90.5 WESA | By Bill O'Driscoll
PublishedApril 25, 2025 at 5:31 AM EDT
Heinz History Center's collection includes one million objects and other artifacts.
Though the museum is sizable and nearly three decades old, the vast majority of them have never exhibited.
The Center looks to help remedy that situation with its latest exhibit. “Pittsburgh’s Hidden History” showcases 300 objects, from notable artifacts to curiosities, 90% of which have gone previously undisplayed. The show opens Sat., April 26.
Bill O'Driscoll
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90.5 WESA
“These are things we’ve always wanted to share with people but we’ve never gotten the opportunity,” said Anne Madarasz, director of the museum’s curatorial division. “They have great stories, they’re striking objects.”
Just as the Smithsonian Institute is sometimes called “America’s attic,” this show at the Smithsonian-affiliated Heinz History Center fills a similar role for Pittsburgh.
Items in this huge cabinet of curiosities range from vintage board games and a few generations of Westinghouse-brand toasters to a 14,000-year-old flint tool, a key from the long-vanished Fort Duquesne, an original sign from iconic gay Downtown nightclub Pegasus, and a circa-1978 denim outfit custom-made for Alfred “Deano” Dean, the first Black hairdresser at the old Horne’s department store.
“We want visitors to make connections between what they see in this exhibition and the things they use and collect in their everyday experiences,” says Jeffrey Brodie, the Center’s vice president for museums.
Heinz History Center
Objects never before exhibited include the wooden sleigh stolen by the infamous Biddle brothers, Jack and Ed, in their January 1902 escape from Allegheny County Jail. Convicted of killing a grocer in Mount Washington, they were themselves mortally wounded in the escape attempt (which was aided by the warden’s wife, as dramatized in the 1984 film “Mrs. Soffel”).
The Center sums up the grab-bag nature of the show with the line “Treasures, Peculiarities, Rarities, Curiosities, Oddities, Doodads.” However, it is organized thematically, in sections ranging from “That’s Really Old” and “Scary Pittsburgh” to a section on clothing titled “Looking Good.”
Here’s the original 1915 ticket booth from the North Side’s Garden Theatre, and Chinese guardian lions from Kaufmann’s department store’s old “oriental rugs” department. There’s an antique wooden Hyllmede milk wagon, signs from the South Side’s Beehive coffeehouse and Oakland's Original Hot Dog Shop, and a 1950 aluminum martini shaker.
“Scary Pittburgh” includes a child’s tombstone from 1860, the green-skinned, larger-than-life-sized lady vampire figure from an old Kennywood ride, and an elaborate, circa-1890 wreath made from human hair (the latter being a Victorian custom, and rather goth).
Library of Congress
Really old stuff includes a circa-1755 pocket knife and an 1805 embroidered sampler by one Elizabeth Keneby. A section titled “Shake It Up,” on social disruptors, includes a banner borne aloft by Pittsburghers in the 1963 March on Washington.
Outfits in “Looking Good” include an “afternoon dress” from about 1880, sourced in Pittsburgh but designed by the famed Parisian designer Madame Vignon, and a gray satin “presentation gown” with a 10 foot train, worn to the Court of King Albert and Queen Carola of Saxony in 1898 by Sarah Kerr Cole, the Pittsburgh woman married to the Charles Lawrence Cole, the U.S. Consul-General to Germany.
“Just a beautiful, beautiful piece of clothing,” said Emily Ruby, the exhibit’s co-curator.
There is also a room of very small items, including sculptures delicately carved from tagua nuts and hickory nut shells by Richard Reamer and George P. Riggs in the 1910s. A pocket watch has a face custom-carved with a scene of the city as it appeared before the Great Fire of 1845.
“If you look closely enough … you can see people on the steamboat that’s in the foreground. So that’s how exacting it is,” Madarasz said.
“Pittsburgh’s Hidden History” also incorporates interactive games for kids, many of them scavenger-hunt style. Additional programming includes Hidden History Trivia Nights.
The show runs through Oct. 5. More information is here.
