This picture of the spectacular but smoky view from Grandview Park illustrated a Pittsburgh Press article headlined, “Vacationland on the Car Line.” The story highlighted places to visit “if you must spend your vacation at home … or have no vacation except a few free days.”
Grandview was one of several parks visited by reporter Gilbert Love. Standing on the park’s walkway, he saw ”the crowded slopes of the Hill District and North Side” — parts of the city that would become decidedly less crowded in the coming decades as neighborhoods were demolished to make way for the Civic Arena and Three Rivers Stadium, both of which are now gone.
“To your right,” Love wrote, “the streets of the South Side make a pattern, with a very real steel mill in the background.” The J&L mill shut down in the mid-1980s. Today, the site is filled with shops, apartments, restaurants, offices and movie theaters — all part of a development called SouthSide Works.
