On the north-western Allegheny Plateau, at the point where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers join to form the Ohio, lies the city of Pittsburgh, surrounded by the wooded hills of the western Appalachians. The wealth of the city came from these hills: the coal mined here was the basis of a great steel industry which at one time produced half
the total requirements of the United States. This branch of industry is still a major element in the city's economy, but since the crisis of the antiquated American steel industry in the 1970s a process of restructuring has been under way, and Pittsburgh now has a range of other industries as well, in particular service industries, high tech industry and light industry. The city's good communications - it is an important inland port and has a large new airport opened in 1992 - have led major firms like Westinghouse Electric to establish their headquarters here. Pittsburgh is thus no longer the soot-encrusted coal and steel town of the past, but rather a metropolis with fine parks and gardens flanking the rivers, a modern city centre and established cultural institutions such as the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Opera.
History
The first Europeans to reach the "Golden Triangle" between the rivers were Frenchmen, who built Fort Duquesne. The French fort was destroyed by the British in 1758 and replaced by Fort Pitt (named after William Pitt the Elder). The settlement which grew up round the fort was named Pittsburgh; the local coalfields began to be worked and blast furnaces were built. The demand for iron and steel for the Civil War brought prosperity to heavy industry, and thereafter industrialists like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick built up their empires. Pittsburgh enjoyed further booms during the two world wars, but thereafter the crisis in the steel industry made a process of readjustment necessary.
Pittsburgh was one of the birthplaces of the American trade union movement: the American Federation of Labor was founded here in 1881, and the city was frequently the scene of bitter conflicts between workers and employers.
Pittsburgh is the dominant city of southwestern Pennsylvania, a place that has successfully transformed from a polluted, working-class steel town into a one of the most livable cities, according to several polls. Pittsburgh sits on the confluence of three rivers, the Monongahela, the Allegheny and the Ohio, known as the Golden Triangle, which has made the city a natural commercial and transportation center since the eighteenth-century.
Today, Pittsburgh boasts such attractions as the Andy Warhol Museum in tribute to its famous son, the Carnegie Museums, the historic Point State Park, and nearby Fallingwater designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
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