2026 is my 20th year of living in Pittsburgh. You may have noticed me posting a lot of pictures of Pittsburgh on Instagram lately – I have been doing a lot of reflecting on what has kept me here, and how good this city has been to me. There are certainly more compelling locales, but I just don’t feel at home anywhere that isn’t steeped in history and at least a little haunted. The sterile, pre-fab particle board suburbs will never do. I am attracted to places whose endurance and energetic charge compel me to contemplate their stories, and visualize a timeline larger than my own.
When stumbling upon traces of previous life in Pittsburgh, I contemplate the individual lives that were connected to even the most mundane items. A solid brass lipstick tube still containing product dropped along the city steps, a bottle thrown into a wall by a worker, a note scratched into wooden siding over 100 years ago.. They all give evidence of the tapestry of lives lived in this shared space and invite wonder. Who was the woman who dropped the lipstick? Where was she going? She must have been furious when she noticed it missing! What country was the worker from and what languages did he speak? Was his boss a jerk that day? How old were the children scratching notes and how far did they walk to leave them?
I am constantly reminded of history everywhere I look in Pittsburgh. Starting with my house, which was built like a damn ship with old growth wood and mortise and tenon joints by an Irish family in 1870. It’s massive wooden paint encrusted corbels hang like silent sentinels, watching over generations of inhabitants.
It took years of digging and a little luck cross referencing various records to find out that our house was built by stone masons. Suddenly the many large rocks in our yard made a lot more sense. It turns out our house was part of a massive estate -the size of several city blocks- which contained two of the first houses on the hillside, and several outbuildings. Today, only our house and one of the outbuildings survives.
I had always wondered just *exactly* why our house sits at an odd angle in relation to the street. It’s because the house is about 30 years older than the street! Our house would have been in the rural outskirts of town back then, surrounded by small farms. Around 1900 the area changed hands as industry picked up steam, as did immigration. Polish hill, directly down hill from us, began to boom. Our house was later purchased by a Polish family and the area rapidly developed, with smaller, cheaper housing dividing and filling up the once sprawling estate.
Prior to this revelation we had only known what an elderly neighbor had told us before she passed. Dolly, who lived next door in one of the newer dwellings her entire life, said that our house had been a “house of ill repute” for much of her younger years.
This nugget of information lead me to research Pittsburgh during prohibition and I was surprised to learn that Pittsburgh was on par with other major cities in terms of gang violence and an appetite for alcohol. Pittsburgh was known as “The Drinkingest City”, with the Volpe family cornering the market. My biggest regret is not keeping a map I found illustrating where prohibition related murders occurred in my neighborhood during one year, and it was absolutely peppered. Excellent article here.
Even before learning this I had an unshakeable gut feeling something bad and almost certainly violent happened in our basement. Could our basement have seen gang related violence a century ago? We may never know for sure, but learning this isn’t really far fetched is certainly fascinating food for thought. If only these overbuilt walls could talk..
Speaking of overbuilt walls, as we move through the house with renovations, we peel back the layers. Behind energy-crisis era drop ceilings is original trim, fixtures and further layers of antique wallpaper. Our house is so well built that we have been able to salvage large quantities of building materials of quality better than anything we could buy new. Our current living room was once a formal front parlor, with enormous windows overlooking the river valley and distinctive decorative wooden paneling skirted the room. Our kitchen still has this paneling, although it’s hidden behind appliances. It’s different from regular wainscoting, I hope to document it soon and maybe someone can tell me the name for it. Our kitchen also predates cabinets unfortunately… As anyone who has renovated an old home knows, there is always another project waiting.
My previous house sat just outside a massive amusement park which no longer exists. Rival gangs of children ran amok, and as it turns out, wrote notes to each other on the wooden siding of my house. As I renovated my kitchen, I exposed what was originally an exterior wall. I found dozens of names, little hearts, and various messages scratched into the soft shiplap. To think of all that activity being buried in plain sight! And that’s just one instance. How many other forgotten messages lie in concealment throughout this city? Surely, the words I write here will not have the staying power of a child’s, at an amusement park, over 100 years ago. How about that.
And the sad phantom little girl. Although she only showed herself to me once, I didn’t need to see her to know there was the spirit of a very unhappy little girl at the top of the stairs at my old house. Years later, another witchy friend of mine who lived there after me asked if this was something I was aware of, knowing nothing of my experiences. Poor little thing. I left her candy, but I don’t think anything could ever cheer her up. Was she an influenza victim or did she fall down the stairs?
My original Crossfox studio was connected to the back of this house. It was basically a shack, and had been used by the family to roll cigars, back in the days of neighborhood hucksters. I always found it fitting that I began my “cottage industry” in a space that was built for this purpose, and I liked to imagine myself working alongside them in different dimensions yet inhabiting the same space.
My second studio was situated in a large, grand brick building which was originally a medical clinic and then a men’s club. My studio was the bar of the men’s club. Although the bar was long since ripped out, you could feel it. The energy was like a bunch of loud voices talking at once and no one really listening. Not bothersome though, just a distant din. Easier to work with than one kinda weird basement guy anyway.
Now I’m getting to know a new area. Although many of the details are still shrouded, I await their revelation with relish. Our commercial building, which houses my 3rd studio, was originally a neighborhood grocery store- for a neighborhood that has mostly returned to forest. We found evidence of a public telephone outside, and occasionally people who grew up in the neighborhood stop by to see what remains.
I am so much more compelled and inspired by old walls and their secrets than I could ever be by soulless, disposable, bland beige new construction built to fall apart in a few decades or less. Give me something of substance! So thank you Pittsburgh, for intriguing, entrancing, inspiring, teaching, mystifying me and leading me on voyages of the mind and soul. I wouldn’t be half the artist I am without it.
Crossfox 
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