Some great photos of the Steel City from my pal Estelle Tran at her new blog, Pixburgh N’at.

Recognize this spot in Oakland?

Another great street scene.

Love this one.

Make sure you read the sign.
Check more of ‘em out here.
-KG
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For decades, Youngstown’s Fosterville Neighborhood, located on the city’s south side, was a vibrant residential area. It played host to the booming Glenwood Avenue commercial corridor and the legendary Idora Amusement Park, whose Wildcat roller coaster was consistently ranked among the top roller coasters in the country.

The collapse of the local steel industry in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the closure of Idora Park in 1984, signaled the area’s long decline.

In recent years, the area now known as Idora has begun a turnaround. The creation of the Idora Block Watch and then the Idora Neighborhood Association sparked increased community involvement. A decline in crime and the increasing removal of blight continues to give residents hope. That hope was celebrated this past weekend with the first annual Idora Fest.

Last Sunday, I had the pleasure of joining a group of Pittsburghers for an Urban Hike in Swissvale, a borough just outside the city with an interesting history.
Some stops along the way included the Trundle Manor, Kopp Glass and some affordable housing for sale from the Mon Valley Initiative.

Also on the journey: The Triangle Bar, home of the famous “Battleship” (giant sub sandwich).
Urban Hike is a group that regularly organizes hikes in the city’s various neighborhoods and surrounding communities, with stops along the way so participants can learn about what …

Author’s note: This post is alternatively titled “Angie’s Best-O-Cle, Part Deux.”

Summertime in Clevelandtown. No one ever wrote sonnets about it, but maybe that was because they were having too much fun! Ew, besides, sonnets are boring and pretentious. And ode to Cleveland in the summer would be a good punk rock song.

But I digress …

If you live in Clevelandtown, like me, you probably don’t have central air. But Cleveland gets hot in the summer. So, when I am in need of a cool down, I hop on my bike and head down to the Lake.

Our Friend Matt Bach at the Michigan Municipal League sent us these photos, showing the sunnier side of Detroit. They were taken on a recent league staff tour led by Let’s Save Michigan campaign founder Sean Mann.
From Bach: “Mann, a Detroit resident and avid supporter of Detroit, showed League staff all around Detroit including stops the Detroit River Walk near the General Motors Headquarters, the historically stunning Guardian Building, the famous Heidelberg Project neighborhood and the old train depot. Our day started off with lunch at Slow’s BBQ. It was …

Alaina Cauchie, creator of the Pittsburgh is Beautiful website, sent us these photos.

“I started Pittsburgh is Beautiful as a visual expression of what makes Pittsburgh so awesome – ‘gritty is the new pretty’, basically,” she said. “I love the juxtaposition of the old versus new that happens so frequently in our town. Although Pittsburgh has gone through some hard times in the past few decades, it is enjoying an urban revival and I am so glad to be here for it.”

Alaina is constantly updating the site. But she shared a few of her favorites with us.

These photos were taken by Cleveland photographer and urban explorer Kevin Smith. He writes at BornCirca1979.

Below is the Warner and Swasey building on East 55th and Carnegie in Cleveland. For 100 years, they made telescope parts in this building, before closing in 1980. There have been talks about making it into a tech center.

On to Westinghouse Electric, on East 58th Street. This building employed 560 workers in 1960, according to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. At the time it was Westinghouse’s world headquarters for lighting. It relocated in 1979.

Last week I visited Lowell, Massachusetts, which many consider to be the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in the United States.
The city near Boston was home to many cotton mills in the early 1800s, but by the 1920s and 1930s, many of the mills had closed. The economy briefly revived during World War II, but most mills closed for good by the 1950s and 1960s – foreshadowing the manufacturing job losses that would later hit cities like Pittsburgh, Detroit and Cleveland.
The city saw dark times during the 1960s, and some …

Brilliant, Pittsburgh-based photographer Laura Ainsley, co-founder of American Elegy, has been exploring Pittsburgh’s dividing lines as a case study in social change.

Here’s what she had to say about the project:

When Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods once throbbed with the heartbeat of industry, members of the
working class did their best to carve out small plots of life of their own.

In neighborhoods around the city, families of these workers—many of whom were immigrants or the
descendants of recent immigrants—made their lives in these in these gardens, on these porch stoops, and in the neighborhoods that grew up around them.

I’ve taken some heat lately for suggesting that some of the criticisms of Cleveland are true. But there is one thing Cleveland truly excels at, one aspect of this city that’s completely world class, it’s the Fourth of July.

On the west side of Cleveland, the fireworks season begins right around June 1st. From that moment till roughly August, explosions at all times of the day and night are a matter of course. A charming white noise that is a welcome sign of summer, if you will.

Say what you will about the city of Cleveland, I dare someone to dispute this fact: nobody beats Cleveland and Fourth of July or Fireworks.

Cleveland photographer extraordinaire Frank Lanza shot these photos at the unofficial Fourth of July celebration on 67th Street in the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood on the city’s west side.