlier that aren’t officially even a part of Oakland. To make the situation even more confusing, there are also some semi-official sub-neighborhoods. I’ve done the best I can at dividing them in a way that makes sense and ensures that every part of Oakland that deserves separate treatment gets it, while preserving well-recognized definitions as closely as possible.
I should also add that I have more of a personal connection to this place than I do to other parts of Pittsburgh. Although I never lived here, I went to Pitt Law School, and if there’s anything that comes to mind when people think of Oakland it’s that it’s the home of Pitt. Perhaps more importantly, though less relevant to my own nostalgia, I took my first breath here at 300 Halket St., as did about half of Pittsburghers born after 1970 and quite a few before. At 10,000 births a year Magee Women’s Hospital outpaces everywhere else by a wide margin (second place only has 3,000) and accounts for 40% of all births in Allegheny County. I should add that despite the name, in recent years UPMC has been aggressively advertising its services to men, though it will always be known as a maternity hospital.
9A. Steel City Beautiful
On of the themes that has developed over the course of this series is that the armchair urbanists who are so prevalent online often base their arguments upon two assumptions that do not stand up to historical scrutiny. These assumptions are woven into a narrative that goes as follows: Older American cities were allowed to develop organically, which resulted in the wonderful urban cores we see in the major cities of the Northeast and Upper Midwest. While this wonderful chaos was stymied somewhat by the introduction of zoning in the early 20th century, the focus on the automobile in the decades after World War II effectively killed it. The result was that newer cities would become oversized suburbs, while older ones would be subjected to urban renewal projects designed to make them more like the newer ones. A key component of this was the introduction or revision of zoning codes that made cities of the older style effectively illegal, requiring most new residential construction to be single family homes with generous setbacks. Also, this was totally a conspiracy among automakers to make the public more car-dependent.
What escapes these people is that they're applying 21st century values to an early 20th century reality. It's easy wax rhapsodic about density when everybody, no matter how poor, has access to treated water on-demand, sewage systems that don't require us to give our waste a second thought, electric appliances that obviate the need for open flames, and buildings with fire suppression systems. And it's especially easy to wax rhapsodic when urban living is a matter of choice and not one of necessity. To put it bluntly, urban conditions in 1900 were not the same as they are in 2026, and then, as now, there were reformers with their own ideas on how to address the situation.
And thus, City Beautiful. I'm tempted to call it a movement, but it wasn't so much a movement as a set of related ideas about urban design that coalesced in the 1890s. The first of these was that cities should address aesthetic concerns through public art, particularly sculpture and architecture. The second was the idea of civic improvement. This is a hard concept for us to grasp now, as it has become a subconscious assumption, but in the 1800s it was a new idea that citizen groups should take an active interest in improving their communities. Finally, there was the idea that urban design should complement and improve the natural landscape, rather than view it as a nuisance to be overcome, as exemplified in Frederick Law Olmstead's design for Central Park. These ideas converged at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, where the White City offered an urban vision distinctly different from the existing reality—the gleaming neoclassical buildings set in an impeccably landscaped park along Lake Michigan, lit with brilliant electric light, stood in stark contrast to the tenements and factories adjacent to it. What would it be like if a whole city looked like this?
No one contemplated that question more than the industrialists of Pittsburgh (Andrew Carnegie wrote an essay on the value of the fair to America). With its easy river transportation and access to rich coal seams, the siting for an industrial city was almost too good to be true, and it exploded as such. The geography of Pittsburgh was the stuff that made millionaires, but when they looked upon what they had built, they couldn't help but be embarrassed. Even by the standards of the time, Pittsburgh was especially awful. At this time, development was concentrated in river valleys and the Lower Hill, save for a few outposts where the railroad had penetrated. Most developed areas had population densities in excess of 25,000 people per square mile, and the Lower Hill had a population density in excess of 100,000 people per square mile. To put that in perspective, 2020s Manhattan has a population density of around 75,000 people per square mile, and Brooklyn has a population density of around 40,000 people per square mile. These densities in Pittsburgh, however, were achieved not with high-rise apartments or tenement buildings, but with people cramming into single-family houses and small apartment buildings. In an era where most people had to live withing walking distance of work, and when pollution controls were nonexistent, Pittsburgh had little to offer that wasn't purely economic.
Luckily for the industrialists and civic improvers, a series of mergers in the mid-19th century meant that Pittsburgh had plenty of undeveloped land available for expansion. In particular, there was plateau to the east of the Hill that formed the bed of an ancient river channel. Wealthy Pittsburghers had been living in the Bellefield area since the 1830s, as they fled the cholera epidemics that plagued Downtown as well as the fire of 1840, and working class residents were starting to inhabit the cliffs above the river. But at the time Mary Schenley donated 400 acres for parkland in 1889, the area was still largely pastoral.
The industrialists had found the perfect spot to build a new Pittsburgh that was free of the stigma of the old. While Carnegie and Mellon would be the two men the most often associated with Oakland's early years, no man had a bigger influence than Franklin Nicola. Nicola was not an industrialist or financier but a real estate developer, and his purchase and development of farmland would play a key role in ensuring that Oakland developed as a paragon of City Beautiful thought. He purchased the remainder of the Schenley land and divided it into educational, residential, social, and monumental quarters. In the ensuing years he and others would, in collaboration with architects such as Henry Hornbostel and Benno Janssen, construct some of the more prominent buildings in what can be described as Monumental Oakland.
Nicola's vision, emblematic of the movement as a whole, went beyond mere aesthetics. Notice that there is no quarter dedicated to commerce, none dedicated to industry. Proximity to work and the amenities required for everyday living were a minor concern compared to proximity to higher education, social clubs, civic monuments, museums, churches, and libraries. City Beautiful planning was not meant to solve practical problems but to transform urban society into a more virtuous society. It was thought that city planning could eliminate, or at least mitigate, the crime and squalor that was associated with urban living. Whether or not this would be successful was an open question, as urban planning was in its infancy. By present standards, City Beautiful does not have a good reputation, as most of the proposals were abandoned early and came nowhere near completion, and many of the ideas—lots of green space, superblocks, and the idea that urban environment could affect public virtue—would later be incorporated into the disastrous urban renewal policies that were implemented mid-century. If one wants a modern example of what was intended, look at the Capitol District in Washington, DC, which is the result of John McMillan’s plan to approximate Pierre L’Enfant’s original vision for the city by removing the Victorian-era modifications that had been made over the previous century.
As far as Oakland is concerned, though, City Beautiful was a smashing success, not so much because the vision was seen through but more because there never was an overarching vision. City Beautiful as applied to Oakland was less a comprehensive plan than a series of smaller plans that played into a basic idea. As trends moved on, so did Oakland, but it still remained the nerve center for the city’s more high-minded elements, and while tastes changed over the years, it has more interesting architecture than anywhere else in the city with the possible exception of Downtown. If the McMillan Plan for Washington, DC is the canonical example of what City Beautiful planning is supposed to look like when fully implemented, then Oakland represents what City Beautiful can achieve when the concept is put in place but is allowed to develop on its own.
9B. West Oakland: Not Out of the Woods Yet
We've been talking about the Hill District for a while now, and while we're ostensibly moving on, there's one niggling issue when it comes to West Oakland. This is both an official city neighborhood and a legitimate area in its own right, but for a large part of its history it was sort of considered part of the Hill District. Geographically, the area we're talking about includes the residential area between Terrace Village and the Pitt campus, plus the campus of Carlow. The official boundaries include part of Soho and part of the Pitt/UPMC complex as well, but I'm discounting these because the former is obviously part of another neighborhood and the latter has more in common with the rest of the Pitt campus than the residential areas to the west.
I'm including Carlow College here because, while it's in Oakland, it's in its own world and isn't really connected to the Pitt campus or the business district. I know people who spent 4 years at Pitt and couldn't tell you where it was other than the sign on Fifth Ave. Educationally, it's a small college run by the Sisters of Mercy that was an all-girls school until 20 years ago and is now technically coed but is still 85% women. It's the kind of place Catholic mothers will push their daughters towards because there won't be as many boys as Duquesne. Also included in this part of Oakland is Chesterfield Rd., which is residential but is really its own thing because it's a student area located outside of the main student areas. It's interesting architecturally, if only because it's a master class in mid-century remuddling. The houses were originally built in the 1920s and were identical duplexes with mock Tudor trim on the second floors. Now you see everything from vinyl siding to stucco having replaced it, as well as a few that are still original.
