- Production of this WQED special program was made possible by the BHL Foundation serving Southwestern Pennsylvania since 1927.

Additional support was provided by the Henry l Hillman Foundation and by the wonderful members of WQED.

People like you who've called and contributed.

This program is part of Wqe D'S Pittsburgh History series.

When a lot of Pittsburghers hear the word south side, they immediately think of Carson Street.

That's where all the shops are old and new, where restaurants and bars and nightclubs have become a big attraction.

- The south side is a fun spot.

We just happen to work here, right?

It's like a hubbub anymore.

Everybody's - Reviving it, which I think is great.

- In the old days, there used to be a saloon on every corner.

Now there's a saloon and a tanning salon.

- This is a place where family traditions survive.

A largely working class neighborhood with lots of old houses, both on the fashionable flats and on the steep slopes.

We're going to take a look at some of the south side, consider some history, look at some buildings, meet some people and see if there's something good to eat along the way.

You can eat a different place every day for a month down here.

I think we've decided to call this program simply south side, south side, - Not south - Side, south side.

Early in the morning on the south side cars as well as delivery trucks often stop and park in the alley called Carry Way.

There's a wonderful smell in the air.

Something's baking.

- If you come in the back alley here, you get 'em hot, get 'em right outta the oven.

People come from everywhere, believe me, everywhere I've, I've talked to people, why I told 'em I was from the south side and they said, you know the pretzel shop?

I said, I, my mother lives next door.

Wayne Connor knows these pretzels.

Well, I grew up on them.

Pretzels and milk, pretzels and Pepsi pretzels or whatever you wanna drink with it, you know, pretzels are great, man.

- They've been making great pretzels here since 1927.

- I used to come in as a customer years ago, bought 'em on the incline when I was a kid, and I come ined a place one day and a guy said to me, you know, anybody be interested in buying a place like this?

And I said, yeah, I do.

So I bought it.

- That was in 1981.

Dan Bowen and his family have run this old pretzel business ever since.

Did they mess with the original recipe?

- No.

I'd have to be a full tangent.

No, no.

That's why a lot of people, it's a couple of people told me in the beginning you changed them.

I know there's no way in heck you would never, ever change a good thing.

No, - It's a basic mixture of water, flour and yeast that makes a big, soft old fashioned pretzel.

Dan's wife, Marlene often does the dough - Real precise on measuring, you know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

Yeah, - Six of their seven kids work here too.

Some of them arrive in the middle of the night to fire the oven and start their little assembly line.

- We usually get around here 3, 3 30 some days it's earlier, two 30 or more.

It all depends on what we have planned, on how many orders we have.

- The dough is loaded into a machine that divides it and rolls it.

It's an ancient contraption that was brought here used in the 1920s.

Marlene and her daughter, Jamie Twist every pretzel by hand.

- If I came in in the morning and say, well, this is the first of maybe 4,000 or 5,000, I would go crazy.

I don't think about what I'm doing, I just do it automatically.

- They make 'em there, put 'em on the table.

They come here, they just go in the bath, they get sticky and they raise and they come up here.

The stickiness keeps the salt on and then they're right into the fire.

- I don't know whether you'd call them a foolish pretzel or not, just a sourdough pretzel.

As far as I know of - This old brick beehive oven was built here by a Pittsburgh company in 1872.

Sean, one of the Bowen Boys usually takes care of it.

- It has a temper.

If you don't treat it right, it's not gonna treat you right.

It sounds weird.

If everything's not the same every day, if you don't keep everything in the same order, it's just not gonna cook for you.

They're not at - All like store-bought pretzels.

- A lot of people don't understand handmade, you know, they don't.

We don't measure the salt.

My mother twists different than Jamie.

Jamie's might look a little bigger than my mother's, but it's the same, same size, same weight.

- We still ate them and I mean, they're good.

- Some people like the fat port.

Some people like the tabs on the end when they break off, you grab them, they taste better than the others - While old timers and early risers still enter from the alley.

In the mid 1980s, the Bowens fixed up the building and extended their business from the oven all the way through to a more prominent storefront on East Carson Street.

It's like a bakery now.

Next, they have expanded their products to include pretzel sandwiches and a variety of other baked goods, but pretzels are still the main thing.

Anything else?

Six pretzels.

Six.

The Bowens not only created this new interior for the pretzel shop, they also cleaned up and restored the 19th century front of the building.

- It had about 25 or 30 years of paint on it and we had it steamed and cleaned and we built the front.

This was a hotel.

It became a bar quite a few times, but at the end there it was a furniture store.

- Oh, there are lots of places on the south side that aren't what they used to be.

People all over find new uses for old buildings.

And at the western end of what we are gonna call the south side, you'll find the famous Pittsburgh development called Station Square.

It used to be a railroad station.

Now it's a lot of things.

- It's a tourist destination.

There are over 134 businesses on this site.

There are restaurants here.

There are clothing shops, there are historic shops, and also it's in close proximity to downtown.

It's a great exercise to walk from here across the Smithfield Street Bridge to downtown and back.

- Howard Slaughter is a former banker who now works in historic preservation for Pittsburgh history and landmarks.

The organization that created this commercial center out of several old railroad buildings that once belonged to the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, the area that's now called Bessemer Court.

And much of the parking lot used to be filled with a huge train shed where over 70 passenger trains stopped every day.

But by the early 1970s, the station was out of use, old and dirty then history and landmarks stepped in.

The old freight house was converted into a shopping center.

The old warehouses into a modern office complex and the old p and LE headquarters were kept as offices in the renamed Landmarks building.

And in 1978, the Grand Concourse restaurant opened here, the glorious space that houses its main dining room.

Used to be the train station's two story high waiting room.

For years, - Many people came here to meet and to greet family members.

It was a place to send off young men to war.

It was a place to group young men from - War.

The PNLE built this place to impress the stained glass windows are still amazing.

- When they began to restore this building to clean all of the dirt and all of the tar that had been on the windows for well over 30, 40 years, there was a high tech polish that they used.

And you know what it was?

It was oven cleaner.

Over 400 cans of oven cleaner was used to clean those stained glass windows.

And that's a true story and that's how they cleaned them.

- Throughout the Grand Concourse, there are reminders of the spaces waiting room origins, but it's been an excellent restaurant since it opened in April of 1978.

It's - Been a success ever since then.

41st largest grossing restaurant in the country right here at Station Square in Pittsburgh.

- The success of the development of Station Square by history and landmarks in the 1970s prove to Pittsburghers that an old rundown area with some fine old structures could be revitalized without destroying all the old stuff.

- A lot of these buildings, people didn't realize what they had, the treasures that were there.

It's a new way to look at urban development and you take the urban design issues and you take the old historic preservation and you bring that together and it makes for a wonderful place to talk about and to share and it's certainly great to work.

- So we're going to say Station Square is one end of the south side here at the end of the Smithfield Street Bridge where Carson Street divides into east and west, three and a half miles east of Station Square at the intersection of Carson and Beck Run Road.

There's a drive-in ice cream place called Page Dairy Mart that marks the eastern most end of the south side.

- I consider myself the beginning of South side 'cause the sun, the sunrise is here.

First.

- Chuck Page and his family have been serving ice cream here for decades.

- We've been here since 1951 and we have soft serve ice cream and hamburgers and hot dogs and about anything sweet that you desire.

We have here - Among the many creamy treats that they whip up here is something called a dirt sundae.

- Dirt sundae.

It gets the most smiles of any sundae we sell.

It's a vanilla ice cream with two gummy worms and Roundup Oreos on top.

And the little boys think they're eating real worms that just conceit in their eyes.

- Well, the Paige family has been at this corner since the late 19th century.

The original little shop beside their old house looked like something out of the Wild West.

Like much of Pittsburgh.

This whole area was flooded in the great St. Patrick's Day flood.

In 1936 afterwards the family built a new building for their house and a gas station.

And after World War II, they added an ice cream stand.

- My grandfather started it.

The soft serve was just new.

Everything was like a custard machine or hard pack, and he wanted to get something different.

They were cones, milkshakes, and sundaes.

And the first store before it blew up, that's all they had.

- Yes, the original page Dairy Mart exploded in February of 1958.

Chuck wasn't working yet.

- I was five years old.

I was supposed to come down that day and my mother wouldn't let me come down 'cause I had to take a bath.

