PastFinders

07/20/2026

It's that time of year again where you'll be seeing social media posts about how Pittsburgh "got her H back" after "losing her H."

The story you've likely long believed is simply not the full story. Pittsburghers never reached consensus on the correct spelling of the name until well past the 1920s. It was spelled two or three different ways when it was first named in 1758. From that point on, Pittsburghers and Pittsburgh companies simply picked the spelling they preferred. The GH spelling was considered quaint and conservative and a call-back to Scottish roots. The G spelling was considered more modern.

In fact, when the US Board on Geographic Names decided to standardize their own maps and timetables by dropping the final H from cities that used it in 1891, Pittsburgh and its people pretty much changed nothing. Everyone mostly kept using the spelling they preferred. Newspapers continued to spell it the way they had prior to the standardization. Check out the collage we've attached here. Note that all of these mastheads are from the same date in 1889, two years before we "lost" the H. But you'll see the Dispatch and the Press were already not spelling it with an H. We even found times wherein on the same page of our local newspapers, in 1902 for instance, a decade after we "lost" the H, a Horne’s advertisement spelled it Pittsburg, but a Kaufmann’s advertisement went with Pittsburgh.

Furthermore, while we say we "got our H back" in 1911, many who preferred it without continued to drop it. The Pittsburgh Press didn't return the H to their masthead until a full decade after its "return," finally going with "The Pittsburgh Press" in 1921.

07/17/2026

The air is horrible right now in Pittsburgh due to Canadian wildfires, and the historians among us are coming to a new appreciation for just how miserable it would have been to live in Pittsburgh prior to smoke abatement enforcement. The 1913 Mellon Study that quantified Pittsburgh's industrial air pollution revealed some startling statistics. Even Great Britain's notorious pollution was no match for ours. While annual soot-fall maxed out at 539 tons per square mile in Leeds, 426 in London, and 820 in Glasgow, Pittsburgh's average was an astonishing 1,031 tons per square mile. These pictures should give you a good idea of what Pittsburgh's people were breathing in day and night, day after day for decades. None of these photos were taken at night.

07/06/2026

On June 27, Pittsburgh celebrated the 100th birthday of the Andy Warhol Bridge, one of our iconic and historical triplet Sister Bridges. Here's a photo of the bridge taken January 14, 1933 when it was just six years old. We've included a modern-day view to show you how much has changed over nearly a century. In the app, you'll find historical photos of all the bridges that originally stood where today's Sister Bridges span our river as well as a complete City of Bridges walking tour that shares the history of every bridge that ever crossed the three rivers at the Golden Triangle. (Photo source: Pittsburgh City Photographer Collection, University of Pittsburgh)

06/29/2026

PastFinders and the Pittsburgh Film Office were featured on Pittsburgh Today Live. You can tour lots of Pittsburgh's film history in the app, including a fantastic downtown multi-movie tour!

Daisy Jade takes us through part of the Pittsburgh Film Trails Tour with the Pittsburgh Film Office, showing off some of the most iconic Pittsburgh film locations.

06/23/2026

We're so pleased to announce that The Westinghouse Legacy has joined the PastFinders app! Operating out of the Pittsburgh area, the organization is dedicated to preserving and sharing the legacy of George Westinghouse. We will be helping them use PastFinders to map out his worldwide legacy and to offer both in-person and virtual tours that tell his remarkable story.

06/16/2026

You've seen lots of historical photos of Pittsburgh's astonishing pollution, but here's one you've likely never seen. Courtesy of the Carnegie Museums, this photo was taken around 1989 when the facade of the museum, music hall and library was cleaned of a century's worth of soot. We placed this photo in the app under the waypoint marking the spot of the exterior that intentionally left uncleaned during this process.

05/20/2026

Pittsburgh was once astonishingly polluted to the point its omnipresent black skies became legendary across the world. By the time the city significantly cleaned up its air after the 1970s, the film of soot that covered nearly everything in the city, indoors and outside, needed to be washed away. Sometimes it took decades. The next time you're in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History or Carnegie Museum of Art, take a look at the multi-level 1907 John White Alexander mural that spans the walls of the central staircase. You'll find on each level a few squares that look darker than the surrounding painting. These soot-covered spots were intentionally left untouched when the mural was cleaned in 1995 after pollution and grime had left the art nearly invisible. We snagged these photos of two such squares on our last visit there. Be sure to also swing outside to find the place on the museum's facade that they also left untouched during cleaning. If you can't find it, it's in the app!

04/30/2026

We placed five rarely seen photos of Pittsburgh streets taken around 1897 alongside the same views today, 130 years later. These photos are all from an 1897 Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce publication found in the Darlington Digital Archives at the University of Pittsburgh.

04/26/2026

Here's Pittsburgh around 1897! This rarely seen photo shows downtown Pittsburgh looking down Sixth Street toward the Sixth Street Bridge (today's location of the Roberto Clemente Bridge). This view was marked in an 1897 Chamber of Commerce publication as being taken from Liberty, but we place it at the Sixth and Penn intersection. You can see the entrance to the old Bijou on the right, past a hotel that old maps show having several names over the years including Hotel Victoria, Colonial Hotel and the Ben Forbes Hotel. We especially love the woman crossing the street in her finery. It's not often you find historical photos of Pittsburgh people dressed in such light-colored clothing because the industrial air pollution didn't allow fabrics to stay bright for long. This meant either changing clothing during the day, or accepting that any clothing worn outdoors would quickly become permanently gray.