The heart of West Oakland, though, is the residential area surrounding Robinson St. This is a lower-middle class black area and traditionally hasn't seen the same amount of student encroachment as the rest of Oakland, despite its proximity to campus. Unlike the rest of the Hill District, levels of blight are low, but it was still a rough area. During my college years, it was pretty much accepted that one didn't go west of the Fitzgerald Field House. I knew a couple of people who were jumped near there, and I've heard stories of unscrupulous landlords who would rent to out of town students whose apartments would then get broken into when they were home on break. I find it odd that while I don't have any problem visiting the Hill District itself these days, I still get sketched out by West Oakland. The minimal blight made it one of the few parts of the city that was actually worse than it looked.
So, for decades, Pitt students and everyone else treated this as part of the Hill. But I'm not going to. First, it's officially part of Oakland, which I know I'm discounting but it still counts for something. Second, the history of the area is more one of Oakland than one of the Hill. It was built out in the first decades of the 20th century—much later than the Hill—and by the 1920s was largely an Irish neighborhood. It's difficult to tell when the demographic shift occurred because the census tracts don't line up, but the available data suggests that it happened some time between 1960 and 1980. The biggest reason I've included this as part of Oakland, though, is because I simply wouldn't know how to categorize it as part of the Hill because it doesn't have a distinctive name apart from West Oakland. It borders Terrace Village but it's not part of the neighborhood as it was never a project, and it's certainly not part of Uptown or Sugar Top.
Neighborhood Grade: Sketchy but Safe. I suspect that the area's poor reputation stems from its proximity to Allequipa Terrace and the associated spillover. From what I can tell, the demographics of West Oakland changed as the projects started to get bad, and when the projects closed, former residents sought housing there. Once this generation of troublemakers aged out or moved on, and crime in the city dropped generally, West Oakland staged a modest recovery. The downside to this is that it's become increasingly attractive as a student area. While most of the current residents are service employees of the universities and hospitals, the lure of inflated rents will likely cause a slow deterioration rather than a full recovery.
9C. Central Oakland: The Oakland of Chancellor Bowman
Alright, I promise you we're done with the Hill District now. Central Oakland is a semi-bogus name that city planners use, since most people would just call this Oakland, but it's really Oakland qua Oakland. It includes most of the Pitt Campus, most of the hospitals, and the main business district. Officially, these areas comprise all of Central Oakland, and parts of North Oakland and West Oakland.
Getting back to the City Beautiful vision, in 1908 the Western University of Pennsylvania moved its campus from the North Side to Oakland, and as part of the move changed its name to the University of Pittsburgh. A contest was held for the design of the new campus and the winning submission went to Henry Hornbostel. At the time Hornbostel was Pittsburgh's court architect of sorts, having designed a disproportionate share of public buildings, and his design for the new campus was bold. Hornbostel's "Acropolis Plan" would have put 30 Greek Revival buildings on the hillside above O'Hara St, topped with a full-scale reproduction of the Forum of Trajan in Rome, huge escalators being built to move students and faculty up and down the hill. Only four buildings were completed as part of the original plan, though a few more were part of the plan in spirit. Throughout the first decade in Oakland, the university relied largely on temporary buildings, and funding was hard to come by, especially after the outbreak of the First World War. Compounding the problem was that the project's genesis was toward the end of the City Beautiful era. Neoclassical architecture soon began going out of style, and when John Gabbert Bowman became chancellor in 1921, the project was shelved.
While the Acropolis plan looks good in renderings, anyone familiar with the geography of the area understands that it wouldn't have been as impressive in practice; there is simply no vantage point from which it would have been visible. The VA Hospital, which sits at the top of the hill, is taller than anything Hornbostel planned on building, and it's invisible from most of Oakland. The renderings, while impressive, are taken from a vantage point which simply does not exist. Even at the time, when the area was undeveloped, the only place where the desired effect may have been achieved was from the campus of Carnegie Tech. When John Gabbert Bowman became chancellor in 1921, he scrapped the plan in favor of something even more ambitious: An Art Deco/Gothic skyscraper that would serve not as a mere schoolhouse but as a monument for education. Tour guides may point out that the Cathedral of Learning is the tallest educational building in the Western Hemisphere, but they should also add that it is, bar none, the finest educational building in the world. Rising like a sentinel, there is hardly a spot in Oakland without a view of it, and on a clear day it can be seen from the top of Chestnut Ridge, over 50 miles away. It's the heart of the Pitt campus, and the most enduring symbol of the University.
One aspect of Pitt's history that I find especially interesting is that the campus is a pastiche of academic architectural trends. This is true of all campuses, to some degree, but seems especially true with Pitt, as the original plan's infeasibility caused it to spill from its original bounds early in its history. Most campuses, even urban campuses, have a core area set aside for them where the campus first developed, and over time things gradually expanded from there or were filled in. Pitt's original Oakland campus, the site where the Acropolis was to go, currently has 14 buildings. These include several residence halls and a fraternity complex, and include neither the main administration offices or the school's most iconic building. By contrast, there are more than 50 campus buildings scattered throughout the rest of Oakland, the Cathedral included.
So, from the original, stillborn campus plan we have a only a handful of buildings in the Neoclassical Beaux-Arts style, followed by the Collegiate Gothic of the Cathedral and its two associated buildings, Heinz Memorial Chapel and the Stephen Foster Memorial. The Cathedral was an institution-defining project but had the misfortune of being completed during the Depression. By the time WWII ended and the university was in a position to begin expanding again, Collegiate Gothic had fallen out of favor, and Pitt did not seem to favor any particular style in its new buildings and preferred to purchase existing buildings and repurpose them. It would not be until the 1960s that the next wave of construction would begin, and by this time Modernism was the style of the day. In particular, the site of the former Forbes Field and the adjacent frontage on Forbes Ave. would see a complex of new buildings in the much-maligned Brutalist idiom.
My relationship with these buildings is complicated. I am no fan of Brutalism, and these buildings are not exactly beloved by students, but they work. For three years of my life, I practically lived in this cluster of buildings that includes the Law School, David L. Lawrene Hall, Posvar Hall, and the Hillman Library. The first three of these are more or less representative of Brutalism's worst excesses—bulky exteriors, huge overhangs, internal pedestrian plazas that don't engage with the street, cavernous interior lobbies, and lots and lots of concrete. The Hillman Library is a kinder, gentler Brutalism, and is an example of the style done right, even if doing it right means sacrificing stylistic purity. But these buildings do function, and for proof of this one only needs to look across Forbes Ave.; for as beautiful and iconic as the Cathedral is, it doesn't work particularly well as an academic building. Accommodating students seems to be a particular problem, as it is too narrow to hold large classrooms. Much of it is used for administrative offices, and the academic rooms are rather awkwardly arranged. Emblematic of this is the famed nationality rooms. There are at least 30 of these classrooms that were meticulously designed to represent the various countries whose immigrants helped shape Pittsburgh. Such attention to detail was paid of making them period-accurate that every professor who has a class scheduled in one of them immediately tries to get it moved into a normal classroom.
Or so it was during my time at Pitt. The university administration, rather than recognizing the architectural incongruity as something that made Pitt unique, decided that the situation was unacceptable and is currently in the midst of an expensive renovation program where they intend to make everything look as homogenous as possible. While they aren't stupid enough to try to mess with the Cathedral, the Brutalist buildings make easy targets, and they've since been renovated in the bland, corporate style that's de rigeur in Class A office interiors. The Hillman Library, one of the best Brutalist buildings ever constructed (nay, one of the few good ones ever constructed), has been completely ruined by a glass atrium in front of the lobby reminiscent of the pyramid at the Louvre, only less charming. The interior was nothing special but at least looked how a typical campus library was supposed to look and functioned like one was supposed to function. Now they've given it the ambiance of an airport terminal and decided that, in order to foster a "collaborative atmosphere" good, sturdy desks and chairs would be replaced with low sofas and coffee tables. The library had a bit of a reputation as "Club Hillman" for the amount of socializing that went on there, but leaning into like this in a way that makes it difficult to use textbooks, writing pads, or a computer is taking the idea too far.