And I remember my mother getting the phone calls and going, oh no, it can't be.

It can't be.

And then I remember watching it on tv.

My grandfather, my, my father, and three other employees at Duane Light were sizing up the building for air conditioning.

There was a gas leaking the street.

They had used unscented gas and the gas traveled through the sewer line and the one person from Duquesne Light lit a cigar up and it just leveled the building.

Just blew all the walls off, blew all the windows off and what they would've been all killed except the center walkin cooler held the ceiling up.

- So it's a south side family business that has survived disasters, still selling some great soft serve.

- Hi, can I have a small vanilla cone?

- There's a pride in it.

I just think there you can really name a handful of businesses that have lasted that long and same family and father always said, keep quality product at a fair price and that's what we try to do still.

It's a very happy business.

- Well, all the land between page dairy and station square and the adjoining hillsides were all part of the land given by the King of England in 1763 to John Ormsby as thanks for his service in the French and Indian War Ormsbys son-in-law.

Nathaniel Bedford was the man who in 1811 decided to lay out a plan for a town here just south of Pittsburgh.

He named the Long East West streets after his wife Jane and others in her family, Mary, Sarah, Sydney, Josephine Bingham Street was for his married sister and Carson Street was in honor of a sea captain.

Friend of his Bedford named the town Birmingham after his home city in England and this Pittsburgh, Birmingham became the center of what we now call the south side.

We couldn't find a portrait of Nathaniel Bedford, but just north of Carson.

At 12th Street you'll find Bedford Square, which was named after him.

Bedford Square is where the old market house sits.

This building was actually the fifth market house on the south side built originally in 1893.

It's been a recreation center since 1950 and inside here you'll find all sorts of activities.

B seven for much of the day, every day.

This is the south side senior center.

- I think it's one of the most active senior centers around - Christine Brown.

The director here coordinates the daily lunch and all the various activities.

- You know, you try to do a lot of different things.

A lot of the guys just come in and play pool.

We, we are very fortunate.

We have three pool tables and we have guys that come in and just to play cards in the afternoon to sit down and to get away from their house or as a meeting place because that's what we're here for.

- A number of helpful as well as amusing things take place here on the first floor where originally the market stalls were located, but there's a second floor too with a full-size gymnasium.

- The gym's been upstairs for many, many years and they do all sorts of different things up there too.

- The day we stopped by, there was a lively line dance class being led by Clia Reic, - Two, three back with your right up with your left and turn around.

I love dancing.

I was a dancer way back and it's about, I would say it's about a year that I started to come down and everybody's welcomed us and this is really a nice center.

Very nice.

- Not all the activities up here are group oriented.

- I'm here every day to walk when weather's bad or don't have time.

I walk up here.

- Frank Cashey has his own personal workout.

- 17 around is mile.

I usually do 16, do our games up here, basketball and other senior games.

What else?

- Well, the market house is in Bedford Square and if you look on an old map, you'll notice that this neighborhood back in the 19th century had quite a few glass factories.

Glassworks, Glassworks, Glassworks.

- This was the National Center of Glass making.

One time more glass was made on the south side of Pittsburgh than anywhere else in the country.

This area teamed with machinists and mechanics and mold makers and metal men.

And so a lot of the new ideas in how to make glass came right out of the South side.

- Anne, mad Ross knows so much about the history of glass around here because she wrote the book Glass Shattering Notions.

As part of her work at the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, we met her in front of the red brick building on Bingham Street that now houses the Salvation Army.

It was originally a glassworks too.

- This was actually the site of the Ripley factory, which opened in the early 1870s and then in 1891, this became not just part of the factory of the US Glass Trust factory F it was called, but also became the offices and headquarters of the US glass, which was the biggest glass trust, the first glass trust and the biggest glass trust in the country.

- A few other south side glassworks produced some of the finest glass items in the world, but that wasn't the city's specialty.

- Pittsburgh was really the producer of glass for the everyday consumer.

They made a lot of it, they made it cheaply and they made it so everyone in the United States just about could afford glass.

By the 1880s - For the 1998 exhibition on glass at the hind center and located an old film that shows how panes of glass used to be made.

- It's not from the south side, but it shows a process that would've been used on the south side starting in the 1790s when they started making glass here, flat glass didn't start out flat, it started out as these big cylinders.

They blew them up to eight feet long, swung them over what were called swing pits to actually elongate them and then they'd score them with a hot piece of glass or a hot piece of metal, put them back into an oven.

And there was a guy whose job he was called the flattener, and that's just what he did.

He stood there all day long with a long metal rod and then they'd cool them down, cut them to the size of the window pane you needed, and that's how your window glass was made.

- South side glassworks produced more than just panes.

They also made bottles and table items and other pieces, many of which have survived.

- This is the kind of glass you'll see when you visit a flea market or antique shop around the area.

You see lots of this ruby stained glass.

Now this is just pressed glass.

It was made to look like expensive cut glass that would've been made probably as a souvenir, and you would've found these if you went to Co Lake Park or visited the Pittsburgh Exposition, and they would've sold this as a inexpensive little souvenir of your visit to wherever you were.

- There are interesting artifacts and other reminders of the old local glass industry, including on East Carson, the Iron and Glass bank, which also acknowledges the crucial importance of the iron industry.

On the south side there were Iron Works and subsequently a number of steel plants here.

And in the 19th and early 20th centuries, these industries attracted many immigrants to Pittsburgh.

First from Ireland and Germany, then from Eastern Europe.

Many of these people came specifically to work in Pittsburgh's giant steel mills, including those of j and l Steel, which employed over 45,000 people at one time.

- You are looking at the vast Pittsburgh Works division of Jones and Loughlin Steel Corporation covering four and a quarter miles of harbor line on both sides of the manga Halo River.

Under the near stacks are the 11 new furnaces of number four open heart.

A $70 million project in j and l's, $400 million expansion program.

- The plant was growing in the 1950s, but 40 years later, most of it was gone here in 1998.

They're finally tearing down the old steam plant, the last of the j and l buildings on the south side.

There are master plans for redeveloping this area and there are lots of people who remember working here.

- I was a child there and a lot of my memories are basically of a child in a man's world.

And it wasn't really, I think until it all went away that I realized how important it was.

- Ed Stakowski Jr. A Southside native teaches now at Pitt, but started to work in the mills when he got out of high school in the late seventies.

I - Was Labor Southside general labor, sometimes known as Southside General abuse.

We were the bottom end of the spectrum.

You know, the scenes you see when they promote the Steelers on Monday night Football, you know the, the dramatic steel worker with the sparks flying in, you know, the molten iron.

I think there were five guys who did that.

The rest of us had shovels and you know, our boots caught on fire every other day.

As the years go by, I remember it much more fondly than I did when I was actually in it, because when I was in it, frankly I hated it.

We said half the time it's hot, half the time it's cold and the other half is just miserable.

- Much of the work in the mills was difficult and dangerous, but the pay was often good.

And working in the mill was a simple fact of life.

- When I worked here, it took a lot of comfort from the fact that I could look out from where I was working and there was my folks' house and I could see my father and my mother in the front yard sweeping I could.

I could look across the hillside and see where I played ball.

I could look farther down and say there's where I went to school.

This place was really as much a part of the community as the churches, the bars, your friends' houses.

- The mill was huge, so big in fact that it's ever going away was inconceivable.

It was then an essential part of Pittsburgh's identity, - Part of the romance of the time.

The Pittsburgh Steelers, you know, winning their third and fourth Super Bowls in 78 and 79 really fed into it, you know, well for God's sake they were named after us.

There was a good bit of the tough guy macho chest beating thing.

And I think to a great extent it was earned.

And I think that made it all the more difficult when it ended.

- There seemed to be no simple answers about how or why the huge steel industry on the south side came to an - End.

I think a lot of folks blame the unions.

I think it's a knee-jerk reaction based a lot in jealousy because it's no secret that union labor made good wages.

But I think what a lot of people don't realize is that the companies were as much to blame as the unions were by not reinvesting in the plants, by investing in foreign, in foreign plants and foreign steel.

You can blame the company, you can blame the union.

You'll be right twice.

Well, there's no question many people miss the mills and the work being part of history to be part of something that no longer is it.

