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

Additional support was provided by the Henry L. Hillman Foundation, by Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania, by the James McQuade family, founders of the Friends of the Pittsburgh History Series, and of course by you and other generous, loyal members of WQED.

This program is part of WQED'S Pittsburgh history series.

We dedicate this program to John Klaus of Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania, who in May, 1909 discovered a 300 pound, eight foot, four inch Mastodon tusk on the bank of a stream near Aspinwall.

Mastodons great elephant like creatures once roamed Western Pennsylvania, but that's easy to forget until you see something like this that's survived through the years.

We know much about the past because of things that have stuck around, things that weren't destroyed or thrown away.

We're going to celebrate some things that have survived for any number of reasons in and around Pittsburgh.

Some of them are ruins, some are still open and operating.

Some need a little work.

Some of these places are really old, others are relatively recent in origin, but still remarkable for having lasted longer than you might expect.

This is a hodgepodge of stories bouncing from one end of the region to the other, looking at a wide variety of subjects, all of which seem to qualify as things that are still here.

Oh, we know there are lots of other things we could have included, but we're saving them for other shows.

Okay, let's start in Oakland at the museum, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Jay Apt, who's a former astronaut, is now the director of the museum and his staff includes scientists like Mary Dawson, who's the curator of the museum's Department of Vertebrate paleontology.

One of her colleagues, Dr. Zhe-Xi Luo is a paleontologist from China.

Everyone at the museum is understandably proud of the dinosaur bones that are still here.

- People come to Pittsburgh to look at dinosaurs.

- Dinosaur Hall is the best collection of dinosaurs anywhere on the planet.

- And ones you see one of these reconstructed dinosaur, are old.

- We are one of the very few museums in the world that has a display like this.

- My in-laws to be took me to see the dinosaurs is the very first thing to see in Pittsburgh.

- I like to know about what happened pre-history actually coming here and seeing them and you're like, wow.

But it's nice to have it right here in our hometown.

These skeletons that are standing here are for the most part original bones.

- We are always curious about where we are coming from.

- So I think people get drawn here by their mystery.

- And how we evolved into our current life - And they were in charge.

They ruled dinosaurs rule.

I don't think any more found anywhere around here.

- This museum discovered in 1909 an accumulation of bones in Northeastern Utah, which is now Dinosaur National Monument.

I love dinosaurs.

I think they're great.

We have one of the best, perhaps the best collection in the world of Jurassic dinosaurs.

Deus Carnegie Eye was standing here in 1907 when this building opened.

It's so interesting for me to see.

- They're so big I can't get over how huge they are.

It's just awesome to think that something this big walked the earth.

Sometimes these lights go off and there's a light show and it feels scary.

- Children like monsters, - They scare you when you're young, - But these are real monsters - And when you get older you get used to 'em.

People aren't afraid of 'em anymore 'cause they're not around.

Then you really start to get interested in 'em.

- But something that's also science, it makes me just think of a very long time ago and I think of how these were all roaming the earth.

My grandchildren know every name of every, I don't know their names.

That's a Diplodocus.

Could say it very well.

I like the - T-Rex.

The Tyrannosaurus Rex came here in 1941.

- It is a world famous skeleton - And that is the way it was mounted at the American Museum where it was originally put up.

- Very few people actually realized that the Carnegie Museum has the very first specimen of the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

- I just thought that the, that the Tyrannosaurus Rex was pretty cool.

- Which one is it?

I don't know.

Was he here before?

- I was two years old and my dad was here with me and we petted the bones.

- So everybody wants to touch.

Generally the rule in a museum is no touching, please, and we weren't allowed.

We got called on, but we do have an exhibit over here.

We have one bone here that you're able to touch.

The kids are able to come over and put their hands on it.

- These creatures lasted for 200 million years and then they were gone just like that in two years.

There's a bunch of theories like a, we could have hit the Earth or it got too hot or cold or whatever.

Well, when asteroid hit, yeah, we think the earth, that's what we think 65 million years ago it probably happened.

Yeah, - Yeah.

Or maybe they just do big or something.

I don't know.

Much, much larger than what we have here are the dinosaurs that we have in the collections.

- The collections include all the assorted unassembled bones that aren't on display up here.

Betty Hill takes care of those collections, which are kept down deep in the basement of the museum.

There - away from where everybody gets to go.

Betty is in charge of cataloging and preserving all sorts of stuff that the Carnegie Museum staff has collected over the years.

- Well, this is a block of dinosaur material from Dinosaur National Monument.

We collected this in 1923.

As you can see, at the time they did this, they would wrap it in burlap, soaked in plaster, and that's to reinforce it during the shipping back to Pittsburgh, they had quite an operation going out there at Dinosaur National Monument.

- And Betty's in charge of quite an operation down here.

Her office is in the big bone room.

- This is the research collection.

People come from all over the world to study the things in here.

- It's full of fossils, including many huge old bones.

- Oh, here we are.

Here's one of the tail vertebra of an Apatosaurus, better known as Rontosaurus.

- All the stuff here is carefully labeled and arranged on shelves.

- These are heavy.

I'll tell you, here's another one, a larger one.

So this is farther up the tail.

Oh, and even a little one like this.

- Betty keeps records on all the items here and can tell you where and when all the pieces were found.

- I have an affection for them you might say not just the the dinosaurs though, for all of the collection - And it's actually lots of things collected over a hundred years.

Some of the smaller items that Betty takes care of are stored nearby in what's called the little bone room in here, along with all sorts of tiny fossils and smaller bones.