Apart from the Pitt campus, the Oakland business district, while large, isn't particularly impressive. Prior to 2005 or so, Oakland was the center of, for lack of a better word, alternative culture in Pittsburgh, and had a wide array of cool bars, coffee shops, bookstores, and other amenities typical of a college town. It was Pittsburgh's Greenwich Village, so to speak. Beginning in the 2000s, however, two forces came together that would strip it of this status. The first was the University itself, which began buying the commercial properties and evicting tenants in favor of chains that could afford high rent. The Beehive Theater became a New Balance store, Club Laga became a Radio Shack, and the Chipotles, Dunkin' Donuts, and Gamestops of the world began taking over Forbes Ave. The second factor, which may have been spurred by the first, was the gentrification of other neighborhoods that had heretofore been working class and unglamorous. Even the bars are the kinds of places that cater to college students, and they aren't even great in that respect since Pitt isn't much of a party school. The one thing the business district does have going for it is the variety of ethnic restaurants. While other neighborhoods are also strong in this respect, recent surveys show that this is the preferred location for new proprietors, as the captive audience of an open-minded college crowd allows them to do brisk business.
Neighborhood Grade: Non-residential. I guess you could count students in the Pitt dorms and people in the hospital long-term, but this is a commercial and institutional area. Seeing as everything around here revolves around Pitt and, to a lesser extent, UPMC, I expect any future development to be entirely in Pitt's image. That being said, there has been some significant construction on the western end of Forbes in the past decade or so, UPMC recently completed an extension of Presbyterian Hospital on the old Children's Hospital site, and there's another building going up where a parking garage used to be, so things keep moving. But this is already one of the most densely built-out parts of the city, and it feels like it's getting near capacity.
9D. South Oakland: The Ghetto
This is officially part of Central Oakland, but everyone calls it South Oakland. Adding to the confusion is there is an entirely different part of Oakland that is officially South Oakland, about which more in a later section. This area is bounded by the Forbes Ave. business district on the north, the Boulevard of the Allies on the South, Panther Hollow on the East, and Magee Women's Hospital on the west. When the second founding of Pittsburgh was merely a glimmer in an industrialist's eye, employees of the iron works at Soho and Linden Grove began settling the cliffs above the river. Oakland Square was developed in 1889, and over the succeeding decades, various immigrant groups, mostly Italians, began filling out the rest of the area.
The University of Pittsburgh's enrollment, however, began to explode in the decades following WWII. Prior to the war, there were few enough students that my grandmother (Class of 1935) had a yearbook with everyone's picture. The GI Bill caused enrollment to surge to 12,000 by 1950, 18,000 in 1965, and with the Baby Boomers reaching college age, it hit 27,000 in the early 1970s. One consequence of this is that housing became scarce. Pitt had few dormitories until the 1950s when it purchased Schenley Quad, former luxury apartment buildings on Forbes Ave, and the adjacent Schenley Hotel (now the student union). The poorly regarded Litchfield Towers were built in the 1960s, but this wasn't enough, as in 1971 there was still only room for 3,750 to live on campus.
Pitt, never a stranger to ambitious construction plans, sought in 1969 to build dormitories for 1,000 students at the top of the hill near the current location of the VA hospital, setting the stage for a showdown that would define the conflicting interests and contradictory positions of developers vs. residents. A group called People's Oakland was formed, whose goal was to resist university expansion to the extent they could. Remember, this is around the same time that Pete Flaherty was elected mayor among the growing distaste for large urban renewal projects, and Pitt's various plans for expansion were viewed as part of the same scourge. Long-term Oakland residents, often allied with students, sought to stem the tide. People's Oakland's stance was that the neighborhood was already too crowded, and more residential construction would only exacerbate traffic and other problems stemming from too many people. They particularly resented what they viewed as the university trying to ram projects through without community involvement. After all, we live in a democracy, and if the People don't want a new dormitory, then they should be able to say no.
In the short term, People's Oakland was successful; they were able to block the project. In the long run, though, they should have foreseen that they were cutting off their nose to spite their face. Even in 1971, it was clear that the housing situation was forcing students into residential areas, but the long-term residents thought that stopping construction meant stopping expansion. In reality, freezing dorm construction for 20 years only put increased pressure on the residential areas, and by the time Sutherland Hall was constructed in the early 1990s (on a site near the defeated project's location), there were few long-term residents left. In subsequent years, Pitt has successfully built several new dormitories and school-owned apartments, but this hasn't put much of a dent in the market. People's Oakland set out to save the old neighborhood, but they ended up destroying it.
So South Oakland is a prototypical student ghetto. The rents are insane, as they consider every bedroom in a house being occupied by someone paying a pro rate share of the entire rent. $2100 for a three bedroom is already on the high side in Pittsburgh, but that gets you nice digs in a fashionable part of town. In Oakland, that get you a place with indoor/outdoor carpeting, a kitchen that hasn't been updated since the 60s, a bathroom that hasn't been updated since the 30s, mold problems, heating systems so inefficient that $700 gas bills aren't uncommon, and, in at least one instance, a chimney collapsing onto someone's bed (luckily when he wasn't home).
If Oakland were a typical mill neighborhood this situation would be tolerable, a necessary evil. The shame of it all is that it is architecturally one of the finest places in the city. It was built out during a time when Pittsburgh's housing was in a period of transition and accordingly has a wide variety of typologies, from typical Pittsburgh vernaculars like detached homes and brick rowhouses to smaller multi-family styles like six-flat apartments that are more reminiscent of Chicago. In a different timeline, this could have been one of the city's architectural gems, but the houses were mostly ruined by various absentee landlords who deferred necessary maintenance and remuddled historic facades.
One would think that after 50 years of gradual neighborhood deterioration long-term residents would give up the ghost when it comes to opposing housing projects, but no such luck. In 2014, a developer bought a row of houses on Bates St. dating from 1914 with the intention of demolishing them and building an apartment complex on the land. Community opposition blocked this project, leaving the rowhouses vacant but still extant. The developer simply walked away, and by 2021, the site was actively hazardous, and the property was transferred to a conservator who intended to renovate them. But by that point they hadn't been occupied for seven years and were beyond the point of repair. Developer Walnut Capital bought the property in 2021, demolished the structures, and conveyed the land to the university.
Of course, no good deed goes unpunished. Walnut Capital had previously tried to renovate an abandoned car dealership into an apartment complex, but community opposition blocked that project as well. While they were eventually able to settle on office space, the South Oakland housing shortage still loomed large, and they set their sights on a former Quality Inn, which they wanted to convert into apartments with a grocery store on the ground floor. By 2024 this project was "on indefinite hold", due to, you guessed it, community opposition. The relevant community groups evidently had no particular problem with the project itself but instead latched onto concerns that the developer wasn't meeting with the right people in the right order, and something about how Oakland was developing a new 10-year plan and they should wait until that was out before starting the whole process over again.
The ironic thing about this is that all these projects were supposed to be for the benefit of long-term residents, not students. The few long-term residents have made it clear multiple times, including in the since-released 10-year plan, that one of their goals is to increase the number of long-term residents as a backstop against the university. To be fair, the university is such a behemoth that developers like Walnut Capital are forced to partner with them if they want to build anything in Oakland, as they could probably block it themselves if they don't like it. They then want certain concessions that the developer may or may not be interested in giving. Pitt's involvement then poisons the whole project because the residents see it as further university encroachment into their territory. Pitt wanted to build lab space or something similar in one of those projects, and the residents took the position that campus extending that far south was unacceptable. So we're left with a toxic situation where South Oakland is in a permanently deteriorated state and any hope of relief is stymied by a complicated network of animosities that sinks any effort to relieve the problem. Neighborhood Grade: Student area. There's absolutely no reason for anyone to live here who doesn't attend Pitt. For that matter, there's little reason to live here even if you do attend Pitt. Even graduate students wouldn't be caught dead here. It's safe, though you still have to deal with loud parties, the occasional flaming couch, and drunk people smashing car mirrors for no reason. When Mexican immigrants first started coming to Pittsburgh Oakland was one of the neighborhoods where they concentrated, but the above issues led them to vamoose once they realized there were better options. Making things even more sad is that even with the huge Central Oakland business district, this area is still able to support a smaller business district on Semple and scattered businesses throughout the neighborhood. It could be a gem of urbanism. The silver lining in all of this is that the high demand makes it unlikely that the area will ever see wholesale blight and abandonment, but unless serious changes are made to student housing policy, most of these properties will forever be faded glories.