It's something I take pride in and I think it gives me kind of an interesting place in, in Southside's history and in Pittsburgh's history, not just me, you know, thousands of other guys like me.

- There were other steel mills on the south side in addition to j and l and on Bingham Street between 13th and 14th streets, there's still a small fabrication plant with one of those cool old painted signs on its red brick here.

They still deal with steel products every day.

- Just within the last 20 years, a lot of the people have gone like j and l, Elay Levinson, they're all gone.

But we've survived - At Walter Long Manufacturing.

Dave Long is the fourth generation of his family to work with steel in this relatively inconspicuous space.

- My great-grandfather Walter started the company in 1898, right here on the south side as far as we can figure out, actually built this building.

And prior to that, a glass factory owned this land.

Our big thing is making fabricated steel pipe.

We'll start out with a flat piece of steel and roll it into a cylinder and then weld it shut.

This particular machine my granddad bought used in 1918 as World War I surplus.

So obviously it's been around a while and we still use this machine almost every day.

And this is called a pyramid roll, mostly from the configuration of the rolls.

And what happens is you put the steel plate in between the rolls and then that top roll will exert pressure straight down on the plate and just running back and forth.

You know, the plate will come up and be rolled.

That's pretty much the whole ball wax.

Almost everything we do is custom work.

Storage tanks, pipes, bins, and hoppers.

Shoots for coal.

A a lot for the printing industry.

For a lot of the stuff we do, we we're not quite sure what the end product is.

We are, we're just darn glad they need it.

My motto is if it's steel, we can do it.

- While most of the work they do here is industrial and heavy duty.

They are always open to special requests.

- There's a, a lot of local artists down here in the south side and we get on occasion a few local sculptors and whatnot come in to ask for bending and rolling and things of that nature.

You know, local people will come in and they'll need a fence or whatnot or you know, we're, we're never too busy, you know, for the little guy because I look at, we're really little guys too, you know, we're nobody's too big that you can't help out.

You know anybody.

- Well, there are other family businesses on the south side that have survived several generations.

Frank Doer has a trucking equipment company on the flats he makes and rehabs truck bodies and other metal products.

- Basically we're a custom body builder.

The body's in anything from behind the cab on - Here in the Mary Street shop.

They do things like customizing this trailer.

- We're footing it all now with all these here desk and bins, the store everything and records and put in aluminum floor.

Now this job here was another redo.

We painted the cap the body and installed a lift gate there in the back.

Here's another product that we kind of involved in into making these refuge boxes for cities.

Burrows primary, I guess they're litter camps.

- They assemble paint and finish these sidewalk trash cans for the whole city of Pittsburgh as well as for other places.

But trucks have long been their specialty and the family has lots of photos - We made for just about all of the big name stores made around like Gimbles coffins, a lot of fire trucks.

We do a lot falls for the city Port Authority, whatever.

Anybody comes up with an idea, we go after him and we say, Hey, we'll try it and make it for you.

- One of Frank's sons, Dan works in the office here and knows some other door history.

- Well, sometimes we leave our door open so that people can see our horse that we have on display.

We used it back when we used to sell horse wagons to model our harnesses that we also sold.

And it's funny because sometimes when the door's open, people are walking past and they're startled, they'll ask us, is that real?

And we'll say, no, it's, it's just plaster repairs.

And some people think it's actually stuffed, but it's, it's not.

- The horse is on Mary Street, but the oldest door building is a couple of blocks away on Jane.

This is where the door family business started around 1903 and they still use it as a metal fabrication shop.

Frank's son, Mike works here - And this is when the, my great-grandfather was a horseshoer.

I don't think this is him here, but you can actually see someone stooping down in maybe fixing a horse.

Yeah, I can see some of a horse there.

You can see a couple legs.

- They do a lot of heavy work here, but in one corner they've kept a bit of history.

- We have a forge over there and it still has the wooden floor and the anvil and all that stuff there with it.

You know, I just never had the heart to pair it either.

- You know, when you're working on the hammer, you know, beating on the Amil a little bit, you, you think back to yourself, wow, my great-grandfather did this.

You, I didn't know him, but you know, just kind of neat to to think about that.

You know, once in a while, you know, it's not - My brother's the hands-on guy and I push the paper, I'll do some design work and quoting and bidding and it's neat to see it start from, you know, the ground up.

- Now there's something about putting your hands on it, getting it done, taking a look at it and watching it go out the door.

It's kind of like, you know, eh, - It's nice to be driving somewhere.

You could be out driving around Pittsburgh and you'll see one of your trucks drive by with your name on it and eh, we remember that one.

- Well, if you're looking for trucks on the south side, you may want to check out the huge red brick terminal buildings that fill the space between third and fourth streets.

Just east of the Liberty Bridge trucks load and unload here, backing into bays that once were railroad spurs.

Jim Miske, who works for the paper products company remembers when trains used to back right into this building.

- When I started we, we first initially started unloading box cars, me and another fellow, well we all got in there and start pulling out the boxes and load 'em all pallets and separate 'em all through the warehouse.

Us trains, you know, you had deadlines.

Three 18, here come the locomotive in the yard coming in to go pick up better be empty.

We're pushing the door shut as the, is the locomotives pulling in to pull the car out.

- When this place was built, Trane cars were backed into openings on the riverside of the building.

So box cars could be loaded inside.

And although from Carson Street, this looks like two buildings, it's actually one enormous U-shaped structure with a road through the middle.

On the third floor level, it's a giant old warehouse.

- When it was built in the turn of the century, it was the largest building between New York and Chicago.

It was the largest refrigeration plant in the world.

- Dan Lachner is the CEO of terminal properties, which owns this building and he'll tell you the whole complex includes the powerhouse by the river as well as an office building on Carson Street and the main building or buildings.

- The sum total of all of those is just shy of a million square feet.

- Dan said he'd show us some of the space, including a few of the 41 elevators.

And Chris Baker, one of the building managers came along - The fourth, fifth, and sixth floor on this building.

And the east building here is where they had the cold storage and the walls were lined with cork, as Chris will show you there.

- This was used for insulating the interior walls of the cold storage areas.

Fiberglass probably was not available at that time, was not invented yet.

- There is some empty space on the upper floors, but paper products, which is Dan's family's business stores, most of its inventory on the lower floors.

- This is a second floor.

This is a typical floor where we have product that is shipped in smaller quantities and not in pallet loads.

So we rack this stuff on shelves and onesie twosies or fives and things like that down below.

It's the big bulk pack.

That's where the bulk of our things are on the first floor.

- Lots of merchandises moved on the first floor, but the various tenants here keep things busy up on terminal way.

At the third floor level too.

Even in the smaller buildings, you may find a company like the Pittsburgh office of US Web.

Marco Cardamone is the managing partner here where they do a variety of modern media projects for many different clients.

- And this is the main communications room for all of the internet projects that we have developed.

These machines hold websites for our clients and over there we have racks of communication devices, modems, that sort of thing that link together.

This facility with the internet.

- They use the relatively old offices up here for all sorts of relatively new computer-based imaging.

- Well, we first came to the terminal buildings in 1987 and we think it's great.

We like the south side quite a bit.

We like the proximity to the city, yet being a little bit outside of the city hustle bustle.

And we like the scale of the terminal complex.

- They apparently liked it so much.

They're now in two of the buildings.

- We have our digital photography studio across the street and we have an electronic link connecting this room and that facility.

So the two facilities kind of work together.

- So the terminal buildings built in 1903 can apparently survive many advances in technology, simply offering all kinds of space, never really attracting a lot of attention, except perhaps up on top - On the roof.

We have the Marlboro sign, which is famous because it's one of the most visible billboards in the state of Pennsylvania.

Second, only the one near the Walt Whitman Bridge.

- Yeah, lots of Pittsburghers know that billboard, but it's probably not as beloved as the big old clock face on the old Duane Brewery.

That clock installed here in 1950 was built in 1933 and was then the largest single face clock in the world.

It's been broken since the early 1990s and nobody wants to pay to fix it because there's still some uncertainty about what's going to happen to this complex of buildings.

Duquesne Beer built these newer structures in the late forties, right across Mary Street from the old brew house built in 1899.

Originally, the independent brewery, - It's overbuilt 'cause it had to hold all the brewery tanks, all the liquids.

The floors are over foot thick and the so, I mean, it's really overbuilt.

