Best of Pittsburgh: 10 Things Behind the Steel Curtain

By Ed Wetschler

A lot of football fans go to Pittsburgh to see the NFL Steelers, but I'm not one of them. There are better things to see and do in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, than root for 45 endomorphs whose very name, the Steelers, misrepresents the clean, post-steel, high-tech city Pittsburgh has become. Besides, you can watch a football game anywhere; I understand they even play the game in Green Bay, Wisconsin. But here are ten things you can only do in Pittsburgh (and two extra things you can do nearby).

Photo Caption: The downtown Pittsburgh skyline

Jeff Greenberg

Ascend an Urban Mountain

Mount Washington is as high (about 400 feet) and steep as the New Jersey Palisades that face Manhattan, but this cliff is within the city. U.S.A. Today ranked the view from the top -- downtown Pittsburgh and the three rivers

Ed Wetschler

Wander Warhol's Weird World

The largest single-artist museum in the world, the Andy Warhol Museum celebrates the real king of pop. You've gotta love the big room that features Warhol's famous

Frick Art & Historical Center

Savor Frick's World

Henry Clay Frick, one of the richest men of his day, lived on a Gilded Age estate with neighbors named Carnegie, Heinz, and Westinghouse. Every detail in this 19th-century starter mansion, now part of the Frick Art & Historical Center, fascinates, from the aluminum décor (back then they didn't know what else to do with this metal) to the orchestrion, a mechanical ensemble with an organ, horns, flutes, drums, and complex arrangements of the classics. Visit the Center's Car and Carriage Museum, too, with its gorgeous early autos, including several evolutionary dead ends like this 1901 Knox Model A Runabout, with its rear-end engine, tiller, and three bicycle-like wheels.

Details: Frick Art & Historical Center, 7227 Reynolds St.; tel. 412/371-0600; www.thefrickpittsburgh.org

Photo Caption: Knox Automobile Company, Springfield, Massachusetts, Model A Runabout, 1901.

Pittsburgh Pirates

Catch a Night Game at PNC Park

Pirates, so-so, but the team does have one of the most beautiful parks in the Majors. Enter via Roberto Clemente Bridge, a rollicking pedestrians-only thoroughfare on game days. Sit behind third for a stunning view of P'burgh's skyline. And be hungry: Great ribs at Manny Sanguillen's stand (I've seen Manny greeting fans there) and, at the Primanti Brothers stand, the classic Olde Pittsburgh meat, cheese, and fries sandwich.

Details: PNC Park, 115 Federal St.; tel. 412/321-BUCS; pittsburgh.pirates.mlb.com/pit/ballpark/

Photo Caption: An evening game at Pittsburgh's PNC Park.

Five-two

Kiss a Butterfly

Each of the 17 greenhouse palaces of the Phipps Conservatory envelopes you in a different world. For example, one of them is a butterfly farm from spring through fall. No extra charge for that greenhouse; it's included in the $12 adult admission fee to Phipps (whereas Florida's Butterfly World charges $21.95 for just butterflies). Wear pastels, and gentle butterflies will land on you.

Details: Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, 700 Frank Curto Dr.; tel. 412/622-6914; https://phipps.conservatory.org

Photo Caption: Phipps Conservatory & Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh, PA.

Ed Wetschler

Meet Miss Polka Dot

My favorite work in the Mattress Factory, a museum of installation art is Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Dots Mirrored Room. You step into the art

Ed Wetschler

Eat The Strip

The old warehouse area at the foot of cliffs has morphed into one of the best ethnic restaurant and food shop districts in North America. The Strip is like a Little Italy, Russia, Hungary, Greece, Middle East, China, etc. (plus meatpacking district, fish market, produce fair, yuppie emporium, etc.), but all in one convenient, aromatic neighborhood. Much of the food in the shops are perishables sold to local shoppers, but out-of-towners can eat in the restaurants, enjoy hand-crafted brews at the Brew Church, and bring home wonderful coffees, teas, chocolates, biscotti, spices, esoteric Asian and Arabic ingredients, dried fruits, air-dried sausages....

Details: The Strip, 1212 Smallman St.; tel. 412/201-4774; www.neighborsinthestrip.com

Photo Caption: A clerk with biscotti at The Strip in Pittsburgh, PA.

The National Aviary in Pittsburgh

Meet the Birds

The National Aviary's Crown Victorian pigeon looks like the love child of a peacock and a soccer ball, but unlike any other bird you've ever met, it sounds like a tympani. The National Aviary has enough Chagall-painted parrots and avian environments you can walk through to entertain even zoo-ophobes. And the outdoor Birds of Prey free-flight demonstrations, indoor Wings Avian Adventure, falconry demonstration, and other daily events make you ponder why this eagle owl doesn't just take off after that chipmunk.

Details: The National Aviary, 700 Arch St.; tel. 412/323-7235; www.aviary.org

Photo Caption: An owl flying at The National Aviary in Pittsburgh.

Frick Art & Historical Center

See the Monet That Got Away

Unlike his archrival Henry Clay Frick, steel baron Andrew Carnegie created the Carnegie Museum of Art as the country's first contemporary art museum, a collection of "the Old Masters of tomorrow." So he scooped up fabulous late 19th- and early 20th-century art -- works by Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper, Mary Cassatt's Young Women Picking Fruit, and a Monet Water Lilies that was intended for L'Orangerie in Paris. It never got there; it's in Pittsburgh.

Details: Carnegie Museum of Art, 4400 Forbes Ave.; tel. 412/622-3131; https://web.cmoa.org

Photo Caption: Detail of a Mary Cassatt painting at Carnegie Museum of Art.

Ed Wetschler

Explore the Mills that Died Away

Rivers of Steel Heritage Tours takes visitors to the sites of the 1892 Homestead Strike, where Pinkertons and Amalgamated Iron and Steel Workers killed each other (and almost killed the labor union movement). It also leads visitors into the 1891 Carrie Furnace Complex, a sprawling National Historic Landmark composed of rail tracks, towers, massive ovens, sluices, and valves. Watch your step. Please. Guides like former millworker Jim Kapusta describe the iron-refining process, the black air, the noise, and the heat that necessitated platform shoes in a pre-disco era. Today, this once-cacophonous complex sprouts wildflowers, but Kapusta keeps alive the history of America's explosive industrial era.

Details: Guided tours of Carrie are offered May-Oct.; www.riversofsteel.com

Photo Caption: Carrie Furnace images in Pittsburgh, PA

Ed Wetschler

Visit Frank Lloyd Wright's Odd Couple