9E. The Real South Oakland: The Bad Part of Oakland
This area has no particular name and is officially part of South Oakland, but it has a totally different vibe than what is commonly referred to as such. It occupies a peninsula (if you can call it that) of the plateau that Oakland sits on, loosely bounded by the parkway on the south, Panther Hollow on the east, Bates St. on the west, and firmly bounded by the Boulevard on the north. This is one of the few parts of Oakland that is dominated by long-term residents, mostly elderly Italians in the north and blacks in the far southeast. This latter area's demographics are the basis of the subtitle, which is partially tongue in cheek. The true bad part of Oakland was always West Oakland, but this is still sketchier than the other South Oakland, trading some student ghetto elements for real ghetto ones. That said, it's not seriously unsafe and still has a neighborhood feel.
The area began to be settled in the 1870s but development continued through the 1920s, and even today there have been relatively recent infill projects on the sites of an old mill and a school. Some students have been living here, particularly in the northern part near the Boulevard, and there's a decided tension with the long-term residents, who don't want to see this go the way of the other South Oakland and otherwise decrease quality of life by making parking space scarce and increasing through-traffic. Student potential here is ultimately limited though due to zoning, which prohibits chopping up single family homes into apartments and puts limits on the number of unrelated persons who can live together, as well as efforts beginning with the Peduto administration to aggressively enforce code violations. But it's really too far away from campus to be of much interest to undergraduates.
I didn’t write a good spot for pictures so here are some rowhouses, and here is a more streetcar suburban area.
Neighborhood Grade: Stable. While there's a certain appeal for students who can't afford a house a 10-minute walk from campus renting a cheaper house a 20-minute walk from campus, this isn't going to turn into a student ghetto any time soon. Conscious efforts to retain a corner of old Oakland aside, the Boulevard of the Allies is a four-lane road that can be dangerous to cross on foot and presents a real barrier to walkability. Exacerbating this further is the lack of a business district apart from the other South Oakland. The Boulevard is somewhat mixed-use, but these are things like medical offices and auto-related businesses. There may be some attraction for non-student professionals who work in Oakland, but it's always going to be a more marginal area in terms of desirability.
9F. The Bates Basin
This one doesn't get a subtitle because it's a small area and there's not much to say about it, but it's distinctive enough to merit its own section. It occupies the bowl surrounding the southern end of Bates St., where the grade eases enough to allow access to the plateau above. This bowl is mostly wooded and is thinly settled, giving it a West Virginia feeling. The big issue here is that this part of Bates St. is effectively one big highway onramp, being the main link between the Parkway and Oakland. There have been various proposals throughout the years to widen it to four lanes for better access, but these keep getting tabled for unknown reasons. The new 10-year plan I referred to earlier includes a call to not only expand Bates to four lanes but also add special transit lanes and bicycle infrastructure to give Oakland a much-needed bicycle connection to the Eliza Furnace Trail below (the current connection is sketchy and inconvenient). Included in the plan is the desire to demolish all the houses in the basin to create some kind of green buffer, though I suspect that people in Oakland just don't like the run-down, backwoodsy feel of the place.
Neighborhood Grade: Sketchy but safe. The houses here are either right on top of a traffic jam or in what looks like a West Virginia holler town. I once met a guy who lived here and said he liked it, and I've biked through here trying to find a safer way up the hill and it was fairly interesting, though the streets all dead end and I half expected a guy to come out with a shotgun and tell me to get off his property.
9G. Oakcliffe: NIMBYism Done Right?
This small area is bounded by the Boulevard on the north and west, the Parkway on the south, and the Bates ravine on the east. This is officially part of South Oakland but is also an official micro-neighborhood and has a very active civic organization. Typologically, this is a more brick, urban, rowhouse dominated area. Like everywhere south of the Boulevard, it's about 50/50 student/resident and is defined by conflicts between long-term residents and slumlords who snap up available properties in all cash transactions, but the neighborhood organization has made things especially testy around here, as its closer proximity to campus than the rest of Oakland south of the Boulevard makes it particularly vulnerable.
About ten years ago a landlord was fined $300,000 for having too many unrelated people living together. I don't want to belabor the point about student ghettos too much, but the whole phenomenon presents a conundrum to YIMBYism and armchair urbanism more generally. Most contemporary commentary centers around the idea that zoning regulations and other mechanisms prevent cities from achieving their full potential by artificially boosting land values and artificially creating housing shortages. If we were only to eliminate these mechanisms, or at least severely restrict them, we could simultaneously create more dynamic cities and lower housing costs. Also, the people who implemented these things were racist and probably paid off by the auto industry.
Now, I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, but I'm fairly confident that most of these YIMBYs wouldn't view ever-expanding student ghettos as a positive development. Yet, they are created by market forces, and it's zoning that's keeping Oakcliffe intact. The area is zoned single-family, and only three unrelated persons can live together. The community organization is full of good people, but they're mostly a snitch patrol who aggressively report violations. While I don't think they have a problem with students per se, they prefer the kind of people who plan on staying for a while and who will engage with the community.
When they're not busy protesting every plan for additional development, they're ostensibly supporting the city's strategy of limiting the student ghetto to the area between Forbes and Bates. It's a reasonable plan but actually achieving it would mean obliterating the current neighborhood to build new high rises. The reality is that there is a population that doesn't have a lot of money but does have an above-average willingness to tolerate poor living conditions and a requirement of living in an area where they don't need a car, and student ghettos are a result.
Except there's something else going on here that nobody takes into a consideration. The above scenario is suspiciously similar to conditions during Pittsburgh's time as an industrial boom town. Cars hadn't been invented, so living within walking distance of the mills was necessary, and the population consisted almost entirely of poor immigrants who were willing to tolerate crowded, substandard conditions. The social reformers of the day took a look at these situations and found them unacceptable. In the 1920s, they would establish zoning codes and later, building codes, to ensure that nobody had to live like this. In the 1950s, they began ambitious slum clearance programs to end the problem, but it's clear from the writings of the reformers that they had desired to do this as early as the 1890s.
In the Oakcliffe Community Organization's meeting minutes, I found a note about proposing the demolition of 2610 Forbes Ave. This house is currently sited on what is effectively a highway onramp, where the Parkway, Forbes Ave., and the Boulevard of the Allies all come together at Oakland's Main Entrance from Downtown. It looks like this house was occupied as recently as 2016 but has since been abandoned and is currently owned by the city. It stands alone, perched precariously on the hillside, but it was once part of a group of houses in a part of Soho called Rock Alley. There is a report from 1914 describing the area as muddy, unsanitary, and dilapidated, with sewers running through the streets and some homes open to the snow and ice. Following this report, the residents were relocated and the houses were demolished, though this house hung on through the construction of the Parkway in the 1950s, the Birmingham Bridge in the 1970s, and the realignment of Forbes and the Boulevard in 2008. One could argue that it should be allowed to remain, the last outpost of a neighborhood lost in the name of progress and reform, that had it managed to hang on certainly wouldn't have survived the ravages of urban renewal and its demands for improved auto accessibility.
But let's be honest, the house needs to go. It's on a terrible piece of property in a city with a lot of terrible pieces of property, it was substandard when it was built over 100 years ago, and it has no appeal, save for possibly someone with absolutely nowhere else to go. The point I'm trying to make here is that these things are complicated. Should the residents of Oakcliffe simply abandon their little slice of Oakland to fate and leave when conditions become intolerable? Should we give up on South Oakland altogether and replace the existing urban fabric with student apartment complexes the size of the Tower of Babel? Are Pitt's expansion strategies a reasonable response to demand? Are Walnut Capital's? Are Oakcliffe residents wrong to oppose the new developments? How much say should residents have in what their neighborhoods look like? After all, it was the heavy hand of 1950s reform that led to the NIMBYism we have today, and online urbanists seem to forget that. I know these themes will come up time and again throughout the rest of this series, but the whole student situation in Oakland highlights how incredibly complicated this all is, and how there are no easy answers. Neighborhood Grade: Stable, but a precarious stability. On the one hand, if Pitt's housing problems were solved it's easy to see this becoming gentrified. On the other, if it weren't for a community organization holding it together it would quickly descend into student ghetto.