So to tear it down is, is just crazy.

- Bob Bingham knows a lot about this old brewery because he and his family live here.

They're part of an ever-changing group of artists known as the Brewhouse Association.

- And the mission of the brewhouse is really to take these spaces and fix them up so that they're livable for artists.

They aren't, it's not high class living by any means, but I believe that artists, younger people in Pittsburgh need a reasonable place to live and work.

If you want to expect him to stay here and have some kind of art community.

- Bob, his wife Catherine and their daughter Maya, live on the fifth floor.

Bob admits that at first living here was a bit like camping, but he spruced up the place just before Maya was born.

A wall divides their living quarters from Bob's studio with easy access between the two.

Not all the spaces in the building look like this because each is customized by the various artists.

- There's a mix of ceramic sculptors, metal sculptors, painters, photographers, filmmakers, and usually what attracts them to the space is the amount of space and that it's affordable.

So it's people that need large working space and don't mind living a little bit on the rustic side.

- Well, not everyone who works here lives here.

Rick Bach is one of the non-resident artists who rent the large workshop space on the ground floor.

They are known as the industrial arts co-op, or IAC, - This group of five artists that share the space.

Most people are working in steel, some people are building furniture, some people are just building sculptures.

Ray Applebee's, building a line of furniture to take to the Chicago Design Show.

This is a giant piece built by Tim Collin for vo check.

A play that was just held here a few weeks ago.

It's made, you know, from steel mill scraps.

It's on wheels and it does this neat thing with its head.

These little things back here.

You fill them with nuts and bolts and then somebody behind the scenes would pull them and, and it would poop bolts and all around you.

These are all art giant outdoor art pieces in storage.

Giant heads you can see just literally thousands of pounds of billboard material stored just everybody's pack rats.

I think for a lot of us it, it changes the way you work.

Like, like if you're working in, you know, your apartment or a small studio and then you come here, just the enormity of it and the heavy dirtiness of it all sort of changes the way you think it like really opens, opens up your thought process.

I think - Enormous space is just one benefit of living and or working in the brew house.

Bob invited us up to the rooftop.

- This is what we call the post-industrial roof deck garden.

It's a communal space that everybody can use.

Obviously there's more than 30 people in here.

We can't quite fit 30, but we have this large stainless steel table we got from Frank Dore and a new recently purchased barbecue that everybody uses, all kind of looming under the, the large stacks from the brewery boiler.

And just this past year started greening this area to take a little bit of that industrial edge off.

- Cool.

Now the brewhouse also has a gallery of sorts where artists can come and display their works.

It's a space that helps connect the brewhouse artists to their neighbors and friends and visitors on the south side.

We asked Skip Lowy to meet us there in Space 1 0 1.

He used to work for the Duque Brewery and has put together a great collection of Duquesne beer artifacts and paraphernalia.

- This is a different Duque Brewery memorabilia from different ages.

The brewery started in 1903 and was closed down in 1972.

I was a bottler at in the bottle house.

My machine was Duane Ile seven Ounce.

I was the smallest guy there so I could fit in a hole to clean out the machine.

And these are my pride and joy.

Various taps from various ages.

There's celluloid, there's porcelain, there's modern day plastic.

- By the 1950s, Duquesne was one of the 10 biggest breweries in the country for many years.

The largest selling beer in Pennsylvania called itself the finest beer in - Town.

If you worked there, it was the finest beer in town.

I enjoyed it.

It was kind of salty, but it was free.

So you go eat lunch and you open a cooler and you drink a beer.

- Lots of pittsburghers.

Remember the old Duane ads?

- They had a few jingles on, have a Duke, have a Duke, have a Duke, duke cane.

There was a few on tv.

- Duke screwed with big round barley.

Charlie.

That's why it's got the kind of rich round flavor, ordinary beers that not, it takes that bigger barley Charlie four flavor that's rich and round.

Next round Charlie make it Duke.

- This is my favorite piece.

This is right after Prohibition.

It's a neon sign at Duquesne Prince of Pilsner, which I got out of an old hotel in Meadville.

- You know, a lot of these things have that guy with the glass.

Who is he?

- He's to Prince of Pilsner and probably later on he was the Duke of Pilsner.

- Well, you can't have a Duke anymore, but the South side is still famous for having plenty of bars at the corner of Jane in 27.

There's an old one called Chika Cafe.

It's a neighborhood place since the mid sixties.

It's been owned by the Chuka family.

It's classic dark TV's on small menu, reasonable prices, lots of regulars, - Iron City Bear, and shots of Imperial or WinDor shot in Bear Bar.

- Now you might find Rich Chuka here, or you might find him down on East Carson at the family's other place known as Chika Two.

- Down here, it's more, you know, mixed drinks, vodkas and pictures of shots.

We saw more food, you know, sales wise than beer and whiskey and - It's good food.

The bartender here, Earl Rudi says Chka two changes depending on when you stop by - During the day.

More of a restaurant evening it becomes a bar, but it's nice.

It still has a good atmosphere.

Can't park, but, - But at lunchtime they serve some great hardy specials cooked up by Earl's cousin Jane Heininger.

- It's basically sauce side cooking.

I was raised basically on the south side by my mother and father.

My grandparents lived here and it's just plain old home cooking.

And I don't like giving out little portions because that's not what I was raised.

And I don't know how to cook for two people, so I'd rather cook for a whole lot.

- Well, a whole lot of people come to the south side to eat.

There are dozens of restaurants that serve a wide variety of foods.

- Oddly enough, you want to have a restaurant in an area where there are a lot of other restaurants.

- When Christine Dobber opened her restaurant called La Palmier on the south side in 1983, it was one of the first fancy restaurants on Carson Street.

- I don't think of it as being fancy, but serious restaurant is the way I think of it or serious about our cooking.

- Christine and her staff use the best quality ingredients and prepare things relatively simply.

Simply.

She calls the cooking here French Family Style Dinner can be extraordinary and the desserts often prepared by Helen King can be sublime.

- Desserts is part of my specialty.

It's one of my favorite things I like and dessert, because you have to measure them.

You have to be precise.

You can't put it like, well, I wanna have a little bit more of this.

No, not in dessert, because it has to be precise measurement.

Voila.

- Hmm.

Well, if your French is a little rusty, you may wonder about the name of this place.

- I chose the Pommier because it means the apple tree.

We planted the apple tree when we started and it's 15 years old now and we get a very lot of apples from it.

And they're really excellent.

- Well, there are other excellent restaurants nearby too, like Cafe Allegro on 12th Street at Bedford Square.

Joe Nolan has been the chef here since the place opened in the late eighties.

- We're famous for the idea that we're not afraid to create different and new items.

You know, we do a grilled calamari that's, that's absolutely dynamite.

And most of the places you might go and find a breaded, calamari fried, and we don't have a fryer.

- What they do seem to have is a concern for really great food and for making some of the best breads in the city.

- Anytime there's a new bus person or a new waiter, I always give them my spiel.

And my spiel is, the most important thing in my mind is the customer's first impression.

And the first impression here is a nice fresh bread that we make daily.

- Joe and his staff make the bread in the downstairs kitchen where they do a lot of the basic prep work.

While we were down here, Joe volunteered to show us one of the usually unseen parts of the restaurant.

- This is, this is actually our wine cellar.

It used to be an old cool cellar.

Actually, if you were standing up above me, you'd be out on the sidewalk.

We, we store both red and white in here.

So what we want to do is keep it in that 65 degree range.

Is it a great wine cellar?

Well, it's not Mario Lause, but it, it, it works nice for us because again, it keeps it nice and cool, especially in the summertime.

- Cafe Allegro has won all sorts of awards for its food and its service.

It's really become a neighborhood landmark.

- The South side itself is such a dynamite area because, you know, it has really revived into such a nightlife scheme where 10 years ago there wasn't a lot of nightlife down here.

- Well, now after dark, especially on Fridays and Saturdays, things can get pretty exciting on and near Carson Street.

Many people think that this whole nightlife tradition really started back in 1980 when Bob Sno opened Mario's on East Carson at 16th.

- We were probably one of the first ones here, one of the first new ones here.

Oh my God.

Other than maybe D's down the street, I think maybe we are pretty much one of the longer surviving businesses down here.

