Rust Belt

Placeology #9: The Rust Belt Goes for Gold

Andy Warhol Bridge, Pittsburgh

Photos and text by Rick Ouellette

A recent article mentioning that National Geographic has named Pittsburgh one of the Top 25 places to visit in the world (the only U.S. city to make the list), was posted online and made my Facebook feed. Invariably, one of the first comments was “That’s the best laugh I had all day.”

I was tempted to reply, “How so?” But I’m trying to be less judgy nowadays, so I let it slide and left a comment saying how much I enjoyed my own trip to Iron City last year. I mentioned the newly expanded Andy Warhol Museum, a great ballgame experience at the Pirates’ PNC Park with its bridge-and-skyline backdrop, the Nationality Rooms at the Cathedral of Learning and the colorful folk-art complex called Randyland. (See below)

Besides, if I asked that person why she thought it was so funny, the likely answer would be: “Really, I mean, PITTSBURGH?!” If there is one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that people love knowing what they already know, even when it’s wrong. This is esp. true when it comes to Rust Belt cities. If you mention Cleveland, a likely response is about the Cuyahoga River being on fire, even though that was 56 years ago. And don’t let’s get started about the state of New Jersey, which many motorists have reduced to the “smelly” stretch of I-95 opposite New York City, filled with refineries and powerlines. We want all the gasoline and electricity we can get—but are somehow offended to see where it comes from.

The AKG Museum in Buffalo. The mirrored surfaced of the institute’s modern walkway reflects both the older building and an outside sculpture.

Perceptions are gradually starting to change, and just not in Pittsburgh. Buffalo’s AKG Art Museum was named by Time magazine as one of The Greatest Places in the World in 2024. A dazzling modern addition has been added to the original 1905 Greek temple-style original, connected by a serpentine elevated walkway.

And the AKG is far from an isolated location: it sits in the middle of Buffalo’s cultural corridor near Frank Lloyd Wright’s jewel-like Martin House, the Buffalo History Museum (housed in the only remaining building from the city’s 1901 world’s fair), an outdoor Shakespeare theater and various gardens and a lake with flamingo pedal boats. All of this in the beauteous confines of the Frederick Law Olmstead-designed Delaware Park.

But my favorite part was staying at the nearby Richardson Hotel (above), which occupies the middle section of the former Buffalo State Asylum. Opened up in 1880 on grounds also designed by Olmsted, this massive architectural gem was an early commission of famed architect H.H. Richardson, fresh off his masterful Trinity Church in Boston. Underneath it’s two colossal towers, the main administration building, as well as its two matching Romanesque wings, make up the footprint of this remarkable boutique hotel. As with many such facilities, this asylum grew overcrowded and it was expanded (in brick, not the expensive Medina sandstone of the original building) to such an extent that it takes about a half-hour to walk around it.

The nighttime photo at top shows both the elegance of Richardson’s design and the great work of the restoration crew. The bottom photo gives one some idea of the scale of the former asylum, some of which is hopefully being set aside for much-needed affordable housing.

Like many other state hospitals, this one was closed in the late 20th century. But unlike others that were demolished without much opposition, Richardson’s piece de resistance sat there until the city realized what they had. Now this asylum is a point of civic pride, a lynchpin in the city’s ambition to become a design capitol, with a focus on the many significant buildings, including its magnificent City Hall (below) and Central Terminal (currently being restored), two of the region’s premier Art Deco edifices.

The effects of deindustrialization has been devastating for many U.S. cities in the Northeast and Midwest. The poverty, crime, population loss and disinvestment that followed is of historic proportions. But a potential silver lining is the fact that, at their economic peak, places like Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Detroit used some of that manufacturing wealth in the building of first-class (and often majestic)  museums, libraries, theaters, railway stations, hotels and monuments—all speaking to a grand sense of collective civic pride all but missing in our age of calcified socio-political divides.

A mural inside Buffalo City Hall from more optimistic times.

I’m not suggesting, or even hoping, that people will give up the default destinations like Las Vegas or Disneyworld. Yet the trend towards sub-genres of domestic travel is encouraging and should help in the nascent Rust Belt revival. These days, there is foodie tourism, historic preservation tourism, music tourism, film festival tourism, sports tourism—Pittsburgh is hosting the NFL Draft next year and it’s a BIG deal. Anything that gets us out and about on a path that leads to greater understanding of our common heritage is a welcome move in the right direction in these wrong times.

Lastly, a word about an even newer trend: abandoned steel mill tourism. In the not-too-distant past, places like the former Bethlehem Steel plant (above top) and the Carrie Furnaces (above bottom) were top-line locations for the urban explorer community. Now I’m no stranger to the wild and woolly world of urbex photography. But I have never been one of its real hardcore practitioners and I was glad when I eventually got the chance to visit such places without fear of arrest.

The gargantuan Bethlehem Steel plant (renamed Steel Stacks) is now the dramatic backdrop to an outdoor concert venue and cultural center. The elevated walkway brings one up close to this amazing structure. Placards inform the visitor of the “Hot, Loud and Dangerous” conditions that the steelworkers put up with to provide the nation with its infrastructure. It’s a “thank-you-for-your-service” moment that some risk-taking explorers would not realize or get the chance to find out.