9H. The Technology Park: Brownfield Development
This is an area that nobody would describe as Oakland but is included here because nobody would describe it as anywhere else, either. This is a strip of land between the Monongahela River and Second Ave. that was formerly the site of various steel mills before being wholly consumed by the massive J&L Pittsburgh Works that stretched across both sides of the river between the South Side and Hazelwood. In the early 90s this was converted into office space in one of the earlier projects to remediate an abandoned industrial area. It's currently home to a bunch of CMU labs, whoever the successor to Union Switch and Signal is, and a few other tech companies.
Neighborhood Grade: Non-residential. Walnut Capital had planned to build an apartment complex here, but it was shelved due to lack of interest. I doubt any residential gets built here in the foreseeable future since it's far from traditional neighborhood centers and it's a decidedly 20th century project with no attempt at creating a business district or indeed being anything other than a suburban office park.
9I. Panther Hollow: The Real Old Oakland
Part of Oakland's eastern boundary is formed by a ravine carrying Nine Mile Run to the Monongahela River. Residential portions of Oakland's plateau line one side of the rim, and Schenley Park and CMU line the other. The bottom contains a small neighborhood that is the last spot in Oakland completely resistant to student infiltration. This area was settled by immigrants from the Abbruzi region of Italy, many of whose descendants still live here today. I would point out that the actual name of the ravine is Junction Hollow, Panther Hollow being another ravine that extends through Schenley Park and terminates in Junction Hollow. The neighborhood itself is called Panther Hollow, though, and most Pitt students erroneously refer to the ravine as such.
In the 1960s, Pitt wanted to build a massive research complex in Junction Hollow that would have stretched up to the rim and contained a tunnel to accommodate the rail line. This plan was wisely scrapped following community opposition. More recently, this has been the go-to location for amateurs who think that Pitt's football problems will be solved with an on-campus stadium. The Panthers played in Pitt Stadium, on the current site of the basketball arena, until 2000. Pitt Stadium was old and in need of expensive upgrades, the university needed a new basketball arena, and the city was building a new stadium for the Steelers that they were willing to allow Pitt to use rent-free. The school jumped at the sweetheart deal and the Panthers have been playing on the North Side ever since.
For some fans, this is an immense source of damaged pride. On the one hand, some are nostalgic for the electric atmosphere that used to exist on game days and consider a ride on a shuttle bus a poor substitute for walking up Cardiac Hill as the band warms up in the alley. On the other hand, there's simply no room in Oakland to build a stadium, and there's no justification for spending hundreds of millions of dollars for a facility that will be used fewer than ten times a year. "What about Panther Hollow?" is the mantra of the ignorant. It's smaller than they think it is. People also forget that Oakland is one of the most difficult places to park in the city, and that combined with the lack of tailgate space will limit the appeal to normal fans. Normal fans, opposed to students, that is, who on-campus stadium boosters are convinced would show up in greater numbers. Never mind that the student section is usually pretty full; we need to convince more non-students to show up. Anyway, it's not happening so there's no point in advocating for it.
Neighborhood Grade: Stable. You don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of ever living here, but if you can find a house, go for it.
**9J. Schenley Farms: The Oakland of Franklin Nicola
As I mentioned earlier, Nicola's plan for Oakland called for a residential section that was to function as a sort of model suburb, at least as far as one was envisioned in the early 20th century. To this end, he dedicated an area in the north of Oakland, adjacent to and somewhat below the hillside that was to be the site of Pitt's acropolis campus (and is now the Pitt Upper Campus). Two of the remaining sides are hemmed in by Bigelow Blvd., and the northern side consists of a terrace that was later added onto the back side of the Upper Hill.
Model homes were constructed in 1906 and the neighborhood was filled out by 1920. In the introduction to this series I identified five basic typologies that could be used to describe Pittsburgh's neighborhoods—row house, frame row, mill house, streetcar suburb, and postwar auto suburb. While these aren't strict categories and a lot of blurred lines exist, Schenley Farms represents a sixth category that should be added to the list, the early auto suburb. I overlooked this initially because it isn't common, but it's still common enough. Automobile ownership wasn't common until the 1920s, and right when one would have thought that residential neighborhoods built around the automobile would have taken off, the depression hit, followed by the war, and by the time that true auto suburbs came along, architectural trends had changed.
The homes of Schenley Farms, however, predate even this early auto era, making it probably the earliest of the auto-based neighborhoods in the city. I'm not sure whether the original residents would have owned cars, but the houses all have driveways and detached garages, suggesting that they would have at least owned horses, and it seems likely that these were converted for auto use relatively early. In any event, other features of the neighborhood include architect-designed houses and underground electrical service. This latter feature was supposedly so power lines wouldn't mar the view of the houses from the street, though these days the views are obscured by the copious shade trees. Due to its desirability, this area immediately became an enclave of the upper middle class to wealthy, and it remains so to this day. But there is an alternate history.
At the time of its construction, Schenley Farms was not the only wealthy neighborhood in Pittsburgh. Going back far in the city's history, rich people built large houses and abandoned them as other areas became fashionable. The population pressures of a growing city meant that these grand old houses were chopped up into apartments for lower or working class residents, and this process was already underway in some areas at the time Schenley Farms was being laid out. In the 1960s and 1970s, with Pitt expanding and the wealthy moving to the suburbs in droves, it would have been unsurprising if these residences were remuddled and chopped up into student apartments. The reason this didn't happen, though, is our old friend zoning, likely coupled with some restrictive covenants, which notoriously required all residents to be approved by existing residents (It is said that this was racially discriminatory, and while no blacks lived here until the 1970s, I can't find any evidence that any black was ever precluded from buying here). Schenley Farms has been recognized as a historic district since the 1970s, was added to the NRHP in the 1980s, and the Historical Review Board is required to approve all exterior modifications.
I bring this up because YIMBYs and armchair urbanists scoff at these kinds of restrictions as limiting affordability, but there's little perspective. These houses are considered architectural gems, but it isn't inconceivable that they could just be another student slum, the trees removed so the landlords can offer parking spots for $150/month. When walking around old neighborhoods, I often have to use my imagination, fantasizing about an ideal world where modifications are undone, paint is added, details are restored, and the whole place looks as good as its potential suggests. This is usually a pipe dream, though, because the goal is to maximize short-term gain. Even in areas like the South Side that began gentrifying 30 years ago, there isn't much motivation to remove PermaStone or aluminum awnings or restore windows to their original sizes. There is motivation, however, to replace aluminum siding with vinyl and replace old, period-incorrect windows with new, period-incorrect windows. Even high-end renovations tend to go for a modernizing look. I was browsing YouTube recently and came across a channel of a Pittsburgh-area contractor whose calling card seemed to be painting brick houses white with black trim. These weren't cheap flips, either. In my opinion, this man should be arrested. If anyone wants to restore this house to original, it will take a lot of expensive, labor-intensive work to remove the paint. And even if you keep the paint, it has to keep being repainted. All to save a few bucks repointing (probably) and to give it a "modern" look. I find it quite nice that there are at least some places where I don't have to do this imagining, and Schenley Farms is one of those places. It's small, with only about 90 homes (and another 38 on a terrace addition), but every one of them is pristine. There was never any comeback or revival, just an early peak and a long plateau. I'm not suggesting that every neighborhood should be a historic district and require expensive, period-correct details, but there's a time and place for everything.
Neighborhood Grade: Upper middle class. Actually, upper class, these days, as you aren't getting any of these houses for under a million dollars unless you can find one that needs work. I knew some professors who lived here when I was in law school, but a mid-career professor at Pitt or CMU couldn't afford to buy here now. The limited inventory means that these don't go on the market very often, and their history combined with their location near the universities and hospitals yet isolated from the riffraff of the city makes them about as prime as real estate can get. The weird thing is that when people talk about the nicest Pittsburgh neighborhoods it almost flies under the radar. Other wealthy neighborhoods in the East End have sections that are just as nice, but the neighborhoods as a whole are larger, more varied, and ultimately more accessible. The old money suburbs get more press because they have actual mansions with grounds. If you're currently looking, and don't mind living on the less desirable terrace (with its sinking road), there's a 4-bedroom, 3 bath, 3,242 square foot house there for sale with an $860,000 asking price. It was built in 1912 and featured in the March 1913 edition of Concrete-Cement Age magazine, a copy of which appears to come with the house. Then again, considering that in Los Angeles you'd pay the same price for a 1,000 square foot ranch, it seems like quite the steal.
