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Site title: The Metropole – The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
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By Dan Holland
Pittsburgh’s mid-twentieth century renaissance is often hailed as a transformational makeover for a city desperately trying to escape its smoky past. Male leaders such as Pittsburgh Mayor David Lawrence (1889-1966), who would become Pennsylvania’s 37th governor, Richard King Mellon (1899-1970), the Mellon Bank financier, and Edgar Kaufmann (1885-1955)...
We at The Metropole are excited to issue a call for our next theme month:
Cities at Play
We welcome submissions about any aspect of play, recreation, or leisure in the urban environment. How have cities uniquely shaped the way their inhabitants play, and how has play in turn shaped the built environment, the social dynamics, and t...
By Marc Stein
The following text is reprinted with permission from Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s by Marc Stein, published by The University of Chicago Press. © 2026 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
When the PBC [Philadelphia 1976 Bicentennial Corporation] board met on October 23 [1970] at the...
By Dan Holland
The passage of Pittsburgh’s first fair housing law in 1958, the second in the nation, and Pennsylvania’s in 1961 (also among the first statewide fair housing laws in the nation), were rare civil rights victories at a time when record numbers of African Americans were being relocated under the federal urban renewal program. The passage ...