The same goes for the formerly off-limits Carrie Furnaces, now a state heritage park. Visitors can learn that this was a big part of World War Two’s “Arsenal of Democracy.” Factories on an 8-mile stretch of the Monongahela River, starting in Pittsburgh, produced more iron and steel during the war than all the Axis Powers combined. The scale and complexity of the furnaces are mind-boggling, and the implied message of strength and national unity is haunting in an age where even the word “democracy” seems compromised. So let’s get out there and live and learn: and when someone asks, “Pittsburgh, really?” you can answer, “Yes, really.”

“Abandoned America” In Extremis: A Place Where More Than the Buildings Have Been Vacated

Abandoned America: The Age of Consequences
Photos and Test by Matthew Christopher, Foreword by James Howard Kunstler
(Jon Glez Publishing)

All photographs in this post are copyright to Matthew Christopher

Regular visitors to this site will know something of my fascination with lost or abandoned places, the main side topic here when I’m not traversing the highways and byways of rock music history and documentary film. The public’s interest level with such deserted locations has grown to the point where the phrase “ruin porn” is now a thing. Photographer Matthew Christopher, in the introduction of this remarkable and sobering book, says he is well aware that his work may be seen as a modern version of the old Picturesque school of aesthetics. But the book’s subtitle lets on right from the cover that there is a lot more afoot here.

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Page after page feature the devastated remains, in beautifully rendered hi-def photos, of buildings magnificent in scope and/or noble of purpose. These eye-popping images of derelict power plants, factories, trade schools, churches, fraternal lodges and communal vacation resorts speak powerfully of a severely shredded social and economic fabric. (Most of these locations are in Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states). Some may react with an out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new shrug but these ruins nevertheless say a lot of what we don’t want to hear.

Back from the late 19th century through to the Second World War era, when most of these places were constructed, there were political and social differences aplenty, often profoundly so. But there was also was a common-denominator civic pride as a baseline, not to mention a colossal industrial sector that not long ago was the envy of the world. This formed the basis for the eventual building up of a solid American middle-class and a wavering but respectable network of aid and comfort for those in legitimate need.

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Speaking of that America in his foreword, writer and social critic James Howard Kunstler (author of “The Geography of Nowhere”) says “we have come to regard its institutions as permanent achievements.” Reflecting on Christopher’s pictures of a shuttered 1927 movie palace, Kunstler observes that it “presents a display of middle-class opulence that is nearly unimaginable now. Reflect on what that suggests about the psychology of yesterday’s working people: they believed that they deserved to have beauty in their lives, and the builders agreed to furnish it.” Nowadays, not so much.

After Kunstler’s incisive foreword, Christopher in his introduction speaks of the theoretical connection between these defunct places and human mortality. In fact, he does so for several paragraphs, perhaps as a bit of a defensive counterpoint to the fetishization of this subject matter in some quarters. (In fact, he has given several of these locations assumed names to discourage both scrappers and weekend urban explorers). By the end, though, he is squarely on topic: mourning our “shared heritage,” he sees these buildings, both mighty and graceful, as a reflection of a national character that has been diminished. In its stead, Christopher sees the endless repetition of strip malls and big-box stores with their cheap imported goods proffered to people who are often in reduced circumstances, holding down meager service-sector jobs themselves.

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The Northeast Manual Training School, with its distinctive castle design, was built in Philadelphia at the turn of the 20th century as an innovative publicly-funded free school in an area with a burgeoning industrial sector. It later went through various name changes (ending up as the Thomas A. Edison High School) and declined along with the industry and the neighborhood. By the time “Abandoned America” was published it had been unceremoniously demolished and replaced with a discount chain store.

This is not mere nostalgia for a robust heavy-industry economy never to return, it’s more for the loss of the wherewithal to even try and have a constructive dialogue about how to adapt to a changing global economy. It’s there in every achingly vivid photograph of a silenced turbine hall, molding lobby in a working-class resort or half-demolished church. An ideal has been abandoned along with the edifice: this is “a book of heartbreaks” as one person put it in “Abandoned America’s” Amazon comments section.

Not only do those “permanent achievements” look a lot less invariable by the day, the political dialogue (such as it is) about what to do has become the worst sort of zero-sum game. The idea that the two sides of the aisle would have a clash of ideas and each would come away with some of what they wanted is almost laughably quaint now. Now, with Republicans having spent decades literally demonizing Democratic leaders while coastal liberals (many feeling safe with their high-tech jobs) speak glibly of “fly-over states,” we’ve come to a pretty pass indeed.

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Some may think of James Howard Kunstler as a gloom-and-doomer when he talks of America as a once-advanced civilization facing a lasting turnaround “toward a loss of complexity, a reduction in the scale of activity, a loss of artistry, and probably the end of many comforts.” It’s that wish for a return to that greatness, without facing up to any of the complexities needed to get there, that looks like an unsolvable problem in this age of anti-intellectualism and safe spaces. After an election season filled with a succession of soul-crushing inanities, the U.S. elected in Donald Trump the exactly wrong person needed, even if his famous slogan played to those sentiments. Spurred on by a frustration with political gridlock and, let’s face it, conservative media outlets that only know how to act on its most pernicious impulses, struggling Middle America elected someone whose one and only skill is exploiting their prejudices and frustrations—-in fact, a man whose narcissism and unpredictability borders on outright insanity. After not hearing a single utterance of true empathy from Trump, even directed at his own voters, it’s safe to say that not only does he not care about any true “social compact”, but he probably has never given it a single thought in his entire perversion of a life. Man, oh fucking man, have we lost our way in the wilderness of of our own self-regard, leaving us with a national psyche as rusted and hollowed out as the places pictured in Matthew Christopher’s elegiac testament.