The camp driver brought us here, said it's a starting point because every time you wanna go out and have some fun, start at Mario's, you can work your way either north or southeast.

We've been a couple different things.

We've been a restaurant for a while.

This - Is a place to be - In a bar for a while in a bar and restaurant for a while.

Better the universe.

The best way to describe it is we're, we're we're different.

- It's my birthday.

- By the mid eighties, Mario's was getting crowded.

So Bob opened Blue Lou's next door.

The two places were originally designed to be somewhat distinct.

- Both the businesses have kind of meshed into one business.

It's, it's hard with a common walkway between the two really to, to have two separate different businesses.

- If you ain't here, you ain't Southside do it anywhere.

Play - It simple.

So Mario's and Blue lose both sell food and drink and at both you can get what's called a yard of beer.

- It's a glass that's hand blown and it's a full yard in length.

It holds 42 ounces of beer.

Make sure you don't - $50 - If you - Break it.

Well, all this beer drinking has its effects.

And in the eighties, many old time South Siders became very upset about bar patrons around here who apparently couldn't find the restroom.

Ah, this - We call - A porta - Potty.

We ran into some trouble with, with some people outside that were doing things outside that probably should have been taken care of before they went home inside.

Woo, what do you We bought these from a local hospital supply company.

We filled 'em with beer and we sell them and we, we call them porta-potties.

- Hey, if South Side wasn't the place to be, would you be here?

- No.

Yeah.

But there are countless reasons why this is one happening neighborhood - Tonight.

I'm gonna see Donny Aris.

'cause he is a Pittsburgh tradition.

- You know, I've been playing here all my life.

I do.

I have a, I have a love for Pittsburgh.

I really do.

You sound good man.

You sound good.

Do it.

- Mandy.

We're the biggest - B Irish fans of Pit ever.

Nick's fat city.

Nick's fat city.

Every time we play here, both nights, it's, you know, it's standing room only.

It's packed and it, it's, it's just a great rock and roll time.

Great place to be.

- So maybe you get Donny at Nick's and you know, there are lots of other bars nearby and not all of them so loud and wild and crazy.

There are lots of loyal patrons at places like Jack's, which claims to be the only bar in Pittsburgh open 365 days a year.

Who knows?

But if you're not old enough to hit the bars, you can still enjoy the South side.

- What do you mean?

How are you?

We just come to have fun on a Friday night.

You know, we ain't bothering nobody.

You know what I'm saying?

We're staying cool.

You know, people, somebody to show it.

I don't like sitting in a crib all - Night.

Well, there's no limit on who can get a cup of coffee.

And perhaps the most distinctive of the many South side coffee houses is the beehive shave.

Don't have money to like go to the movies.

That's just, you know, if I'm down here, chill, it's free.

The beehive opened in February of 1991.

It attracts some of the most interesting and unusual coffee drinkers around Steve Zov and Scott Kramer are the young guys who put this place together.

- We're both still really involved down here, just hanging out or playing pinball.

- Yeah, we saw just medium coffees.

Lots of medium coffees.

- This sort of came together by not having a lot of money to open it.

We, but it was also a style.

- Everything in the place should be like art.

- He wanted to like have all mismatch furniture and mismatch mis - So like we use different chairs and, and like, so each chair is a different piece of art.

We had seen other coffee houses - Around the United States.

- Well, I wanted to use like, like a furniture, like the, the GR grandma's table.

- And we did it and it was unique to Pittsburgh, so that's why it caught on from day one.

- But I think what makes it interesting is the people that hang out here, - It's a totally different crowd day and night.

- You know, freaks.

Lots of freaks.

- We don't do much to change the place.

It just keeps going.

- We used to have a lot of dogs in here, but recently the Health Department cut that.

I like to think that we're still part of the new South side, but I think the new and the older is, is are blending really fast - And older, new.

What difference does it make?

The beauty of all this activity is you can stumble upon cool things to do by just walking around.

- It's Studio Z Gallery and we're having an opening tonight and we do this once a month and we serve cheap white wine and Brie and whatever.

- And Kathleen Vicki does this to honor her artist of the month.

- It's fun.

I don't have to entertain at home because I do it here.

- Studio Z Gallery has been on Carson Street since 1975.

The city theater didn't arrive on Bingham Street until 1991.

Mark Masterson, its producing director, helped move this cultural organization into what used to be an old - Church.

We were very careful to retain as much of the historic architectural detail as possible in the building so that when you come into the space, you feel what used to be here.

And the building has a lot of character and we tried to, rather than gut it, we tried to fit the new stuff in and still have a feeling of what was once here.

This is a really nice size for a theater because you're very aware that it's live.

You know, it's, you're not sitting watching it with opera glasses.

You can see every eyebrow move and every little gesture means something.

And when you can conjure up that communication between a bunch of people sitting in these seats and a few people sitting up there, for me it can be very exciting.

And that happens often enough in this space because of the space.

I think in part - A building space and its history can make a difference.

Consider the unpretentious structure at the end of the 10th Street Bridge.

You might not give it a second look, but on the south side of the building along the top, there are great little architectural decorations, weird carved fish that give you a hint about what's inside this old structure.

It's an indoor public swimming pool that was built here in 1915.

- I think people actually like it better because it's an older building.

- It's called the Oliver Bathhouse.

And the Big Year-Round Pool fills most of the first floor here.

- Also, when you're taking down their name and their phone number.

- Shelly Terlecki, who's the aquatics program coordinator for City Parks, is in charge of all the lifeguards and helps keep this south side landmark in good shape.

- The city of Pittsburgh takes care of the Oliver Bathhouse and really anybody can swim here.

As long as you have a pool pass or you pay daily admission, anyone can swim.

- Oh, there are some times when the pool is reserved for special programs, like from five to 7:00 PM when the Three Rivers aquatics team is here, kick - Legs together, kick harder, stretch the arms, - Stretch your arms.

Hosea Holder, who retired after 27 years at the Oliver Bathhouse still coaches the kids' teams and he's taken them to competitions and pools all over the area.

- Well, I would say this one's probably second to none.

The water's excellent, clarity's good chlorine level's good.

pH is good and it's great.

It's just an old - Building, that's all.

But the place has a unique charm because of its age.

And Hosea knows some of its history.

The Oliver - Iron and Steel built the building and donated to the city to keep it open for the public.

Two more Stacey reach, reach - On the second floor, there's a balcony and men's and women's changing rooms with showers nearby.

Originally there were some tubs in the building for literally taking - Baths.

This community at one time didn't have indoor plumbing as we know it today.

So they used to come in and they could get a bar of soap and a towel and they could get a bath and they also could go swimming if they wanted to.

Now they had segregated swimming when I mean by segregated swimming.

They had women's day and men's day because as you know, back then men didn't wear suits when they went swimming here.

- Well, nobody skinny dipped when they held meets and diving competitions here.

And actually this facility has always been primarily a swimming pool rather than a public bath in spite of its name.

And folks still use this place every day.

It's probably busiest during the adult swim every weekday morning at nine.

There are lots of regulars here too.

- I've been here since 1945.

I used to swim for the Bureau of Recreation when I was a young lad, and now I'm an old man.

I come three days a week and I enjoy every many of it.

- My name is Melvin Kowski.

I'm 84 years old.

I've been coming here for seven years.

You can see how good of a specimen I am.

Whoa, don't drop that towel, honey.

You on camera.

What?

This is perfect place.

The price is right and you can beat it.

- And it's not many places that at 40 I can be one of the youngsters.

- Okay.

I have two requests.

One that the pool open at eight o'clock.

Everybody knows everybody.

We moved.

A whole bunch of us been coming together.

I've been coming here since 1927.

And the second request is we'd like President Clinton to come here.

We'd love him to have a swim with us.

Okay.

That's it.

- I feel better for doing it.

I feel a lot better for doing it.

- It used to embarrass me when somebody would say, where do you go to swim?

I'd say the Oliver Bathhouse.

But it sounds like a dirty old man's place where you come to all of the girls or something, you know?

- Yeah.

I was just, you know, telling somebody that I swim down here and they said, oh, my mother used to bathe down there.

Oh.

But he - Said, well, it's the bath house.

- So there's no difference in this place since 1927.

The only difference is we wear baiting suits.

- I love it.

I like, I just love it.

I love the people too.

