Pittsburgh's Hidden Stair Streets Nobody Talks About

There's a street in Pittsburgh you can't drive down. It has a name, a street sign and real house numbers — and the entire street is a staircase. Pittsburgh has around 800 public staircases, more than any other American city. But why? The answer starts with the land: a plateau cut apart by rivers, where flat ground was so rare that the steel mills took all of it. The workers got the hills — and built inclines, stairs and bridges to get to work. Then steel collapsed, the city lost more than half its population, and in 2022 the bill came due when the Fern Hollow Bridge fell into a ravine. This is the story of why Pittsburgh looks like no other city in America — and why that comes with a price. CHAPTERS 0:00 The street you can't drive down 0:56 Why Pittsburgh has no grid 1:30 The land that wouldn't lie flat 2:21 Steel takes the flat land 2:46 The 1936 flood 3:42 The workers get the hills 4:07 Railways that climb mountains 5:22 Streets made of stairs 6:22 Counting every step 7:25 What the hills do to a city 8:27 When the mills closed 9:38 The morning the bridge fell 11:10 Why Pittsburgh is different Would you live in a house you could only reach by stairs? Tell me in the comments. Sources: NTSB Fern Hollow Bridge collapse report; Pittsburgh City Steps Plan; Bob Regan, "The Steps of Pittsburgh"; U.S. Census Bureau; National Weather Service (1936 flood). Footage and images: stock video and Wikimedia Commons (see credits below). Images: Wikimedia Commons (cropped, color-graded, animated): • Andre Carrotflower — CC BY-SA 4.0 • Baron Maddock — CC BY 4.0 • Cbaile19 — CC BY-SA 4.0 • Dan Dascalescu — CC BY-SA 3.0 • Dllu — CC BY-SA 4.0 • Doawk7 — CC BY-SA 4.0 • Doug Kerr — CC BY-SA 2.0 • Famartin — CC BY-SA 4.0 • formulanone — CC BY-SA 2.0 • High Contrast — CC BY 3.0 de • Jason Pratt — CC BY 2.0 • Maddy's Mystery Studio — CC BY-SA 4.0 • Mother of "upheld" on Flickr [2] — CC BY 3.0 • Mr. Matté (if there is an issue with this image — CC BY-SA 4.0 • Perry Quan — CC BY-SA 2.0 • Peter Pawlowski — CC BY 2.0 • reivax — CC BY-SA 2.0 • Roy Luck — CC BY 2.0 • Samstein — CC BY-SA 4.0 • Suckindiesel at English Wikipedia — CC BY-SA 3.0 • Tony Webster — CC BY 2.0 • Whpq — CC BY-SA 3.0 Stock video: Pixabay Map data: © OpenStreetMap contributors, © OpenMapTiles #Pittsburgh #UrbanPlanning #CityDocumentary