On the bottom shelf of one rack there closest to the pillar is that Mastodon tusk that John Klaus found an Aspinwall.

It's nowhere near as old as a dinosaur bone, but it's still here.

Mastodons actually became extinct only about 11,000 years ago and by then human beings had arrived in Western Pennsylvania.

When did we get here?

Well, the most important research on that subject is going on out in Washington County near the town of Avella.

- This is a place where Native Americans and then later Europeans camped off and on for 16,000 years.

- The ancient campsite is called the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter.

Sirius Excavation started here in 1973 under the direction of Dr. James Adovasio.

- Better inside that big block that you see, there was part of the roof of the rock shelter when it was originally occupied.

So even though it's a big rock shelter now, it was three to five times bigger prehistorically when that block and the other blocks along the hillside were in place in the roof and anyone walking up this stream would've seen it and would've come up here and hung out.

- This day some folks working for Smithsonian Magazine were hanging out with Dr. Adovasio.

The excavated area is now enclosed.

Inside archeologists have uncovered layers of evidence of ancient activity here.

- As we walk down here, we're we're kind of dropping back a few thousand years a step.

- Scientists have long thought that the first humans in North America probably arrived fewer than 12,000 years ago.

- By and large, the profession at large is changing their minds about exactly when people got here and part of the fact that they're changing their minds has to do with this place.

People were here 13, 13.5, 14,000 minimally and maybe as old as 16,000 years ago.

Storage, pits, trash.

- Those years of accumulated stuff were taken out of here mostly in the 1970s.

A documentary film was made as teams of archeologists came here to do excruciatingly careful and potentially tedious work.

- It's not the way you see it in the Indiana Jones movies.

The excitement is the same, the romance is the same, but you don't see Indiana Jones scraping away at a wall with a, with a razor blade.

- The painstaking techniques used to document all of the removal of materials from here have been crucial in the earning of scientific respect for this site.

- Truckloads of sediment have come out of here dug with instruments for the most part, smaller than you ate your breakfast with today.

- Each layer here is identified with a specific time period.

- The little white tags mark the horizontal layers in the site.

Over on that profile right near the F9 tag, you have a deer bone sticking outta the wall, and then down here at progressively greater depths you've got some fireplaces and fire pits.

- People camped here and sometimes they left hunting tools behind.

- This is the earliest dated item of its kind in North America, and as you can see, it's a quite short spear point.

Formally it was considerably longer, but each time the tip broke, they would resharpen it.

- The age of some of these tools has been determined through radiocarbon dating.

- This quite literally is the oldest tool from the site, the dates to about 16,000 years ago, and it is a small cutting instrument.

What's significant about it is this is the oldest example of blade technology in North America and it's very similar to what they're doing in Siberia thousands of years earlier.

So this is kind of a graphic link of these Native Americans here in Pennsylvania to their forebearers on the other side of the bearing straits.

- The work done here has provided amazing amounts of information in many branches of science - Because we had a very long excavation season, four months, four and a half months, six days a week, 12 hours a day time was never really an issue.

This is really one of the most intensively studied pieces of real estate of its size on the whole planet.

- The Meadowcroft Rock Shelter is one of those amazing places that you might not expect to find in your own backyard.

Because of things that were still here.

This old campsites become an important stop in the human history of our continent.

Of course, nowadays we don't hang out much in rock shelters, but in the wee hours of the morning, you may still go looking for refuge or nourishment or maybe just some human activity and you might find those in a donut shop and if you're lucky, you'll be in Beaver County.

- Well, this is Oram's Donut shop in Beaver Falls.

It's been around since 1938.

- That's when Lillian and William Oram from Oil City moved here and started making deep fried donuts.

They kept their products simple, sweet, and handmade for over 20 years.

= I always thought they were.

They were excellent donuts.

The Oram's had a foster child, Tom Bradshaw, who eventually bought the business in 1960 and kept making donuts.

- I made a real effort to make them good.

- Oh, they're the best cinnamon rolls in the world, undisputed.

- I'm here every morning, - So it's practically like a cult-like following the customers.

Well, any event we have at Columbia Gas, everyone requires more Oram's Donuts.

- Soccer.

Tomorrow's soccer, kids breakfast before soccer.

- When I first moved here, the donuts were 35 cents.

- The history of the place I think is part of the mystique - And they had a dollar's worth of sugar in 'em.

I can never figure out how he could do this.

- You know, it's just been around for as long as everyone in town can remember.

- Oh my goodness.

I've known about 'em since I was a kid.

- And I really think that John's perfected it more.

He, he makes a real effort to make them good.

- The number one seller is the cinnamon rolls.

Now, Mr. Bradshaw developed that in the early sixties, I believe.

- In the mid nineties, Mr. Bradshaw sold the place to John George and his wife, Vicki.

- John's, the donut man.

It was always his dream to have a donut shop.

I don't know why everyone has their own dream, - Really just because of our passion for the product.

- I just like 'em.

- My family likes them.

These people make the best donuts in the world, and I never travele without Oram's donuts.

- And every time I go to New York to visit my friends in Saratoga Springs, I have to take a dozen of warm donuts.

We've got cream filled with chocolate icing, with vanilla icing.

- They don't make a bad thing in here.

Everything is good.

- Vanilla cake, chocolate cake, pumpkin cake, apple cake.

- It's on my way home from work.

I work the night shift, so this is my breakfast and dinner.

- And we've got glazed, glazed rolled in coconut, glazed rolled in pecan.

= I want two of the cream filled.

My personal favorite is the cream filled, actually they're called Bismark's.

And a sugar donut.