The people are great.

- We've been friends for the last 40 years.

Oh yeah.

And we met new friends here.

- It's a wonderful feeling.

You feel like you're in a continuum and a community.

You're just one link in a chain of all of the community people that have come and gone and spent a little bit of their lives at the Oliver Bathhouse.

It's terrific.

- My request again, open an hour earlier and close at an hour earlier.

That means open at eight o'clock and ask President Clinton to come swim here.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

This is wonderful.

- Peace.

When you're done swimming, if you're still intrigued by interesting old spaces, you might wanna hike down Carson to the modest red brick building at 22nd Street.

It's a classic Carnegie Library.

This is the South side branch.

- It's not very large library, although we have about 30,000, 40,000 books here.

Volumes, as they say in the library business.

- Charmaine Molac has been the department head here since the late eighties.

- I walked in and I just thought, wow, this is what a library is supposed to look like.

This all the woodwork, all the windows, all the books.

This is a dream library.

It was built in 1909 and the week that it opened, it had I think 10,000 visitors and the shelves were picked clean in the first week.

There were no books left.

They had to get books from other libraries.

They had so many different nationalities here that the staff had to speak several languages and they were hired based on, could you speak Polish?

Could you speak French?

Could you speak German?

- The building itself hasn't changed much.

And even all the modern additions of computer terminals and such have been installed with concern for the style of the old structure and its glorious woodwork.

- The oak is original to the building.

The front desk is an example of this.

Most of the tables are original to the building, and one way you can tell if it's original or not is the original places where the Gaslights came up have been enclosed with the Old Oak.

- There are other pieces of the past too.

A brass slot in the front desk from the days before.

Computers, a beautiful old cabinet phone booth.

And on the stairway, the stamp of Carnegie Steel is a permanent reminder of who got this place started.

Charmaine also knows about a few historic items that aren't there anymore?

- In our children's alcove, there used to be a little tiny sink in a closet, and the librarians would make the children wash their hands before they handled the books.

And I found out it wasn't just to protect the books sometimes this was the only place the children were able to bathe, and so they would wash their hands and faces here at the library.

And also it helped greatly in combating germs and disease - Libraries of long provided a variety of useful services, and this busy branch is no exception.

- There was a lot of contention in the beginning about building a library on the south side.

They thought that the working men may not appreciate a library, but the south side branch proved that this was a library for the people, for the working class.

- Because the south side has so long a history as a working class neighborhood, there aren't many real mansions around.

Most of the houses are small with 19th century origins, sometimes covered with siding, often with a classic pool vent awning over the doorway.

If you drive up into the slopes, the roads get steep and weird, and you start to notice all the stairways.

John Fiore has delivered mail up here since the mid eighties.

He knows how many steps he climbs every day.

- 1,260 total.

Well, yeah, 1,260.

It's eight miles total.

Eight miles.

That if you, if you walk the whole ride off, now we're going up, then we're gonna go back down.

You don't have to pay BS no money, just do it for free.

And you breathe heavy, but you have to like it.

You have to like this, this rod.

I don't think anybody wants it, but in the, in the scenic route, really, it's good for the mind.

It helps me out quite a bit.

I'm never tired.

- People who use these stairs know that they have unexpected benefits.

- You know, just look at that.

You don't need volume, you don't need Prozac.

You just need Pittsburgh.

And it's a good view.

But the main thing, it's a healthy eye in the post office is a good job.

I had to say that Dooby Doy doo - Be dooby doo.

Some of the streets are streets that turn into steps that turn into streets again, and maybe back to steps, depending on how steep that hill is.

There's little rhyme or reason other than the logic of topography.

They put the streets where they can.

- Dennis Barry is an artist and carpenter who has lived on the South side slope since 1988.

He and his wife Deanna, fixed up an old house that's typical of many up here.

- It's a vernacular Victorian, two rooms deep, one room wide, and from the front looks say two story.

Yeah, yeah.

And from the back is four story.

- Dennis has started a community organization of people who live on the slopes, and he's fixing up another house, just down the street, because despite his Texas roots, he's come to like it.

Here.

- I got to know and care for the, the surrounding neighbors and wanna live here a long time.

It's my neighborhood.

This was a two unit house and I've turned it back into one.

I want the owner to live in this house.

What I, what I usually do is keep it to historic preservation standard, which means that the street face has to be done in paint, wood windows, basically a restoration.

However, on the sides and the back, you can do pretty much what you want.

The trim up on the porch post that was added, I put that on too.

And it's, it's a day's work.

You know, it's an unnecessary day's work for most contractors because it won't change the value of the house.

It's just an added touch.

You know, after all, I'm an artist, you know, I've got, I've got to add a little something to it.

You know, - These hillside neighborhoods have attracted and held a special breed of people as long as folks have been living on the south side, - Long-term residents, they live nowhere else.

It says something for the area when someone stays their entire lives in one place.

- Well, I've lived in the, this area all my life, born and raised, married, and bought this home and raised my family here.

- Mary Jane Sch Malte is a south side historian with a great view.

- This is a good place to just sit and reminisce and relax and read and quiet.

There's not many children in the neighborhood anymore.

That's the difference.

I watched that steel mill going down.

Every time we heard a boom, we knew one of the mills was coming down.

We would get the camera and take pictures.

I have a whole little album of pictures.

There goes the Blooming Mill where grandpa worked, and my husband worked Uncle Nick in one section.

My dad had 49 and a half years in the Mill Union organizer.

Great guy.

I think I'd take after him.

- Well, it would be wrong to imply that it's only the slopes that keep southsiders.

The flats have long lasting charms too, despite the fact that places like the old St ca me's church at the corner of Sarah and 22nd aren't what they used to be.

- This church here was built in 1901 and it's Lithuanian Parish, basically.

- Frank Jka, who's retired now, grew up in this neighborhood and has spent a lot of time in the building behind the church.

It's all apartments now.

- Well, it used to be St. Casper School.

That's where I live now.

I graduated from here in 1947.

I went here for 12 years.

I was born and raised right down the alley here, and I lived there all my life up until 1956.

Anyway, right now I live in the first apartment right here on the right.

- The old school was split up into modern apartments in the mid 1990s.

- There's six apartments on each floor.

There are three floors.

There's 18 apartments.

They're all one bedroom.

My apartment has 14 foot ceilings.

Certain buildings have character.

When you walk in a building, you have a good feeling.

You don't in this building, I had a good feeling.

I'm, I'm the only geezer in a place.

Most of 'em are yuppies.

Sometimes I wonder if the ghost is, some of the nuns are around ready to tweak my ears when I'm making too much noise or something.

- Well, it seems unlikely that any of the other residents of St. Cassie's school will ever have a photo like the one Frank has.

- It's a picture of me in the third grade.

This picture was taken in 1938, and I was down here standing right in the same spot.

That's me holding the sign.

Grade three.

- So some say these days, wild and crazy young people are changing the south side.

What does Frank who move back after 40 years?

Think about all the new stuff.

- I like it.

Some of the old timers complain because the new people, the the outsiders come in and they're a little trashy and maybe a little rowdy once in a while.

But that's sort of a mixed blessing.

If, if this new element didn't come in and bring some life back to south side when the mills closed, south side would've been dead.

It's nice.

Now, is there still enough of the old and enough of the new to give it new life?

- Well, over the years, this neighborhood's new life has been the concern of many people, including Don Carlson.

He's got a local real estate company now and has lived on Sarah Street since the early - 1990s.

Well, I grew up in a small town and, and the south side is just a small town in a big city.

- Much of that small town feel comes from the great collection of 19th century buildings along East Carson Street.

Don was the first director of the South Side local development company, which along with other organizations like Pittsburgh History and Landmarks, the Birmingham Union and the South Side Chamber of Commerce worked to save the Victorian character of this shopping district.

- It attracts people, people from outside the area who, who walk down East Carson Street are always marveling at, at how attractive the buildings are on East Carson Street and, and how vibrant that is.

- The buildings in the shops along East Carson are such a rare collection of vintage structures and lively businesses that the whole district was designated as a great American main street by the National Trust for Historic preservation.

And one of the best things about shopping on East Carson Street is that there are still some businesses that have survived from an earlier era on the south side, places like t and t Hardware, it's a classic wood floor hardware store.

