Tuesday, May 13, 2025
Speakers: Ted Muller and Rob Ruck
Ted Muller and Rob Ruck, professors of history at the University of Pittsburgh, will discuss their book, Pittsburgh Rising: From Frontier Town to Steel City, 1750-1920. It tracks the city’s evolution from a frontier town that came into being as a result of the great war for empire between England and France in the 1700s; through its reinvention as the Gateway to the West after the American Revolution; its emergence as the Iron City in the 1850s, when James Parton described Pittsburgh in the Atlantic as hell with the lid taken off; and ultimately the Steel City of the 20th century.
Every so often, protean Pittsburgh, as David McCullough called it, reinvented itself and when it did there were both winners and losers, most recently the deindustrialization that walloped the region in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and the subsequent transition to an Eds and Meds economy.
Some of the problems that took hold as the city emerged—damage to the ecosystem, polarization between Pittsburgh and its rural hinterlands, inequality, and racial disparities— haven’t gone away. But these crises provoked people to step forward and seek solutions. In studying Pittsburgh’s past, they see resiliency as well as conflict and controversy.
Squirrel Hill Historical Society 