I get a cream filled, they get the big cinnamon rolls.

Used to have a favorite.

It used to be cinnamon.

Now I like, I have a new favorite one every day.

Fridays is always sweet with raisins.

- Production starts every night around midnight.

This is how you get your glazed donuts when they make the cinnamon rolls, Debbie Del Duca and her crew start with big blobs of dough.

- You get two pieces, we put 'em together, goes through the roller, it comes down and he'll put butter on it and then as it goes down, the cinnamon automatically drops and then it gets hands rolled and then it goes down through the guillotine and gets cut.

- And then they go into the proofer where they rise and eventually they'll go into the fryers and the glazer and go onto the racks and then out to the customers.

- I grew up in Beaver Falls and this was a treat when I was a kid.

- You can eat 'em today, you can eat them two days from now and they're still good.

- Well, there's three dozen.

This is a small order this time.

- Going to the post office and ask, how can I send these donuts?

Weren't you glad to be living back around here again, huh?

- Oh, absolutely.

My mom would take us down here at probably about seven or eight in the morning.

You had to get here early because at that time, by nine o'clock they were sold out.

- I like the chocolate with the chocolate icing.

- Oh, I only get the cinnamon.

They make the other ones, but why?

- Well, of course they're like any great Seminole, but there's more of them, more inside, more outside.

- It's big.

- No, it's the ingredients.

The size has nothing to do with them.

The thing is, I mean this donut is probably the size of a hubcap.

- Usually they just come in and go a dozen of these.

- They call 'em belly busters and whatever, you know, but it's very light.

It's a big cinnamon roll.

- Well, they're not fatning.

I just love this area and I think every place has a special place and Oram's is one of them.

- They've gotten a little fancy here, all cleaned up the place, but it still tastes the same.

- They have a flavor that is, I've never had in a cinnamon roll anywhere else.

They're, they're unique.

- Where are you headed with these?

- You know, donuts have a timeless charm that's attracted people for ages.

Other products have lost their charm.

Some have lost their usefulness, but some producers change in order to survive.

And in New Brighton, Pennsylvania, there's a business that was founded in 1872.

It's still family owned and still manufactures a product made of steel, although it's not the original item they made here at Standard Horse Nail sometimes called just Stan Ho.

First of all, we don't make horse nails anymore.

They stopped that in the 1960s.

- That's Peter Merrick.

- Hi Patty.

- At 17, he already knows lots about the history of his family's business.

- The picture in the main hallway is of Charles Morris Merrick.

He is my, that would be my grandfather's great uncle.

I like old things.

I've always been fascinated with things that are old, like old houses, old books.

That's why I love this place so much and why I try to come down here as much as I can.

When I was a kid, like my dad used to have to come in here and I'd come in with him just for something to do and then I learned the combination of the safe and then I'd start coming in here and messing around with stuff and looking at things.

This is ledger number two.

I think this starts out with 1900 - Nowadays, standard horse nail principally manufactures engine parts called keys, some machine keys, and lots of what are called Woodruff keys.

Peter's father, Bob and his mother Chris, both work here now, but they say it's Peter who knows the history.

Including when the company started to make more than just horse nails.

- It was in like 1912 when Frank Woodruff invented the Woodruff Key in Rochester and Silas Merrick, my great-grandfather, invented a way to mass produce Woodruff Keys on a milling machine.

- One of the mill operators, Victor Collins, is finishing up the process that makes the little half moon slices of steel.

- After I get done cutting it, it turns out like this.

Every cut I make 1200.

So I get about 40 cuts a day.

About 40,000 get on on a normal day.

On a good day.

We have problems sometimes, Well problems are not standard horse nail manufactures many sizes and varieties of these keys which have nothing to do with opening locks.

- These are two examples of the sizes of Woodruff Keys.

This one, as you can see, is incredibly small and this would be considered a medium-sized Woodruff key.

The medium-sized Woodruff key would fit in a slot like this, and this is a crank shaft and the key way in a gear like this would slide over the key locking the gear into position.

- So this company with an old fashioned name is still here because it found a product that was needed in motors just about the time that people started using machines rather than horses.

- Everyone that owns basically a car, or lawnmower, or a tractor would have a standard horse nail Woodruff key in their machine.

- So they're everywhere and Standard Horse Nail still here continues to make products that help people get around.

Now if you head down the Ohio River to Newell, West Virginia, there's another old company still here with factories that stretch for a mile along the bank.

- The company was founded in 1871 by Homer and his brother Shakespeare, and it was originally known as Lachlan Brothers.

- They Make China dinnerware and Homer Lachlan is now owned by two families, the Wells and the Erins and David Conley is the director of marketing and sales here.

He offered to show us through the factory where they still make the sort of art deco style China known as fiesta.

Products here are either hollowware like pitchers and such, or flatware like plates and saucers.

Flatware is created from clay shaped by machine with molds and automatic tools.

The flatware will dry for several hours before it can be handled and marked as fiestaware.

- Well, you see the little hole right here.

That's where the back stamp is applied.

The stamp is where our company name and the fiesta name are applied and also the date code, which tells us the fourth quarter of 1999.

- Unlike flatware, hollowware is a little more labor intensive.

- Mostly it's done just the way it was done 150 years ago in the casting room, Paul Pivirotto is a caster who deals with the various molds, which are just like the ones that made the original Fiestaware in 1936.

Nearby, Carol Schmidt is called a finisher and she takes the recently molded pieces and cleans up the seams and rough spots.

- Okay, this is called a Dior and we use this for the places it's hard to reach.

- Now take my hose and drain it into the can here.