The Tuss family has been one of the tees since it opened in 1937.

- What else?

Sir?

- Mike Tuss now owns and operates the place.

- It's real true hardware, a lot of nuts and bolts and screws, A lot of the oddball nuts and bolts and screws, the metrics, the grade eights, the SAEs, stuff like that that a lot of people don't carry and can't afford to carry.

- You know, I don't like to admit this because I'm the hardware guy, but you know, quite often I'll find something I'll, you know, I have to ask someone else, you know, what is this?

'cause - You come in with a bag of parts or whatever, dump on the counter, we're gonna lay 'em out, get our hands greasy and dirty.

We're we're gonna fix it.

It's, it's, it's service - And it's a lot of little drawers, bins and shelves full of who knows what and who knows how.

These guys remember where everything is.

- Mark is the newest fellow here and he's still learning.

- You know, I'm, I'm still asking Mike, you know, I know I've seen him.

Where did I see it?

You know, and, you know, 99 out of a hundred times he tells me it's, you know, to the left of whatever, you know.

Right, right below something else.

- Speaking up to the left of, would you grab your 41 right here, please, sir.

Just, it just takes time.

You've gotta put it away to - Know where it is.

They'll tell you that about 60% of their business comes from the trades carpenters and plumbers and construction guys.

But they get a lot of walk-in traffic too.

And they have regulars.

- We, we have guys that come in here, you know, every morning, every morning, whether they need anything or not, just to say hi and stop in.

Oh sure.

I mean, this is the old time neighborhood business - Waiting to get waited on.

There we go.

Fell asleep.

That's, that's our official youngest t and t customer.

People have to come in here and just look around.

They, they come in here and they look at these, these galvanized tubs up here.

And invariably some, one of the older people say, I used to take a bath in one of those things.

Well now we sell 'em.

They put kegs of beer in and run ice around.

Somebody comes in, they want a pawn of nails, they're not in boxes.

We dump in our scale and we weigh out a pond and nails - While the front of t and t is fascinating.

What's amazing is all the inventory they keep in the back room and in the basement.

- The selling area is only about 2000 square feet, but that's only about 20 to 25% of what's here.

- It wasn't hard to persuade Mike to take us on a tour behind the scenes.

- We're going downstairs.

We're going downstairs.

Okay.

We're gonna bring you down into the dungeons and the caddy combs of t and t Hardware.

Now, this is probably the oldest section of the store.

We have a glass section here that we sell people glass or fix their windows for them.

A lot of galvanized pipe.

And then we also have a small machine shop here.

People come in and need little things made, little things done.

They're stuck.

They can't find parts and pieces.

Sometimes we can make them in or fix 'em.

A lot of this stuff means that a lot of this stuff my dad had his hands on.

My dad was in here for 50 years and he built like this shelving.

This is my life.

This is my life.

This is what I've lived for.

This is what I grew up with.

I grew up with, with hardware.

- Mike's love for this business seems to be shared by all the guys who work here.

Jeff, at k - Go.

We've got years of experience between all of us up here.

There's over 50 to 75 years of experience standing around waiting for people to come in.

- Do you have two by four lens for big fluorescent lights?

- Yes sir.

- You do?

- Yes, sir.

- All right.

I'll have one.

How many?

- One.

One.

12 in a box.

- Pardon me?

There's 12 in a box.

Okay.

I don't need 12.

I just need, you want one box?

No one.

Oh, just one.

Yeah, but there's 12 in a box.

- Well, can't box.

That'll get you one.

Yeah.

- I live in Shadyside, but this is where I do my shopping.

- Yeah.

Why - For a hardware store?

- Why do you come?

- Because, because they're so helpful and they have everything that's free now because I just gave you a good commercial.

We're paying for it.

Okay.

We're paying for it.

- You might have thought this kind of hardware store was extinct, but t and t survives.

- Oh, we're, we are dinosaurs.

We're the last of the old ones.

Okay, thank you.

Probably one of the last of the old ones in the city.

We're one the last of the old hardware stores in the - City.

Well, shopping Carson Street is not like shopping in a suburban mall.

This is a two-sided strip of specialty shops that you won't find anywhere else.

Stores like Pittsburgh guitars, - Guitars are just like people.

They all have personalities and when you play enough of them, you can just tell with the first few chords just what kind of personality that guitar has.

I mean, this is one that you should use the blue notes some nights you're playing.

- Why didn't you have it back at 11 o'clock?

You wouldn't believe Carl Griffin is the man who some would say, made shopping on Carson Street.

Cool.

Did you bring us a tape of it?

- Yes.

All right.

So we can hear it.

How it sounds.

Wonderful.

Big, very big.

When we moved here in 85, we were one of the first establishments to come into this area who was really gonna draw outsiders into the south side.

So we're kind of proud of that.

Carl has convinced lots of pittsburghers about the joys of used and vintage guitars.

A lot of people want to have a guitar with no scratchers on it whatsoever, but if it's due to playing where, like on this guitar here, you can see the ripples in the wood because he has kept his thumb there as he was playing.

That's due to a million gigs.

This particular bass is the one that Dean Murray played in the Elton John Band.

Band that was played on all the Elton John hits.

- Other - Guitars here have interesting histories too, - And there are - Many that are apparently good deals.

We kind of view our prices as Pittsburgh prices, so there's several hundred dollars cheaper than they would be in a national sense.

We just love guitars.

That's basically it.

- Following Carl's lead over the years, other young entrepreneurs have come to Carson Street, including the guys who sell recorded music at Premier CDs near the far end of East Carson.

- We liked it because it's not a cookie cutter neighborhood.

I mean I, I just like, like the looks of our windows and the store itself 'cause it's an old historical building and you don't get that going in a mall.

- Ron Kouts and his partner Bill Toms opened this shop in the mid nineties.

They sell CDs of some of bill's work, including stuff he's done as the lead guitarist for Joe Gache in the House Rockers, the Pittsburgh band whose one CD was produced by Bruce Springsteen.

- He's played here twice in the south side with us.

That was a lot of fun and he came down here and visited our store - And actually we had two people in the store.

Didn't even recognize him 'cause he looked just like any other guy coming off his job - Here at Premier, they sort of specialize in what's called American Roots Rock, but they sell all kinds of music, new and used and people have come to know that you can get all sorts of cool used stuff along and near Carson Street.

- Why used to come to the south side?

Because I liked the cool little stores, the, you could go through a used bookstore and just kind of browse through the shelves.

So I always liked that kind of stuff.

It's like a flea market for a whole street.

- Actually.

There are some great used bookstores in this neighborhood, including city books at 1111 East Carson.

It's a slightly dark and irresistible place if you're a book lover.

Ed Gel Bloom has been selling books here since the mid eighties.

- It's an antiquarian outer print.

Primarily rare or scarce bookstore basically.

We do specialize in philosophy but we're strong in other areas, literary areas, the arts history.

We sell both collectible books as well as reading material.

I even like to read the things you take down to the beach.

A good, a good western, a good detective story, you know.

Anyway, Sherlock's Home was a famous English philosopher.

- Ed appreciates philosopher jokes because he taught for 30 some years in the philosophy department at Duquesne University before he retired.

He says this second career dealing with books just sort of happened.

- It's a fun thing or it can be a fun thing.

Yeah, I think I enjoy more of the getting of them, even if I only had them for a while and pay us number one by selling them or whatever.

- I'll have to check.

Would that that would that be - Over?

- That would be over there.

- Yeah.

Well, like most of the other storefronts around here, this building has quite a history.

- I mean it's been hotels, it's been restaurants.

There was a murder, I believe I have to check in the building here with involved a woman and a priest.

I mean there's been all kind of things in this building.

It's been through a lot of things.

- Obviously there were enough volumes here to keep anybody busy.

But this isn't the only bookstore in the neighborhood.

There's - A bookstore here on the corner.

It's a sort of a socialist bookstore.

There's another bookstore block and a half up.

It's been there in less than a year or maybe just about a year.

- It's called ljs Used books because my first name starts with an l. - J is for me.

Although people call me Frank, my middle name is Jason.

- So we made the word LJ - And we decided to spell it out 'cause I thought that would look a little more bookish and pretentious and so it'd be more fun.

- And we sometimes say Ljs not here, or Ljs coming in later.

But there is no lj.

We are lj.

