Ten things worth knowing about Pittsburgh

Every Pittsburgher has a favorite fact to pull out when friends come to town. Here are ten, each one checked, to add to your collection.

1. The name came in a letter

The earliest known use of the name is in a letter General John Forbes wrote on November 27, 1758, to the British statesman William Pitt, the day after his army took the Forks of the Ohio, where retreating French forces had burned Fort Duquesne. In it, Forbes told Pitt that the place had been named for him. His spelling in that letter was "Pittsbourgh."

2. For twenty years, Washington dropped the h

In 1891 the U.S. Board on Geographic Names decided that place names ending in -burgh should lose the final letter, and federal maps began printing Pittsburg. The city never really went along: the Pittsburgh Gazette, the Pittsburgh Stock Exchange and the University of Pittsburgh kept the h, and so did official city documents. After a campaign led by William H. Davis and Senator George T. Oliver, the board reversed itself on July 19, 1911, and post offices switched their cancellation stamps that October.

3. People called this place home long before the forts

The Monongahela people lived in the region from the 1200s into the 1600s. Lenape, or Delaware, people arrived around 1724 and built Shannopin's Town in what is now Lawrenceville, followed by Shawnee and Seneca-Cayuga communities in the 1730s. They were the first to call the area Allegheny. In 1778 the Treaty of Fort Pitt became the first treaty between the United States and a Native nation.

4. A pre-Revolutionary building still stands Downtown

The Fort Pitt Block House in Point State Park was built in 1764 as a small defensive redoubt and is the only surviving structure of Fort Pitt. It served as a trading post and later a family home before Mary Croghan Schenley gave it to the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1894. It has been free and open to the public since 1895, and the state calls it the only authenticated pre-Revolutionary War structure west of the Allegheny Mountains.

5. Officially a city since 1816

Pittsburgh received its city charter on March 18, 1816. The original document spelled the name with an h, but printed copies dropped it through an apparent printer's error, a slip that would later be used to justify the federal Pittsburg spelling.

6. The city drew its neighborhoods with its residents

Pittsburgh counts 90 neighborhoods. In the 1970s, after Mayor Pete Flaherty's administration created a neighborhood planning division, residents helped set boundaries at community meetings and a coalition of neighborhood groups compiled a neighborhood atlas. There were 88 in the 1980 census; the North Shore and South Shore came along in the early 1990s.

7. You will climb more steps here than anywhere else in the country

The city says it has more public staircases than any other city in the United States. Bob Regan's survey counted 739 sets, 344 of them legal streets made only of steps, and by the city's count its steps add up to 45,454 in all. The South Side Slopes alone have 68 stairways, which is why the neighborhood holds its StepTrek walk there every October.

8. An 1877 ride still runs every day

The Duquesne Incline opened on May 20, 1877, and still carries riders up Mount Washington in its original wooden cable cars. Neighbors rescued and restored it in 1963. It runs every day of the year, and the upper station on Grandview Avenue holds a small museum of Pittsburgh history.

9. Thirty-one classrooms from around the world

Inside the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning are 31 Nationality Rooms, each a gift from one of the ethnic communities that helped build the city. The first 19 were completed between 1938 and 1957, the other twelve since 1987, and most are still used as classrooms on weekdays. The 35th annual Holiday Open House is planned for Sunday, December 6, 2026.

10. Downtown gained a park this year

Arts Landing, a four-acre park on the Eighth Street block between Penn Avenue and Fort Duquesne Boulevard, opened on April 17, 2026, on land that had held a tire shop and a failing parking garage. The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust built it with about 100 new trees, Downtown's first dedicated children's playground, pickleball courts and a bandshell that is now the permanent home of the Three Rivers Arts Festival. Bronze works by the late North Side sculptor Thaddeus Mosley stand throughout.

A sweet postscript

Two more for the road. Prantl's Bakery opened first on Walnut Street in Shadyside, where original owner Henry Prantl created the Burnt Almond Torte, and that flagship still bakes it today. In the Strip, La Prima Espresso has kept an Italian-style espresso bar on 21st Street since the company began in 1988, a short walk from where the city's wholesale produce trade once centered at 21st and Smallman.

Pick your favorite, and the next time someone asks why the city spells its name that way, you will have the answer.