- You take it in like this, bring it across, - And then I'll go around and I'll pour from one end all the way around to the other.

- Then you go under the nose all the way down, - Flip 'em back over, scrape 'em, scrap 'em, cut 'em.

- Then on the inside, that's the hardest place to get to - And take 'em out.

Put 'em on the boards for the finishers to finish.

- This piece basically is ready for the inspector.

- The pieces that pass are dried.

Then the glaze goes on and in.

- The girls here are flushing the inside of all hollowware.

- Glazes often don't reflect at all the final color, but they're carefully applied by people like Brenda K. Keller.

- I'm, we're spray in Cobol Blue.

I'm the dipper.

I spray the outside of the wear.

I like hollow wear.

It's more of a challenge 'cause it's not flat.

- Sometimes it's not exactly right either.

But all the successfully glazed pieces move on to the massive ovens known as kills.

Temperatures in there get as high as 2,400 degrees.

It takes 24 hours to move through what's called the circular kill.

It runs 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.

Kenny Phillips and his coworkers load and unload all the pieces.

- My women select them, they check 'em for cracks, bad bottoms, checking for breaks.

- That's a sound when it's broke, so we gotta throw it away.

You get a dead sound like that.

- All the fiesta pulled fresh right outta the ovens is then stacked in columns to cool and eventually it's inspected for color and cracks and all sorts of flaws.

Many bright and beautiful, but imperfect pieces will go no further.

Amazingly, dozens and dozens of pieces do make it through and eventually get to the warehouse from where they may shortly move on into the hands of a fiesta collector.

- There's almost a cult following that, that fiesta has people on the internet refer to, to Newell, West Virginia as Mecca.

- And twice a year people make pilgrimages to the legendary warehouse sale.

- Hi and welcome during warehouse sale.

We're glad to see y'all here today.

- We've been here since about 4:30 this morning.

- Got here at 3 this morning.

We just wanna mention a few things we have on special.

- We're from a town called Hot Springs, Arkansas.

We came from Oklahoma.

- Michigan.

We're from Michigan.

We have the Chartres sugar packet holders that just came down.

Never know what they're gonna have.

Look at these on five pages and we do have a limit of two each on those.

We love fiesta wear, right?

It's the colors, the bright colors.

It's beautiful because it's made in West Virginia.

- Yeah, I have a farm and all of my animals eat out of fiesta because plates are four for a dollar.

- I cook a lot at the fire department and I need the plates.

So - I've got my donkey and you can never have too many fiesta wear plates.

A horse, a cow, never, never, never.

Pigs, rabbits.

I specialize in yellow, but she has the multicolor into the chartreuse right now.

Last year I was getting everything the same color.

We also have the Chartres 80 cups and saucers still in stock.

I I've got emus now.

Yeah, we're gonna buy dishes.

Yeah, and some new chickens, so I have to get some fiesta for them because you're not paying full price.

- No, no, we don't collect it for just money.

We're antique dealers as well.

I don't - Sell it by I, I use it.

I was searching the web, - We saw this about two weeks ago on the internet and I said, Hey, let's go down girl trip shopping.

I love it.

Our family thinks we're a little off, but we're the fools.

A lot of people, they go to bars and drink and raise cane and - We could be doing a lot worse things.

- Yeah, we are fiesta, we're fools.

We collect dishes.

You often wonder a lot of people why they come out here and punish yourself like this, but oh God, it's fun.

We, I ask that only 50 at a time.

Go in the warehouse.

We have guards that count.

It gets a little rough in there sometimes.

- We, we just keep hearing stories about getting run over and as they come out, others will be let in.

They're like carrying crates of heavy China and they almost poke out in the eye.

You're allowed crates, you're allowed to take four of these in with you.

If you cannot carry four crates, please do not take four.

This is the fun part of the whole thing.

Have a good time, be nice to each other and thank you.

- Just before 10 AM even inside you can feel the tension.

- It's like picturing a million people, that haven't been fed for six months and then all of a sudden they're gonna get all this food out and they just - Come on in.

Oh, we got wildness here.

- My sock.

- I wouldn't miss this for the world.

- Socks very important here because it saves you time.

You can wipe off the dust and you can see what you're buying.

- It's called sapphire.

They discontinued the color.

- Once these are gone, they're gone.

It's discontinued in December - So they're, they're already worth a lot more money and a lot of people in this country stick away for.

Hopefully it'll be worth a lot of money if my daughter's already go to college.

Their grandmothers had fiesta, the Mabel's had fiesta.

- Yeah, I got some good things.

Look at these ornaments.

I was dying for these.

Look at these.

- You know, that has a lot to do with it, I think.

- Never disappointed.

It's fun.

- Gotta go.

I didn't even know - That.

Don't you dare.

It's the hunt.

That's what it's all about.

Well, while people are hauling out all their treasures here in the nearby factory, it all continues.

They can't make fiesta fast enough or colorful enough for a lot of people.

- I think it's, it's amazing that it is just a piece of clay.

They pour it and we do it and I think it's beautiful - And it's still here.

These pieces of dinnerware may be new but their design is old and they haven't stopped being useful old things and even old buildings can be that way.

Take a look at the Braddock Carnegie Library built in the late 1880s.

It incorporates a library and a sort of early health club and a music hall in the seventies.

It was slated for demolition but the community saved it.

- It, it is an astonishing building.

- We try every day to let people know that this is the first Carnegie Library.

- It's like a gem.

It's so beautiful.

- There are many librarians who come to this regarding this as Mecca.

- I like to come in this library, talk to Miss Francine.

This is what started me reading is being able to come to the library.