9K. North Oakland: Old Bellefield
This largely describes areas to the north and east of the Pitt campus. It's an official city neighborhood, though my definition limits it to the blocks surrounding Craig Street, which begins on Forbes at the Carnegie Institute and runs north to Bigelow at the Bloomfield Bridge. Beyond that, there are several subsections that should be dealt with separately, though these aren't notable enough to be neighborhoods unto themselves.
Most of North Oakland is on land that was originally settled by Neville Craig, editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from 1821 to 1841. He named his farm Bellefield, which farm was purchased by glass magnate Edward Dithridge in 1851; Dithridge proceeded to sell lots as part of a housing development with the same name. This was one of the earliest settled parts of Oakland, as it attracted refugees from the Great Fire of 1845, and became a home for some of Pittsburgh's wealthier residents.
The first of the subsections is centered around the South Craig St. business district, which runs for a few blocks between Fifth and Forbes. This whole southern portion was the first area settled, and the few houses that remain from that first wave of settlement are modest frame houses. The business district itself may have been the first in the city to gentrify in the sense that we think of the term today when in the late 1970s and early 1980s it became home to advertising agencies, design studios, specialty shops, and practitioners of the more exotic medical arts. As the rest of Oakland has become more corporate and homogenized in the past 25 years, South Craig still retains a hip college vibe.
The residential parts of this section, though, only survive in fragments. CMU has made it clear that it considers this entire area part of their Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere and they have, over the past several decades, torn down the old houses for campus buildings and parking, and the rest will probably be gone in a few more. While the campus has encroached somewhat on Craig St. itself, most of the businesses are protected by zoning, and the university's most recent ten-year plan aims to keep it as a business district. While the CMU document emphasizes the same dumb trends like "innovation districts", "pop-up events", and "marketplace atmosphere", I'd rather that then see them try to strongarm the city into converting everything over to campus use, which looked to be their intention for a while.
Further north, between Fifth and Center, is an area of old Bellefield that was built out a bit later (late 19th/early 20th century) than the southern portion, and whose residents were wealthier. Most of the original houses here were grand houses and small apartment buildings, though few of these remain. Beginning in the 1920s and continuing up to the 1970s, a large number of apartment buildings were constructed in this area, making it one of Pittsburgh's few historic high-density areas. The residents of these are a mix of students, professors, and retirees, though it appears from the designs of the entrances and use of name architects that these were originally luxury buildings, and a good deal of them have since been converted into condominiums.
Urbanists take note, though—high density, even prewar high density, does not guarantee walkability. At the time they were built no thought was given to street engagement, ground floor retail, or even limiting surface parking. The business district on South Craig may be my favorite in Oakland, but it isn't functional, and to be honest, the main business district on Forbes, a good 20 minute walk from here, isn't particularly functional either. The neighborhood as a whole hasn't had a full-service grocery store in over a decade, and retailers say there won't be one any time soon, as the student population disappears over the summer and winter breaks. The recent (and massive) Empire Apartments at Craig and Center have attempted to buck this trend by incorporating ground-floor retail as part of the building's design, but all of it remains unleased save a Dunkin' Donuts on the corner. (I suspect, though, that there are some real estate shenanigans at play where the rents are too high for anyone except national chains, and financing agreements won't let them lower the price.) The result of all of this is that the single densest part of the city isn't even top five in terms of walkability, maybe not even top ten.
Around the intersection of Craig and Center; most Pitt students are surprised to discover that the foot traffic in this part of Oakland is disproportionately African American, and that there are several businesses that seem to cater to this demographic. It is my understanding that following the slow destruction of the Hill District as a commercial center in the decades following the 1968 riots, this area took up part of the slack, similar to the now defunct Fifth-Forbes corridor I discussed way back in the installment on Downtown. There are also a lot of immigrant-owned businesses in this area, often occupying mid-century storefronts that were tacked in front of houses that can be seen further back on the properties. There is also another small business district a bit to the south of here at Craig and Bayard.
Finally, north of Baum, after another block or so of single-family houses, we get to a weird, semi-abandoned industrial area that was the former location of Pittsburgh Filmmakers, which has a few mill houses at its northernmost tip before the narrow road slinks under the Bloomfield Bridge and into Polish Hill the back way. This district was originally the site of Luna Park, a small amusement park that only operated for a few years in the first decade of the 20th century. Following the park's closure in 1909, the area became the center of the auto business in Pittsburgh. In 1923 it held Samson Motor Co., Kaufman-Baer Garage, Fisk Tire Co., Oakland (the brand) Motor Car Co., Franklin Pittsburgh Auto Co., B.F. Goodrich Rubber, Kelley-Springfield Tire, Van Kleeck Motor Co., Oldsmobile, Nash, Chevrolet, and the main garage for the Pittsburgh Taxi Company. There's an "auto row" on Craig St. that consists of weird buildings that look abandoned but aren't and extend a couple stories below to the streets in the back. This district of auto dealerships and related businesses historically continued along Baum, but that's a story for another neighborhood.
Neighborhood Grade: Student area. Though its population is more diverse than that of South Oakland, this is still largely occupied by college students who prefer to live off campus in a dwelling where they won't get MRSA. It's definitely also more CMU and grad student heavy than the undergrad heavy South Oakland. On the whole it's not a bad place to live if you like apartment towers, but you can probably find cheaper, nicer digs elsewhere.
9J. East Oakland: The Oakland of Andrew Carnegie This is a semi-bogus grouping created to describe parts of Oakland that are largely outside the official neighborhood boundaries but are colloquially described as part of it and which are even part of it for planning purposes than the areas they officially belong to. Beyond that, though, this section is possibly the apotheosis of City Beautiful city planning in Pittsburgh. Most of Oakland is intensely developed, with rare oasis such as the lawn of the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial providing any kind of glimpse into what the neighborhood was originally supposed to look like. Here, though, there's enough open space to get a better idea of what the ultimate vision was.
This section, quite simply, includes the campus of Carnegie Mellon University, the grounds of the Carnegie Institute, and the nearby part of Schenley Park that includes Phipps Conservatory, which has a more "monumental" character than the rest of the park. While I never intended this series to contain tourist recommendations, there's a walk (or drive) that I think gives the essence of what the movement was trying to achieve. Starting from the Cathedral lawn, cross Forbes and head down Schenley Drive Extension. Schenley Plaza is to the right, and the Pitt lower campus beyond that, all occupying the space where Forbes Field used to be. Luckily, the now ruined Hillman library is screened from view by street trees and kiosks in the plaza. But you should be looking to the left at the massive Carnegie Institute.
This building contains a natural history museum, an art museum, a lecture hall, and a music hall, but the side facing Schenley Plaza contains the main branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, which is quite simply one of the best libraries in the world. In the 2000s, when vinyl was at its low point as a medium, they were still lending out records, because the material hadn't been issued on CD and someone might want to listen to it. It has a surprisingly large amount of floor space dedicated to sheet music. It has stacks that are shoved into weird mezzanine levels in the back with low ceilings and narrow staircases. One of my biggest pet peeves about a lot of old, beautiful buildings is that concerns about security, or the necessity of selling tickets, or handicapped accessibility, or some other reason to restrict access means that you have to enter through an annex built in the 1970s, or the basement, or some other goofy ingress point. Since the library doesn't need to be particularly secure and is free to the public, you can still walk right up the steps and enter through the big doors that have always served as the main entrance. It seems that libraries may be among the last such buildings where this is possible. What makes this library special, though, is that it strikes a balance that I feel all large metro main branch libraries should strike: It has the size and scope befitting a flagship library in a major city, but it's fundamentally still in service to the public. It's not as though I've been to a ton of big city main branches but they seem to fall into one of two camps. To illustrate, I visited the New York Public Library—it of the famous lions—in 2010. I saw plenty of displays showing interesting items, the visitors center, and of course the big research room on the third floor that's the size of a football field. Now, in the Carnegie Library there's a lectern in the lobby that says "Ask Me" on the front, and there's someone standing behind it. While I'm sure that the bespectacled middle-aged black woman who was standing behind it the last time I visited fields dozens of questions per day, I doubt anyone has ever asked her where the books are, as that's abundantly clear to anyone who enters the front door and isn't blind (in which case she would direct them to the guy who handles materials for the visually impaired). Nevertheless, while I had seen plenty of rare books behind display cases and reference books and the like, I hadn't quite figured out where the actual library was, as in the part where there were shelves of books to browse. So I found myself asking that exact question, to which the answer was that they were stored in an area closed off to the public, and that if I wanted one I had to go on the computer and find it and someone would bring it up, not for me to check out, but to look at in the reading room.
