Jeremy

Jeremy is the co-owner of Discover the Burgh. His favorite Pittsburgh activities include discovering unusual attractions, trying new breweries, and seeking out the city's best happy hours. He also runs the long-term travel blog, Living the Dream.

Doors Open Pittsburgh – Exploring Our Historic Buildings

Doors Open has since expanded to include tours throughout the city, focusing on specific neighborhoods and boroughs throughout the year. In 2023, the two largest tours will take place in Millvale on June 17th and South Side on September 23rd. The downtown tour as outlined below is likely not taking place in 2023.

Doors Open Pittsburgh is a new annual event in the city where local businesses and public offices open their doors to give residents a behind-the-scenes look at their architecture, interior designs, and inner-workings. As it is our quest to experience everything Pittsburgh has to offer, we found this event to be a great way for us to see a side of the city that is normally removed from the public eye.

After exploring countless properties downtown over the course of the weekend, we have decided to share some of our favorites today in order to inspire you to get out and check out the next Doors Open event!

(Note– Several of the properties featured below are open to the public outside of the Doors Open event, so in some cases you may not have to wait until the next event date to go explore!)

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Blue Dust Review – A Gastropub Celebrating the Steel City

The term blue dust may not be one you know of unless you grew up in and around the steel industry. This is the term for hematite-rich iron ore which was known for covering worker's clothing with a blue hue from a long day's work in the mill.

In fact, we did not know about this term until visiting the Carrie Furnaces in Rankin, PA, where our tour guide recommended us to visit a little gastropub nearby with the same name of this colorful material.

Not being one to turn down a recommendation when given to us, we decided to continue our Steel City experience with a visit to the Blue Dust gastropub across the river in Homestead.

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Halloween in Pittsburgh at Kennywood Phantom Fright Nights

Kennywood absolutely loves going all out around the holidays, and no event is perhaps more extreme than the Phantom Fright Nights in the month of October.

During this event, Kennywood transforms itself into a theme park of horrors with several haunted houses, many scare zones, and several of the park's best rides open to enjoy.

When our friends at the park invited us out to enjoy the scares, you know we had to go.

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Haunted Pittsburgh – Downtown Ghost Tour for a Fright

Pick any city in the world, and odds are good there are a few ghost stories to be told. Pittsburgh is no different, and the city once described as “hell with the lid off” is said to be just as haunted as the rest.

To seek out the city's supernatural side, we booked a tour with Haunted Pittsburgh to learn about some of downtown Pittsburgh's most famous hauntings.

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Johnny Angel’s Ginchy Stuff – A Music Museum for the Ages

If you are a music fan who grew up in Pittsburgh over the last 50 years, odds are good you know the name Johnny Angel. Throughout the decades, Johnny built an impressive career that continues to this very day. His current band, Johnny Angel and the Halos, can be found around the region performing songs from the 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond.

As you can imagine, throughout his career Johnny amassed an impressive collection of memorabilia from his own shows and experiences in the music industry.

To showcase these, Johnny decided to put everything on display for the public at his store Johnny Angel's Ginchy Stuff – a North Side staple that moved to its new home next door to the iconic Bicycle Heaven in 2016.

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10 of the Coolest Pittsburgh Houses You Can Visit

When it comes to unique Pittsburgh houses, be it the historical or downright weird, this city is full of them. Unfortunately, many of these houses are private residences that are not open to the public, which makes fully appreciating them somewhat tricky.

Throughout our quest to experience the many things to do in Pittsburgh, we've visited a number of the unique houses in the city and have fallen in love with several of them.

In this guide we wanted to share some of our favorites that you can also go visit!

This guide only features Pittsburgh houses we've personally toured. If you are looking for more details about each house, click the link inside the description to be taken to our full review. When we find more properties to explore in the future, we will update this guide accordingly! 

Note: Most every house in this guide requires advanced reservations. Many do not accept walk-up visitors.

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A Stroll Through the Thornburg Conservation Area

When I go out exploring in and around Pittsburgh, one of the things I like to do is look at the map and see what kind of public parks and spaces are near me. More often than not these turn out to be simple playgrounds or parklets that do not warrant an article, but every once in a while I discover something amazing that I never knew was there.

The Thornburg conservation area is one of those places, and after visiting this one I can safely say that I look forward to returning many times in the future.

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Carrie Furnace Tour – Finding the Steel City’s Roots

Throughout its history, Pittsburgh has been known for a lot of things. The city was host to George Washington on multiple occasions, the departure point of Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition, home to America's early glass industry, and the world's leading supplier of iron and steel- and that is before even getting to the 20th century.

Although these are all incredible in their own right, it is the steel industry in Pittsburgh that made the city famous the world over.

In its prime, Pittsburgh was producing thousands of tons of steel per day- more than half of the entire output of all factories in the United States combined- and boasted a staggering number of mills located along the city's rivers. But by the 1980s this all changed- the steel industry went bust, nearly all of the factories were shut down, and Pittsburgh went through one of the largest depressions from which it only recently emerged.

Since then, most of the factories have been demolished and replaced with new industries. But a small portion of one massive factory, the iron-producing Carrie Furnaces, was rescued by the Rivers of Steel Heritage Foundation and turned into a historical site for future generations to come and learn about how the Steel City got its name.

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Westin Convention Center Pittsburgh Review – Downtown Gem

When I normally think of convention center hotels, my first thought is of a place for business travelers coming in for a conference or large meeting. What I often do not think about is that these hotels can also be spots for visitors coming in for a weekend to explore the city.

My visit to the Westin Convention Center in downtown Pittsburgh did coincide with a conference, but the property helped me redefine my image of a convention center hotel. For those who want to be in the heart of it all and even have a great view to boot, regardless of why you're visiting, the Westin Convention Center should definitely be on your radar.

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