My father taught himself to read here.

- I like to read them scary books and I remember exactly where the Nancy Drew books were.

- I learned how to shoot pool and swim and I've been involved in the library for so long until it just feels like an old habit.

- I just feel it's a part of me.

'cause I live here in Braddock - For Braddock theft, any type of revitalization, it's gonna center around this building.

Kids can come now, they don't have to worry about having a safe place to go.

- I like coming here because I like to learn and I like to have fun.

- It's really a full tilt community center.

- I've always loved libraries.

My mother said, what a perfect job.

- Mary Becker has been executive director here since 1997.

She works closely with her board of directors, including Evelyn Benzo, Ray Henderson, William Mystic, and a group of volunteers, including people like Helen Watson, John Hempel, and from the Braddocks Field Historical Society.

Bob Messner.

- The Historical society owns the library.

We, we still have a good bit of work to do and there's a lot of money.

Still has to be raced to finish it off.

- Everyone wants the library to be open forever.

- It would've been leveled if it wasn't for the, the, the last librarian who arrived to work one day and found the doors chained shut.

- Dave Solom was the librarian.

I thought he was a little quirky when I was in school, you know, - But filmmaker Tony Buuba would later include Dave Solomon in the film.

Voices from a steel town.

- We in the historical society persisted and it looks as though we're seeing some light down the end of the tunnel.

- Dave was the founder of the Braddocks Field Historical Society and until he died, his love for this building was inspirational.

- He'd say, well, we'll we'll take care of this.

Gaping holes in the plaster holes in the in the floor.

- But he just loved it.

So he loved children so much - He never gave up.

- But what it makes you realize, it just takes one person with a vision to organize a community to get behind a building.

- The librarians saved the library.

That's right.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

- He saved it.

His historical society bought it for $1 from the local school district, but it was in terrible shape.

- The building was so black we never realized that there was a two-tone scheme in the building.

- It don't look gold, not to me anyway, - But more and more of it is fixed up every day.

The old billiard room is a multi-purpose place.

Now up on the third floor, there's a gym where kids play every day and Mary Becker said she'd give us a tour, some of the places they're still working on in the building - And here we have the basement that used to be a bathhouse where the mill workers could come in and take a bath.

It used to have granite stalls.

Today we have decided to turn this into a messy arts room.

Well, we're really in the basement now.

This is the, the doorway into the bathhouse and this is the tunnel.

How they came into the building.

- When this tunnel was open, overworked, underpaid mill workers could enter here to use the Carnegie Club facilities, but some men would have nothing to do with Andrew Carnegie, whom they considered ruthless.

- This was one of the first attempts ever try to do something to deter a union from coming in by treating your employees better or being perceived as treating them better.

It was a fun place for kids.

- That's why my dad didn't object to me coming here at all.

He just wouldn't come.

- People have memories and they heard their parents talk about Mr. Carnegie.

- Mom would say, where you, where are you going Billy?

I'd say, I'm going up to the Carnegie Club.

Dad would say, see - Andrew Carnegie, that son of a, it's an older generation that sort of has that relationship with Carnegie.

Son of a CIA you would say.

- And this is the swimming pool.

It was part of the Carnegie Club and men could swim anytime that it was open.

Women got to swim two hours, two days a week.

The men swam in the nude.

But women had a changing room, which is now my office.

- They're not sure yet what to do with the pool.

It's on the first floor and directly above it on the second.

There's another amazing treasure.

- This is one of my all time favorite places to be in the whole building.

I come here to dream a lot.

This is the first Carnegie Hall ever built.

It's hard to imagine what this room looked like when I came here.

There was about a six foot hole in the ceiling that you could see all the way to the sky.

That's all been repaired and plastered and painted.

It's just beautiful now.

- My senior play was here when I was in high school.

I remember those little dressing rooms.

- This room is nothing short of spectacular, - Unbelievable.

But I'm still not satisfied, still pushing on.

- And I want our residents in this entire area to start participating.

- In the building I think most people look at it now as a place of hope in something for the future.

We are the star, we are the - Shining star in Braddock.

- A lot of people have pride in this building.

I know I do.

It's a great place.

- The great places and odd pieces of communities that survive can be surprising.

There are some old buildings down south in Waynesburg, but the town also still has an incredible collection of old movies, newsreels that feature their town in the early 20th century.

Shot by a man named Charles Sylvia.

These moving pictures document many local happenings.

Nowadays, almost everybody in town knows about the old films, but Bill Mosen who teaches at Waynesburg College, has taken a special interest in them and local restorer, Miles Daven has shown them often in the town's theater and at various acidic meetings.

Bill, who's president of the Waynesburg Volunteer Fire Company and all the firemen including Eric Rush, takes special pride in the films because it's the local fire company that actually owns them.

- There's been a lot of people of course call and go that there's still, still people around who are, are very much interested in those things.

- Well, as a amateur, his historian, I love him.

There's certain little gyms in there, - Hat, hat, hat.

I mean everyone wore a hat.

- This is an example of the original 35 millimeter camera negative that Charles Syl filmed.

- He owned the theater and he was a, he was a camera bug.

He loved to take pictures, - Put your hand on the camera, crank the hand crank camera and started exposing it frame by frame.

Probably somewheres around maybe 18 frames per second - When anything happened.

Like a fire or fair?

- Well the, the fires that are listed in the thing, you know, you always, since you're a fireman, you always look at those things and always remember those kind of things.

- He would go and film it and then he'd bring it here and show it in the theater as local news.

So it was sort of a ploy maybe let's call it early marketing that the idea of come see yourself on the silver screen.

