This much I know is true: Harpster Street is where I fell in love with Pittsburgh’s city steps. It was late October of 2017, and I had only recently started exploring the stairs in the out-of-the-way northside neighborhood of Troy Hill. It was a gorgeous Sunday afternoon with a sensually perfect balance of temperature and humidity, blue sky, and cotton puff clouds. Leaves were turning yellow and orange, and the air around me sparkled in the breeze. I captured the moment with the Polaroid and told myself to remember this tiny sliver of time, this connection to something I could only describe as divine.
When asked, I always say I can never pick a single favorite flight of city steps, but I know I’m kind of lying.
This backstory is why returning to Harpster piqued my curiosity. It had been three years since I last walked along those 145 steps, and while I had held on to my memories, I knew the landscape had changed. Harpster’s intersection with Purse Way (an old red-bricked alley with its own flight of stairs) had been excavated to remove ancient water and sewer pipes and install modern infrastructure. The clearing of dense vegetation along the hillside had revealed a sizeable illegal dump site, and remediation required Allegheny Cleanways‘s skills, their volunteer dumpbusters crew, and many hours of dirty, smelly labor.
On my magical October day of auld lang syne, these far-from-beautiful problems were undoubtedly present but removed from my attention. I was blind to all blemishes and indiscretions. As I meandered around the new, more spacious, open, and cleaner versions of Harpster and Purse Way, I was again enchanted. Like seeing an old friend, it was easy to reconnect, to investigate the new and identify the old, appreciate the mix of light and dark, Earth and sky, and the sparkle of leaves fluttering all around.
Love city steps? Get yourself an issue of Mis.Steps: Our Missed Connections with Pittsburgh’s City Steps! Each copy is unique and features 10 randomly selected “trading cards” of Pittsburgh’s 739 public stairways. Visit the Mis.Steps online store to see all issues and place your order.
Want to visit these stairs? You can locate them on the Pittsburgh City Steps Plan website!
Be a good neighbor! Have you visited city steps and found them in poor condition or that illegal dumping (large items like tires, old furniture, and construction debris) and trash were abundant in the area? Grab a photo if you can, and submit a report to Pittsburgh 311. All problems, both broken stairs and railings, as well as trash and dumping, should be reported to the city. You can easily do this online, by calling or using the MyBurgh app on your smartphone.