They also had quite a few special collections, but to access those I'd have to fill out a bunch of forms explaining why I needed to see it and if the library gods thought I was worthy they would grant me conditional access. I actually already knew this from several years earlier when I was selecting the topic for my senior thesis in history and I had called them asking about some collection or another (in other words, I actually had a good reason to look at it) and I was told that access would not be granted for a mere baccalaureate theses and that doctoral research at minimum would be required for them to even consider it. This was not a library designed for people like me.
What people like me are expected to do is go to a branch library where they carry John Grisham and Danielle Steele novels and allow anyone to browse the stacks, which brings me to the other end of the spectrum. Cincinnati has the largest public library system in the US. But their main branch is… just another branch. It's big, and it has administration offices, and it's well-appointed, but there isn't much to draw anyone from elsewhere in Hamilton County Downtown. Carnegie is the kind of place where anyone can walk in and browse and has programs encouraging people to read but also has the negatives of every official photograph taken of David L. Lawrence when he was Governor of Pennsylvania.
I apologize for this long diversion about libraries, but this series has been well-received and wouldn't be what it is now if the main branch of the Carnegie were anything other than what it is. When I first started and was looking for information on the Fifth and Forbes proposal and not finding it online, I went to Oakland and sheepishly asked a research librarian in the local history room how to go about finding old newspaper articles about it. I hadn't even planned on including any of it here yet, I just remembered it and was curious about what all the fuss was about. I made it clear to him that he wasn't to invest too much time on this because it was purely for my own edification and I'm sure he had a lot of work to do, etc. but he insisted that he loved this kind of thing and that's what he was here for and he expended a not-inconsiderable effort tracking down an envelope with newspaper clippings in it that I assumed would have been thrown away sometime since the millennium. I have since leaned on him quite heavily and he's never let me down so far, and I highly doubt that for all their money and prestige anyone at the main branch of the New York Public Library would have gone to such lengths for such a frivolous endeavor. Gil, if you're reading this, thanks again.
Anyway, as you continue along the colonnade of sycamores that line the road along the front of the library, turn left onto Schenley Drive, which runs along the back of the building with the Frick Fine Arts Building on your right before heading over the Schenley Bridge and into Schenley Park. To the left, there is a view of the Carnegie Mellon Campus. The campus is laid out with two main focal points, The Mall and The Cut, and you can't really see either of them from here. What you can see from here is a jumbled mass of "functional" Beaux-Arts buildings from the old campus completely dominated by more modern ones, the space between them compressed by distance. I once saw a top ten list that included CMU as one of the ugliest campuses in America, but that kind of misses the point. It was originally designed by Henry Hornbostel, he of Pitt's Acropolis plan, he who has been immortalized in the numerous public buildings he designed in his career even if few today have heard of him. While his buildings tend to typify the excesses of the Gilded Age in their ornateness, at heart, he understood that Carnegie Tech was primarily a school where one would learn the industrial sciences, and fashioned them after factories and steel mills.
Even with all the modernist excesses, the original plan has been respected to a remarkable degree. Structures like the brutalist Wean Hall still adhere to the same proportions and setbacks as the rest of campus, as well as the tendency for everything to be in essence a stylized industrial building. Could something a bit more "contextual" gone in its place? Yeah, probably, but what does that say, really? Industry is about efficiency, not beauty, and it looks to the future, not the past. The front view of Hamerschlag Hall, the centerpiece of campus, sees the Cathedral of Learning looming behind it. The Cathedral looks good, but it was bult decades later and didn't factor into Hornbostel's plan. What's also visible is the smokestack to the boiler house, and that did factor into the plan. The view from the bridge gives a full-frontal of not just the smokestack but the entire boiler house, with Hamerschlag and the rest of campus looming on the hillside above the ravine. CMU is beautiful, but this view of it is my favorite.
On the other side of the bridge, Phipps Conservatory is to the right. Henry Phipps was Andrew Carnegie's business partner and he modeled his conservatory on the horticultural hall at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, and some of the plants from that fair are supposedly still growing there. It's a beautiful place if you like giant greenhouses, but by now we've entered Schenley Park. I'm going to treat parks separately in another installment, as large parks don't really feel like parts of neighborhoods, so I'm not going to say too much about Schenley now, but there are exceptions, and this part of Schenley definitely feels like Oakland. If you continue across the Panther Hollow Bridge you get a beautiful view of the wooded namesake hollow below. But once on the other side, turn around, because I saved the best for last. Heading back towards Oakland proper, Flagstaff Hill is on the right, across from Phipps. From the top, the skyline of Oakland is laid out before you, from the towering hospitals, to the hillside where the old Acropolis was supposed to go, to the plateau of the South Oakland student ghetto, to the roof of the Carnegie Institute, to the CMU boiler house, to the slopes of the Schenley Farms Terrace. And framing it all in on the left are the tops of the Downtown skyscrapers, and on the right, of course, the Cathedral. As a building designed to be a sentinel, it looks its most at-home when viewed from unexpected angles, jumping into view as a happy surprise when you don't expect to see it. But it looks its best from here.
Neighborhood Grade: Nonresidential, unless you count CMU student housing, in which case it's a student area. The fact that the land is permanently dedicated to public and institutional uses means it won't be developed further in any of our lifetimes, and I think everyone would agree that that's for the better.
9K. Monumental Oakland: The Oakland of Franklin Nicola (Again)
When I first contemplated writing about Oakland over a year ago, my first thought went to the various architectural treasures contained therein. I did not, however, want this series to become The Motte Review of Buildings, so I focused it on neighborhoods and sub-neighborhoods and how they fit into the city. Downtown has more notable buildings than anywhere else in the city, and I barely mentioned any there. Oakland feels different, though; while any Downtown will have its share of landmarks, Oakland was, in a sense, founded on the idea of beautiful buildings, and the stretch of Fifth Ave. between Morewood and Bouquet has a disproportionate share of them. This area has already been covered in the sections on North Oakland, Central Oakland, and the semi-bogus East Oakland, so this isn't as much a neighborhood essay as it is a list of buildings worth mentioning.
Fifth Ave. runs one-way east to west, so we'll start at Rodef Shalom Temple (Henry Hornbostel, 1906). This is sort of cheating, as residents of the adjacent areas will tell you that they live in Shadyside, but most people consider the synagogue itself to be in Oakland, so I'll treat it as a sort of exclave. Continuing towards town, on the left we have the WQED studios (Paul Schweikher, 1970), another one of the few good brutalist buildings, though it was better before they demolished the grand staircase in front out of practicality concerns. If you grew up watching Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, this is where it was taped. If you grew up watching National Geographic, this is where it was edited. Holy Spirit Catholic Church, Byzantine Rite (1961) is next, a weird building that sits at an angle to the road and can't decide if it wants to be traditional or modern. Hiding behind that on Clyde St. in another exclave is First Church of Christ, Scientist (S.S. Beman, 1904, now home to the Pitt Early Childhood Development Center). This is unusual for a church in that, like all Christian Science churches, it looks less like a traditional church and more like a Greek temple. Back on Fifth is Central Catholic High School (Link, Weber & Bowers, 1927), which isn't a boarding school but looks like one, with its Gothic elements.