- Then the baseball game that's in there is with with a team that was called The House of David.

What it was was they would play in an exhibition type style and they would travel around so that these little towns to get to see a game.

- Miles Daven used to show these movies to townspeople who'd try to spot anyone who looked familiar.

- We're always glad when we hear someone say, ah, when I'd stop the film and I had a pad there and I'd write down whatever they had to say, - Miles can show you about two hours worth of silent old footage.

Many more reels of the original film had seriously deteriorated before the images could be saved.

What's really unusual about these Waynesburg movies is that Charles Sylvia was essentially making home movies and shooting local news long before either of those ideas were common.

Movie cameras were still relatively new.

Everything was still silent and expensive and rare.

- And these frames show women and children standing on the steps of the town's armory.

The armory is where company K was based.

- A lot of the footage is of the old military unit company K. - There's a season there of training for company K before they left for World World War I.

The training, the learning to advance by rush, which is like one group and then another group and you can almost see the, the, the actions of boys playing.

- I remember the ones up on West Street when they had the reception for the company K Troops up there and - They gave a party to all.

The company K and they gave each one a piece of cake and Charlie Sylvia filmed each man coming down those steps.

One at a time, of course to a a stranger.

I mean that was monotonous to watch, but to local people, you know, there's my son or there's my dad or grandfather.

- And it's just, I mean haunting, especially the fact that, you know, there's more than one face that you're seeing that did not come back from France.

- There's something about seeing people from that era, but to see them in motion.

- It's just the fact that it's, it's ordinary people and that just draws anybody into the frame.

- And because Waynesburg is a small town, in fact a lot of the, the names that you can associate with the film that there's still those family names here.

So you have that, that connection.

You have that lineage.

- 'Cause I think people are just interested in just plain life.

- Capturing plain life on film is obviously a potent way to preserve ordinary history.

Old movies can put us in the past and help us understand the allure of places.

Even in times gone by now, these movies were shot by the Gallo family out in Westmoreland County.

They opened a giant swimming pool known as Ligonier Beach in 1925.

It's still here and it's a very cool place.

- All these trees here, everything's green and it just has a feel.

It gets you out of that damn city.

- I came here as a teenager, that's where we came to meet girls and everything.

You know, - People swim here when they were little kids.

They're bringing their grandchildren now.

That's how long the pool's been here.

- It's a great place to meet your friends here.

Mostly every day I make a new one.

We come here every day that we can.

- Six days a week, some maybe even seven.

Well, I remember my girlfriends and I walking out here, riding our bikes out here, come swimming if my mother knew that she'd kill me.

- We love this here.

Sometimes you can do like head firsts with are cliffs - Dives.

- I've been coming here for about 25 years.

- I didn't know you knew how to do a clip.

I do probably 50 some years, - Two, three times a week from Pittsburgh.

- Why'd you say you did it?

- And we have a pool in our own yard, but we enjoy this quite a bit.

The sixties, man, it was, it was the place to be.

It was the coolest spot to be in.

- I don't.

And which one is it?

You do or you don't?

I don't.

- Well there used to be a high dive here where you could show off, but such things are insurance problems now.

Like this slide, it was hugely popular and it's still here, but they won't let you use it.

Tom Gallo and his wife Tilly came by the pool this day, even though they sold the place in 1997 to the Graham family.

Tom grew up here along with his younger brother John.

- I learned to swim when I was five years old.

Right in here.

I did everything here.

I was a locker boy.

I was a paper picker, butt picker.

Dad had a well drilled right near the building there, 180 feet deep and the water was perfect - And my father helped to build the pole and we were here for opening day and I was three years old.

- Flossy Gaskins has come to Ligonier Beach almost every day, every summer since then.

- I watch the people, I'm a people watcher.

Hi Peggy.

Good, how are you?

And I read and just enjoy - People they'll drive for an hour and a half to get here and they, they have their chairs they usually sit on and they want them.

I mean other people have been coming here for years.

- We always try to get here when a place opens - So we can get one of these chairs.

- Everybody fights for the chairs - If you don't get one of the chairs.

There is a small sand beach along one side.

And Ligonier Beach over the years has booked a variety of entertainers.

- They used to have big bands.

My parents came up when they were going together - And of course they used to have dances and things here too in the evenings.

- Dean Martin was here, they saw Perry Como here, Dean Martin.

- But there's no question it's the giant pool with the gradually sloping sides.

That's always been the main attraction.

- And the size of the pool amazes me.

That's the the biggest thing still to this day.

It's just so huge.

- It holds 1 million, 300,000 gallons of water.

- The pool's 400 feet long and 1 25 across.

This pool's big and the water's always cold here and it's just real refreshing.

It's, it's nice here.

- I always say if you wanna take a bath, take a bath.

If you wanna go swimming, come to Ligonier Beach.

It's a little cool - 'cause it's comes in through an artesian, well that's underneath here.

- But on a hot day that doesn't really matter.

It's very invigorating.

It makes you feel good.

- Refreshing.

- The pool has always had a geyser like fountain with a nozzle that everybody has to try and play with.

- And then they had what they called a wheel.

- There used to be a big wheel that you could ride around.

You go up in the air, then you come down and kind of go under the water.

- It was up in the lower part.

It was, I'd say maybe 12 feet in diameter - And it was on a bearing.

My father designed all this.

Well, when that thing got wet, it was slippery.

- The fun part was to push the person in front of you off.

- If you, you got on the edge of it, you could run or walk on it.

It would rotate there.

