Willard Glazier. "Pittsburg." Chap. in Peculiarities of American Cities. Philadelphia: Hubbard Brothers, Publishers, 1885. Pittsburg at Night.

By all means make your first approach to Pittsburg in the night time, and you will behold a spectacle which has not a parallel on this continent. Darkness gives the city and its surroundings a picturesqueness which they wholly lack by daylight. It lies low down in a hollow of encompassing hills, gleaming with a thousand points of light, which are reflected from the rivers, whose waters glimmer, it may be, in the faint moonlight, and catch and reflect the shadows as well. Around the city's edge, and on the sides of the hills which encircle it like a gloomy amphitheatre, their outlines rising dark against the sky, through numberless apertures, fiery lights stream forth, looking angrily and fiercely up toward the heavens, while over all these settles a heavy pall of smoke. It is as though one had reached the outer edge of the infernal regions, and saw before him the great furnace of Pandemonium with all the lids lifted. The scene is so strange and weird that it will live in the memory forever. One pictures, as he beholds it, the tortured spirits writhing in agony, their sinewy limbs convulsed, and the very air oppressive with pain and rage.

• Population-Metropolitan Pittsburgh: 2,242,798, 19th-largest metropolitan area in the U.S.
• Area of City-56 sq mi/144 sq km. Metropolitan area (Allegheny County): 731 sq mi/1,893 sq km.
• County-Allegheny County.
• Weather-Variable climate; cold, wet winters; frequent high humidity in summer. Clear skies 16% of the time; partly cloudy skies 28%; cloudy skies 56%. Annual rainfall: 36 in/91 cm; heaviest rain in June and July. Annual snowfall: 45 in/114 cm. Average temperatures: Jan 24-38 Fahrenheit/-4 to 3 Celsius; Feb 23-39 F/-5 to 4 C; Mar 31-49 F/-1 to 9 C; Apr 41-61 F/5-16 C; May 52-72 F/11-22 C; Jun 60-80 F/16-27 C; Jul 64-84 F/18-29 C; Aug 63-82 F/17-28 C; Sep 57-76 F/14-24 C; Oct 46-64 F/8-18 C; Nov 36-51 F/2-11 C; Dec 27-41 F/-3 to 5 C.
• Sales or Use Tax-A 7% county-wide sales tax is charged on most purchases, excluding items considered "essential" (such as clothing, groceries, medical supplies and prescriptions). Hotel guests are assessed a 7% occupancy tax in Allegheny County.
• Crime-Pittsburgh is fortunate to have a low crime rate when compared with other metropolitan areas. This is not to say you shouldn't take common-sense precautions: Although downtown remains busy after business hours, it's best to travel with a companion and take a cab. Most buses and subways are considered safe-but again, use big-city smarts. Ask your hotel's concierge or at the front desk about the relative safety of specific areas of the city.
• Emergency Numbers-911 for City of Pittsburgh only. See the inside front cover of the white pages for the local suburban emergency service numbers. (You can dial 911 when you're outside the city, but it will only connect you with an operator who will then need to collect your location and other information before routing your call to the appropriate emergency service in your area.)
• Telephone Code-Area code: 412 and 724
• Time Zone-Eastern Standard Time, five hours behind Greenwich Mean Time. Daylight Saving Time is observed from the first Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October.

Few cities in the world recite American history as well as Pittsburgh, beginning with the battle between the French and British, the birth of a nation, the pioneer's push west, and the first sparks of the industrial revolution. Here, a wealth of minerals and a new reliance on machines combined to change forever the face of the modern world. Pittsburgh's rise as one of the world's great destination cities has marched hand-in-hand with efforts to preserve its rich history

Pre-Revolutionary Pittsburgh (1700-1758) ... Without written records, historians and archaeologists can only theorize that Pittsburgh's first modern inhabitants were various Iroquois groups and later, British and French traders. Two French explorers left a diary of their 1749 expedition to the confluence of the three rivers. Four years later, Major George Washington came as an emissary to warn the French to evacuate the region. He wrote a report urging that the British construct a fort at the "Forks of the Ohio."

Point State Park & Fort Pitt: The Birth of a Nation (1758-1812) ... France and Great Britain built a series of military posts where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the Ohio River. The two nations traded control of the strategic point at the rivers, each building a fort only to see it destroyed Finally, in November, 1758 the British build Fort Pitt, named in honor of Britain's Secretary of War William Pitt. The city of Pittsburgh was founded on a nearly-perfect triangle of land. Those first British settlers, familiar with coal, began mining it from the hillside opposite the fort in the early 1760s.

The Age of Industry (1812-1980) ... sparked by Pittsburgh's rich seam of bituminous coal, and rivers that distributed finished goods, began in earnest with the War of 1812 when many workers turned from farming to iron, rope, glass and boat manufacturing. By 1841, local engineer John A. Roebling had designed the first wire rope bridge, and by 1847 the first cable suspension bridge. During the Civil War, Pittsburgh's iron factories supplied the Union army with warships, armor plate, and other materials. After the war, as many as 62 glass factories flourished, most of them on what is now the South Side. In 1873, Andrew Carnegie opened his first steel mill, the Edgar Thomson Works, on the site of historic Braddock's Field. Pittsburgh would stoke its manufacturing economy during the next 100 years, generating a number of inventions and inventors, including George Westinghouse, credited with such advancements as the air brake and alternating current. ALCOA formed here in 1888 to produce a new metal called aluminum.

Post-Industrial Pittsburgh (1980-Present) ... continues the diversification begun in the late 1970s. Still known for its corporate headquarters (ALCOA, Westinghouse, H.J. Heinz, PPG Industries, Miles, Inc., USX, and Allegheny Ludlum), Pittsburgh ranks as a national financial center. Pittsburgh is home to more than 170 research laboratories and boasts more doctoral scientists and engineers per capita than Boston, Los Angeles or San Francisco.

Growth is led by the tourism industry, spurred by the new $800 million Pittsburgh International Airport serving 20 million passengers via 600 non-stop flights each day to 119 domestic and 10 international cities. Pittsburgh is a global city, with some 220 foreign companies, representing both Eastern and Western Europe, Japan, and the Pacific Rim. Nearly half of these companies have located their U.S. or world headquarters in Pittsburgh.