As we pass through the North Oakland apartment district, of note is Fairfax Apartments (Philip M. Julien, 1926), which comes across as a last hurrah of highly ornamented residential high-rises in a landscape that modernism would soon dominate, as is indicated by the plain high-rises that surround it. The most notable of these is Webster Hall (Eric Fisher Wood, 1925), which, while a year older, already shows the more stripped-down style that would soon become commonplace. The RAND Building (Burt Hill, 2006) isn't of much interest architecturally on its own, but it works well as a younger brother to the adjacent Software Engineering Institute (Burt Hill, 1987). Across the street, St. Paul's Cathedral (Egan & Prindeville, 1906) and its associated buildings are the spiritual heart of Pittsburgh, Catholicism being the religion of the immigrants who defined the city. To this end, it beats the diversity drum pretty hard; while it's consistently Gothic Revival, it's a mishmash of French, German, and English Gothic styles.
As we hit the heart of Monumental Oakland, The Mellon Institute (Benno Janssen, 1937) is a testament to what can be done with serious financial backing—these are the largest monolithic columns in the world. Most large columns are made from stone discs stacked atop one another, but these are cut whole. If you read enough about famous architects you read plenty of stories about how most of these guys were arrogant, self-absorbed assholes, I'm looking at you Frank Lloyd Wright. While researching this, I came across an article from a guide to prominent Western Pennsylvanians published in 1923. It is clear that the subjects submitted their own biographies, as most run several paragraphs, but Janssen's is just a full-page photograph with the caption
Benno Janssen, well known Pittsburgh architect, was born and reared at St. Louis, Missouri. Mr. Janssen has been the architect for many of the finest structures in Pittsburgh and vicinity, including buildings of both residential and business type and of several club houses now occupied by the leading clubs of Pittsburgh.
Yup, this is the kind of guy who can just call and order the largest monolithic columns that have ever existed. Continuing on, we have the Cathedral, about which enough has been said. Across from that is the Music Building (Longfellow, Alden & Harlow, 1884) formerly the manse for the Bellefield Presbyterian Church, of which only the bell tower remains. The great Henry Hobson Richardson designed the Allegheny County Courthouse and developed the first (and to date one of the few) distinctly American architectural styles, Richardsonian Romanesque. There are quite a few Richardsonian Romanesque buildings throughout Pittsburgh, though this is one of the few in Oakland. Clapp Hall (Troutwein & Howard, 1956) is the lone building designed in the Gothic/Art Deco style of the Cathedral after expansion resumed following the war.
As for the clubhouses of this area, we have the Masonic Temple (Janssen, 1914, now Alumni Hall), modeled as a Greek temple, the Pittsburgh Athletic Association (Janssen, 1911), modeled as a Venetian palace, and the University Club (Hornbostel, 1920), modeled after nothing in particular. This was evidently the template for the adjacent Nordenberg Hall (Mackey Mitchell, 2013) and nearby Oaklander Hotel (Raintree Architecture, 2017), which are textbook examples of what I call the neoneoclassical style. I am no great fan of this style, but it doesn't exactly bother me, either. On the one hand, it's free from the kind of classical ornamentation that modern architectural tastes find tacky. On the other hand, it isn't self-consciously modern. It's neoclassical architecture that's designed to blend in with its surroundings and not draw attention to itself. Neoneoclassical buildings are good citizens of the neighborhoods they inhabit, and their inability to invoke strong feelings in anyone means that while they avoid the revulsion that comes with a lot of modern architecture, they also forgo any chance of ever being loved by anybody. The best part of the University Club is the rooftop terrace, and the best thing about that is the great views it gives of the Cathedral and the rest of Oakland.
These buildings surround Hornbostel's Allegheny County Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall (1910) which is the complete opposite aesthetic. It's entirely over the top even by the standards of the Beaux Arts, one of the few tributes to the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus that approaches the scale of the real thing. Upon close inspection, it's almost gaudy. Taken as a whole, it's sublime. Rounding out Monumental Oakland are the Schenley Apartments, now dormitories, that Hornbostel designed in the more stripped style of 1923, and the building that started it all, the William Pitt Union, nee Schenley Hotel (Rutan & Russell, 1898).
9L. The City Beautiful: A Postscript
As I was writing this, Hemingway’s, a bar on Forbes Ave., announced that it will be closing in May. Bars have come and gone over the years. Hell, landmarks have come and gone—The O, The Garage Door, Dave and Andy’s Ice Cream, and Fuel & Fuddle all closed in recent years, but for some reason this hits harder. I haven’t been there in years, and I didn’t even go there particularly often when I went to school right across the street, but I was always comfortable in the knowledge that I could go there, and enjoy myself. Because when I say it was unremarkable, what I mean is that it was a bar right in the middle of a college campus that had no pretentions of being a “college bar”, excepting that food and drink were always reasonably priced. It had the same ambiance as any strip mall sports bar, and while everything changed around it for 40 years, it seemed timeless. Even The O, or the Original Hot Dog Shop, as it’s formally known, didn’t inspire such a reaction. It was certainly more iconic, the kind of place that sold T-shirts, but it was always a grease pit whose reputation shone above its actual value (though it was almost certainly better than the gringo $6 taco shop that replaced it). So in a few weeks, I will be taking one last walk around the park.
More important to Oakland’s future, Pitt released the executive summary of its 2025 ten year plan, which includes significant investment in more on-campus housing. One aspect of the plan that caught my eye was the demolition of the Bouquet Gardens low-rise student apartments to construct denser housing. These were somewhat revolutionary when they were built because they were the nice student housing where there was a living room, kitchen, and everyone got their own bedroom, but it apparently isn’t compatible with housing guarantees and pressure for the ghetto to stop expanding. Pitt currently has a three-year housing guarantee for undergraduates, but this has necessitated drastic measures like converting student lounges into dorm rooms and putting students up in hotels. About 40% of undergrads live on campus, and they hope to get this up to 60% by 2035, which I suppose is a good thing, though I doubt it will be enough to spark normal people to start moving to South Oakland and rehabbing the houses.
The one thing I haven’t talked about yet is sports, mainly because the only team of any note that plays there is Pitt basketball. But this wasn’t always the case. The Pirates played at Forbes Field between 1909 and 1970, the Steelers played at Forbes Field and Pitt Stadium between their founding and 1970, and Pitt played Forbes Field and Pitt Stadium between 1909 and 1999. And that’s just within living memory; the long-forgotten Pittsburgh Pirates NHL team played at Duquesne Gardens on Craig Street between 1925 and 1930, and the minor league Pittsburgh Hornets played there from 1936 to 1956. But Oakland’s Achilles heel, parking, led the Steelers and Pirates to decamp for the Three Rivers Stadium in 1970, and the construction of Heinz Field led Pitt football to follow suit 30 years later. When Pittsburgh was awarded an NHL franchise again in 1967, they would not play in Oakland but in what was left of the Lower Hill.
Every boy dreams of hitting a walk-off home run in Game 7 of the World Series; it’s such a common trope that it’s cliched at this point. But in 150 years of professional baseball, it’s only happened once. On October 13, 1960, the Pirates were playing the Yankees in the ultimate game of a hard-fought series that the Yankees were favored to win, having outscored the Pirates 46–17 in the series heading into the game. Pittsburgh led 4–0 in early innings before giving up the lead to the Yankees, who led 6–4 going into the bottom of the eighth. In one of the wildest finishes in baseball history, the Pirates scored 5 in the bottom of the inning to retake the lead, but concede it to the Yankees in the top of the ninth. As the Pirates came to bat, the score was tied at 9. Leading off was Bill Mazeroski, a second basemen known primarily for defense. At 3:36 pm, in one of the most iconic moments in sports history, Mazeroski sent the second pitch of the inning over the head of outfielder Yogi Berra and the left field wall. The Pirates win the championship. Forbes Field is long gone, but the left field wall remains, marked at the spot the ball went over. Every October, fans still gather there to listen to the radio broadcast of the game.
Bill Mazeroski passed away yesterday at the age of 89. Godspeed Maz, and Beat ‘Em Bucs.
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service
This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service
This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.
Quality Contributions to the Main Motte
Contributions for the week of December 29, 2025
@rae:
Contributions for the week of January 5, 2026
Contributions for the week of January 12, 2026
Contributions for the week of January 19, 2026
Contributions for the week of January 26, 2026
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service