- Well their real names are Louise Neve Campbell and Frank.

Jason Rito.

Lemme, you can go ahead.

Louise and Frank have been buying and selling used books here at 1309 East Carson since 1997 when they moved here from Nashville, Tennessee.

- I would describe it as a general used bookstore.

We have everything - Within this part of the neighborhood.

There really wasn't a general bookstore.

You couldn't go someplace and get cookbooks in science fiction in psychology and all in one stop.

- We have a whole list of people looking for history books on Poland, the Ukraine, these things that we, we come across anything interesting.

We call them - Books on samurai warriors and, and karate.

Let's see our natural history section, which is over here.

Also pets and animals.

- We get old timers, south siders.

A lot of the old timers come in looking for cookbooks.

- Cookbooks.

I cried every time I sold a cookbook when we first opened because they were all mine.

I had to a few hundred and and I had to give them up for the betterment of the store.

- It's comfortable.

We want you to make yourself at home.

If you have any questions, we're here for you.

- It seems to be all we have.

There's more Ians at the front.

- If you don't, you could stay all day.

Some over here.

One of the reasons I wanted to have a used bookstore was because the prices of books were going up.

To the extent that a paperback is 7 99.

I thought that was exorbitant.

- Here at L j's they put some of their cheapest items outside the front door where there are dollar racks and even boxes of free books.

These sidewalk selections like Louise and Frank are relatively new here, but they seem to fit in nicely in the neighborhood.

- Oh, I love the south.

I really do.

'cause I like both kinds of blue-haired people and you get 'em here, the little blue-haired people with the spikes and you know, the older blue-haired people and they're both really nice.

- Okay.

You know the crazy mix of shops here is one of the true joys of wandering along Carson.

There are classy galleries and antique shops and undefinable places all mixed together.

And as you make your rounds, it's hard to resist bopping into a one of a kind shop like the purple pop Emporium known as groovy.

- If it's groovy, we might have it Mostly.

Mostly I deal with toys, collectible toys from the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties.

- Renee Dupree opened this place in 1992.

It's impossible to say what all is in here.

Zillions of old play things, familiar and bizarre.

Lots of tiny plastic figures.

- Well, superheroes have been around for quite a while.

Who buys them?

Other superheroes?

- Yeah.

We have - Three different colors.

Wow, you must have a lot.

We - Have a few hundred of them.

Many collectors love this shop - Necklace.

No toys are not for kids.

Right, - But anybody may encounter a long lost, beloved old toy or a favorite old lunchbox.

- This is the one I had.

One of the ones, I had the bionic woman there.

See, she's ripping the phone book in half.

I always wanted to do that.

I do have a special fondness for this, although I never had this.

This is actually the spinning image of my dad right there.

Looks exactly like him.

Pretty freaky.

He won the west too.

- What can you say?

It's a totally groovy - Store.

Playing with toys all day is not, not a bad job.

Yeah, - Yeah.

Now once a year for a few days in the middle of the summer, the whole length of East Carson Street becomes the site of a festival.

People from all over come to walk around to eat and drink to shop and to have a grand time.

Some of the local merchants hate the event.

Some love it.

It's a chance for the whole neighborhood to show off.

It's the south side Summer Street Spectacular.

- We have been holding South side Summer Street, spectacular since 1984.

- It's a the largest street sale, sidewalk sale.

- And the reason for the south side Summer street spectaculars, - It's for the tourists.

The tourists come and invade our neck of the woods.

Tell you what, there's a lot of people out here - Today to bring people to the business district of the Southside to help support the businesses fans.

You say, what's that?

The kids centers, the carnival.

It's, we also call it the S five.

It's easier sometimes.

- There's so much.

Anyone can come down here and have a great time.

- We have the almost - Famous Premier Man shirt, south side bar tour shirts.

Nobody's ugly after 2:00 AM - One of a kind local artists made here on the south side.

This is pizza art.

It's a pot holder that looks just like pizza.

This feels good.

- We sell the hats and bandanas for cats and dogs.

- Cheese steaks, hot sausage don't go by.

Give us a try.

- Stop cabbage or ies anything you want.

- Well, - Not anything - But - His name's Ziggy.

More bargains.

$12 dresses figure.

Come down the south side and take pictures with him with a Polaroid camera.

Pizza butter slice.

Biggest best pizza in the burger.

Happy pizza.

And it's totally painless.

And charge people like five bucks a picture.

- Barbecue ribs, spicy ribs, hot sausage, pierogi, potato and cheese.

Pierogi barbecue chicken and chica bump and sra.

Pierogis.

Yeah.

One of the most slow walk recipes.

- We smile and hand out Pepto-Bismol.

- You know, everyth biggest size.

Size.

Either Polish or slow walk or Serbian, one or the other.

Thanks.

That's it.

Right?

- Well, maybe not everything, but in spite of all the Tasty competition, some local church groups serve ethnic foods at the festival and the Xtek family often helps cook and serve at their parish center.

The Xtek live in the dead end eastern corner of the south side, A place known as the hollow.

- This neighborhood here was largely Slovak, Polish and Hungarian when I was growing up - The hollow, - It's actually, it's the Halah.

He's not from the Halah, so So on an import.

Yes, it's the Halah.

- It was holy Saturday.

The day before Easter, Paul and Connie Zeek and their kids invited us to see how they got their traditional Slovak Easter foods and baskets ready to be blessed.

- It's tradition.

I've been doing it since I probably was six or seven years old.

We took the baskets always to get blessed.

I do make my own homemade colossi still.

This is one of the links that we smoked on Thursday and it was tradition that I learned from my uncle who smoked his and always made homemade ke bosse for Easter.

- These were eggs died in onion skins.

These are the onion skins here.

My great grandmother showed me how to do this.

Hers were always dark like this too.

- This is called, - It breaks.

It smells like it.

So terrible - To make me - Cry.

It is a tradition to cry with, with fresh horseradish and, - And when all the food is ready, they put samples of each in one big family basket along with smaller ones for each of the kids who also include favorite toys and other assorted goodies.

- Graham, I forget anything.

Horse radish, kba, bacon, sca ham, eggs, salt butter.

- Just before noon, everybody heads for the local social hall called the Kohler Club.

It was originally a Slovak literary society for men only, but now it's become a gathering spot.

A community center of sorts for the hollow families bring their baskets topped with embroidered covers passed on from generation to generation.

Folks in the neighborhood have arranged for Father Jerome Pavlik to give the blessing - And you my good people.

Just follow along with me in your hearts and souls as I start this beautiful blessing of the Easter Baskets.

Lord, you enjoyed your servant Moses to kill a lamb and mark the doorpost with the blood.

God - With prayers, holy water and incense.

Father Pavlik blesses the assembled baskets filled with foods for the Easter celebration.

- Oh, it all looks so good.

And you know what?

At this Easter time, don't worry about the calories.

There's no calories in there.

- Cherishing ethnic traditions at all times of the year is an important part of keeping the spirit of the old south side alive.

The passing on of family rituals and family businesses makes this part of town memorable, stable, and lovable.

There's such a healthy mix of old buildings and small shops, great places to live and work to read, to eat, drink, and be merry.

From the steepest part of the slopes to the flattest of the flats.

This is one amazing neighborhood, an unusual, fascinating place that just happens to be on the south side of a city that so many of us call home.

Imagine back in the early 1950s, usually the first week in December, everybody would gather along Carson Street for the neighborhood Christmas parade.

It was a splendid procession with floats and balloons and giant puppets that wobbled as they walked.

It was a treat so much to see and to remember and who it was that goofy bigheaded cartoon character that stumbled like a drunk.

Of course, you could forget how cold it was when those dancing toys came by.

Then the marching bands and the magical figures come to life.

But it wasn't always easy.

A kind of tension mounted as the morning raced by.

How much longer could it be if you looked toward the mill?

Could you see him yet?

The big man in red then?

So suddenly he was there, Santa on the south side.

You knew he'd be back soon.

Production of this WQED special program was made possible by the BOE Foundation serving Southwestern Pennsylvania since 1927.

Additional support was provided by the Henry l Hillman Foundation and by the wonderful members of WQED, people like you who've called and contributed.

You know, here at WQED, we've now got an impressive collection of videos about the Pittsburgh area, and if you haven't heard, they make great presents