A lot of people had cuts and bruises and, and then all these people be flying off laughing and cheering on.

- It was dangerous.

-Yeah, but probably lots of fun too.

But worries about liabilities led to its removal as well.

Those gimmicks got to go, but the pool survives.

The fact that it's still here proves that its basic and fundamental charms are what's really important.

- Every year.

The fact that it closes and that opens up again, it has a certain mystique to it.

- Again, my kids just, you know, that's what they, they look for - And they're anxious to get out and you know, the girls are anxious to wear those ridiculous bathing suits that don't exist, really.

- Early in the morning and early in early evening right before it closes.

- Tradition is more important than you think it is.

'cause they're all looking to do the same thing they did when they were growing up - And the men are anxious to come out and see what's going on.

It's a beautiful place just for serenity and peace.

It's like a cheap vacation really.

I don't know where you'd duplicate this.

- You couldn't duplicate it.

That's part of the beauty of it.

One of a kind places that are still here.

Take on a wonderful sort of importance.

Now in Sewickley, at the end of Chadwick Street, there's an odd looking wooden building, sort of mock Tudor that was originally a train station.

Betty Cole, who's writing a history of African Americans in the Sewickley Valley, met us there.

She started coming here in the 1940s shortly after it became American Legion Post 450, a former commander of the Post Harry Rideout was at the bar.

- Hi Harry.

Betty, how you doing?

Doing fine.

That's good.

Originally, this was the lobby for the train station and of course with the paneling, there's not too much of the original that is left, but this over here, this is one of my favorites and this was the original fireplace.

This is really magnificent.

I'm glad they were able to retain this.

- The station built in 1887 once sat at the end of Broad Street for over 50 years.

Then it was decided that Route 65, Ohio River Boulevard would go right through there.

- They moved it in 1929 by locomotive, they moved them all the way down here from Broad Street.

- It was a private residence for a while, but local black veterans of World War I decided to buy the place.

- And whenever the Veterans of World War II came home, then they had this post home waiting for them.

This was the stage when there was a station.

This was the baggage room and but now you can see it's the used for the pool room and also for meeting rooms.

But it used to be when post 450 got in.

This was the a bar room, and this was the original mirror that was here and the bar was right along here.

- The original front porch was enclosed for a while, but in the early nineties, a community group, friends of the old Sewickley train station restored the place.

Folks around here have used this building for all sorts of events since the forties when a big room known as the pavilion was added on the back.

- During that time, the black population here in the Sewickley Valley, we didn't have a large gathering place to have our community events.

So we use these facilities here.

- Also.

Starting in the forties, Betty helped book some famous musicians into this Legion Hall.

- We had so many wonderful bands.

We had Cab Callaway, we had Duke Ellington, Count Basie.

- All you had to do is look in the book of who's who in the jazz and entertainment field.

And chances are they were in there.

- And I handled the publicity and there was Gene Ammonds, Bull Moose Jackson.

- When Ray Charles was here, - We were having Ray Charles a dance on Saturday, July 2nd, 1955.

- I couldn't get in it.

The place was so crowded, - But everyone loved to come here.

They came from far and near to listen and swing to the big bands, you know.

- And you know this place is still here.

And it's reassuring that an old train station could develop such a long and lively history as something other than what it was built to be.

Not all old terminals are so lucky.

The Greater Pittsburgh airport used to be out in Moon Township in 1999.

It was torn down completely.

It's just not there anymore.

But in the new airport, there's a very classy reminder of the old airport - If you're coming up from the transit station on the escalators, if you're coming down one of the concourse arms towards the center core.

I think because it moves around during the day, the light shining on it from different angles.

It catches people's eyes as they move through the airport.

- It's a huge sort of flying sculpture by Alexander Calder, the man who actually invented these hanging works of art that we all now know as mobiles.

This one is titled Pittsburgh.

Hugh Hack Meister, who's the county's architect at Pittsburgh International Airport, knows a lot about this public piece of art.

- Calder evidently researched the Pittsburgh area.

The three large leaves represent the three rivers.

The forearms on the left represent the four major steel companies during the late fifties.

- Calder's Mobile was first shown at the Carnegie Museum of Arts International in 1958.

It was donated to the airport, but before Allegheny County hung it, someone decided to paint it.

The county colors green and gold.

Calder was furious.

He eventually compromised and said the mobile could be painted a special Calder red, but the county botched that too and had added weights to some of the paddles to make the thing hang differently.

In 1979, the mobile was restored and rehung at the Carnegie until it came here in 1992.

- One of the things I'm very proud of is this is the first time the sculpture has ever hung as the artist originally intended.

It has a ball bearing pivot at the top that permits it to spin freely just with the air currents in the building.

- One of the low paddles has a boomerang shaped hole in it, and if the light's just right, you can see the artist's initials in the metal, but you have to look carefully.

- Alexander Calder always intended his artwork to be interactive.

When a first time had old greater pit, the administration thought that the height that he wanted it was much too low.

So they raised it up.

When we were researching how it should be hung here at the new terminal building, we made sure that we made it low enough that the passengers and visitors could interact with it.

In fact, I was doing a tour for a group of architecture students.

There was a college basketball player in the group, and I asked him to jump up and ting the sculpture on one of the arms because I thought Mr. Calder would've always wanted that.

- Calder would probably be happy that the mobile is back to its original colors too.

The colorful Allegheny County government still keeps this area bright and a bit baffled with its multicolored beltway system.

- I've never understood the belt system.

- The what?

- White belt system.

- There's a name of a color and a - Oh oh, the, the orange belts and blue?

No, - No, just a know in a, in a round spot with that collar on it and it says belt underneath it.

I've - Seen those signs all my life.

- The signs you see, I I don't know anything about them and I've never understood it.

- What do I know?

I I know nothing about it.

- You mean highways?

Okay.

Nothing.

And when you ask other people, they don't know either.

- Actually, the county introduced the belts back in 1950 when it was called the Spider Web Plan.

- I think it's fabulous.

In fact, we had that in World War II for the convoys.

They had the big red ball - Marking highways with a dot was part of what was called the Red Ball express, part of the ally strategy in Germany.

Also, other cities started building beltways.

- I know down in Washington, DC and the city of Atlanta, they have the belt system around their city.

What it, what it is is just one interstate highway.

- No, the only one I'm is that one around Washington DC and I hate it.

- It's not a a weaving secondary road type of belt system and there's not five going around or through each city.

- It was a thrifty, totally Pittsburgh solution.

Let's just put up new signs instead of building new highways.

You could go around instead of through downtown.

But some people have wild notions about the belts.

- It was my understanding that they, they came there in 1950s.

They were there to help evacuate the city in the event of a nuclear attack.

- Well, the belt system is probably as old as I am, which means it's probably outdated also.

- That makes sense to me.

There are five belts, six, if you count the city's relatively new purple belt downtown, but two of them, the red and the green are not complete circles.

- There's the orange belt, the green belt, the blue, and there's all different belts.

- Okay, well that's on the sign now.

What did they do?

- Originally and presumably to route traffic in ways consistent with either alleviating jams or in emergencies?

We talking about the same thing.

- It's a way to get around - Pittsburgh and avoid traffic.

I mean, I'm allowed to get lost because I'm not on a green belt and I should be on a black belt or whatever.

- So, you know, most pittsburghers don't even know they're there.

- I'm a native here and I can get lost without a orange belt and blue belts and yellow belts.

- I know enough shortcuts.

I don't need the belt system, you know, but, - But Ken Conello makes the signs up at the county's traffic division in the North Hills.

On the yellow belt, the screen is a stencil and as it comes up, flooding the paint on, there's a squeegee that applies The paint lifts the screen back up and it gives us a, a bare bones belt sign.

- Occasionally people will call and tell us, yeah, there's a sign in my yard and it's down and I'm not sure what it's for, but please come and either remove it or put it back up again.

- Dennis Simon, head of the traffic division says they make sure the belts are well marked by putting any new employee in a truck with a foreman.

- We send them out and tell 'em, just follow the signs and the foreman will sit in the passenger seat and he'll just look out and watch the birds or whatever it may be and let the, let the gentleman drive in the truck, follow it.

And if he can't follow it, you know there's something wrong.

- I know that people from out of town get maps.

- Sometimes you're on Route 28 - And they look at that belt system and it gets 'em to places they want to go.

- Sometimes you're on just a local neighborhood road and - The belts circle Pittsburgh.

The idea was get from point A to point B without going through downtown Pittsburgh.

- I try to stay out of Pittsburgh, - Go around the belt and you don't go right into Pittsburgh.

- And they weave you in and out all through the county.

And I guess if you don't know where you're going, they're helpful.

It's a unique system and it works well.

- I think they're, is it a tourism, - Especially out of towns?

It works real well for them.

If you're going to the airport, tell 'em, get on the orange belt and it'll take you right to the airport.

- Do I ever use them?

I did once to go to Oakmont.

I always look for beltway signs.

I follow those every once in a while when I'm up that way.

- Oh yeah, going to Kennywood think you take the green belt or blue belt or something.

- For a lot of people it's basically, I mean it simplifies getting from point A to point B.

You, - If you follow the, if you, if you can follow those signs, you'll eventually wind up back at the, the same in theory - The orange belt out in Monroeville.

In fact, they had a bar out there called an orange belt bar.

- Like, oh, I'm on the orange belt, but where am I going?

- Did she ever have a drink in the orange belt bar?

- It's too bad.

The orange belt bar is gone.

But the crazy combination of roads that constitute the belt system can still take you to lots of other great old places that are still around the Pittsburgh area.

We're lucky that there are so many wonderful one of a kind places and things that simply by surviving help make this part of the world an excellent and endlessly interesting place to live.

And it's apparently been that way for a long time in the wide area around our city.

There are so many historic, unusual, unexpected old things that all combine to make this a really good place to call home.

- Well a lot of these had this so documentary element.

- This is where you'd throw your sleeping bag down, pop your six pack out.

- This is one of my favorite animals.

Whenever anyone is visiting the city, - Sw it and proceed on with your hunting activities.

- Film distributors had to be very kind of ingenious in how they presented.

- I never knew exactly what happened on the other side where all the pool tables were.

- Risque elements to a particular film.

- I've been telling the war stories since year one.

- This is a Glyptodon from the place to scene age of North and South America.

- You've got to get Oram's donuts.

You just must get them.

- And so they would take documentaries and sort of dress them up a bit.

- It was similar to a giant armadillo, - But it was always under a kind of educational packaging.

- People came to read their newspapers, - But for a moment in time - There were bathtubs downstairs and showers and they used those.

- Gosh, we're finding out stuff from this.

I thought it was cute.

That would just blow your socks off.

It's sort of like a cult following in Pittsburgh.

- Everything that makes Western Pennsylvania neat now - It's what everybody wanted to see - Was twice as neat then.

- Particularly when it said something like adults only or, you know, forbidden - 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, by Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania, by the James McQuade family, founders of the Friends of the Pittsburgh History Series, and of course by you and other generous, loyal members of WQED.