The ways that famous Pittsburghers such as Andrew Carnegie and H.J. Heinz shaped the world of industry and commerce are well known, but Southwestern Pennsylvania has also been a major force in the arts and culture world throughout its history.<\/p>\n
From songwriters to playwrights to artists to actors, Pittsburgh\u2019s native-born icons have started movements, made headlines and taught generations of kids to be kind.<\/p>\n
Stephen Foster<\/p>\n
It may be surprising to learn that the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh is essentially the birthplace of American music.<\/p>\n
Stephen Foster\u2019s compositions live on in songs including \u201cOh! Susanna\u201d and \u201cCamptown Races,\u201d which are still popular today. He was born exactly 200 years ago, on July 4, 1826, in Lawrenceville, the son of early Pittsburgh pioneer merchant William Barclay Foster.<\/p>\n
After briefly attending Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Foster began publishing songs in the early 1840s while also going into business with his brothers. According to \u201cThe Life and Times of Stephen Collins Foster\u201d by Christopher Lynch, head of the Theodore M. Finney Music Library in the University of Pittsburgh Library System, many of Foster\u2019s songs were minstrel songs that were often disparaging toward Black people.<\/p>\n
\u201cFoster\u2019s minstrel songs, which he began to write in the mid-1840s, if not earlier, drew on the stereotypes of African Americans that he encountered in these early songs,\u201d Lynch wrote.<\/p>\n
Foster penned \u201cOh! Susanna\u201d at the age of 21 and continued to travel and gain new musical experiences. He published scores of songs after that song became massively popular and widely printed as a \u201cparlor song\u201d throughout the nation.<\/p>\n
After much travel, Foster would eventually settle in New York City. He died in 1864.<\/p>\n
Mary Cassatt<\/p>\n
Impressionist painter and printmaker Mary Cassatt may be most associated with French artists, but she was born in what is now Pittsburgh\u2019s North Side in 1844.<\/p>\n
Cassatt began traveling Europe in 1865 and showed her first painting, \u201cA Mandolin Player,\u201d at the Paris Salon in 1868, according to the National Museum of Women in the Arts. She caught the eye of famous French artist Edgar Degas in 1877 and began to show her work with the Impressionist painters of the day.<\/p>\n
Cassatt concentrated on images of women and children, often examining the bond between mother and child. One of these pieces, \u201cMother and Two Children\u201d (c. 1905) has been in the permanent collection of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art since it was donated in 1979. It is one of the most popular pieces in the museum\u2019s collection and was heavily featured during the museum\u2019s Year of Women Artists throughout 2025.<\/p>\n
According to the Smithsonian American Women\u2019s History Museum, Cassatt was one of only three women and the sole American to exhibit with the Impressionists in France.<\/p>\n
Nellie Bly<\/p>\n
Speaking of pioneering women, Elizabeth Cochran \u2014 pen name Nellie Bly \u2014 was born in Cochran\u2019s Mills, now Burrell Township, in 1864 and turned the world on its ear as a journalist. With perseverance and panache, she elevated investigative journalism to a new level.<\/p>\n
As a young woman, she worked at a boarding house in Pittsburgh and first broke into writing after responding to a misogynistic column in the Pittsburgh Dispatch in 1885. The paper hired her and, in fact, gave her the pen name \u201cNellie Bly\u201d after a song of the same name by Stephen Foster.<\/p>\n
The newspaper relegated her to the women\u2019s section, so she headed to New York City instead, taking a job with the New York World. In her time there, she had herself admitted to an insane asylum for the poor and spent 10 days observing the conditions so that she could shine a light on them. She eventually published a full book, \u201c10 Days in a Mad House.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Bly is best known for her 72-day-long trip around the world in 1889. The trip was intended to beat the fictional record in Jules Verne\u2019s popular novel \u201cAround the World in 80 Days.\u201d<\/p>\n
It also proved that women could travel just as well as men.<\/p>\n
Gene Kelly<\/p>\n
You may not picture Pittsburgh when you watch Gene Kelly splashing through a downpour in the 1952 musical film \u201cSingin\u2019 in the Rain,\u201d but the legend of dance and performance was born in 1912 in Highland Park.<\/p>\n
Kelly first enrolled in dance classes at the age of 8. He graduated from Peabody High School and the University of Pittsburgh and eventually opened the Gene Kelly Dance Studio with his large family.<\/p>\n
Taking on dance as a serious profession, he moved to New York City and made his big Broadway debut in \u201cPal Joey\u201d in 1940. His star rose quickly as his vast abilities as a triple threat drew widespread attention.<\/p>\n
While \u201cSingin\u2019 in the Rain\u201d was Kelly\u2019s most famous role, he is remembered for other MGM musicals such as \u201cAnchors Aweigh\u201d (1945) and \u201cThe Pirate\u201d (1948).<\/p>\n
Kelly is also known in Pittsburgh as the namesake of the Pittsburgh CLO\u2019s Gene Kelly Awards for Excellence in High School Musical Theater. Since 1991, the awards have been presented annually to high school musical productions throughout Allegheny County.<\/p>\n
Fred Rogers<\/p>\n
It may be obvious, but no list of important local cultural figures would be complete without WQED\u2019s \u201cMister Rogers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Born in Latrobe \u2014 where he is still celebrated annually to this day \u2014 Rogers was the longtime host of the public broadcasting program \u201cMister Rogers\u2019 Neighborhood,\u201d a show filled with education, puppets, empathy and a lot of cardigans.<\/p>\n
Rogers held degrees in music and in divinity. He began his career in public television in Pittsburgh in 1953, and \u201cMister Rogers\u2019 Neighborhood\u201d began airing nationally in 1968. In 1969, Rogers spoke to a U.S. Senate committee in a plea for the importance of funding public television.<\/p>\n
In that <\/a>address<\/a>, he said, \u201cI end the program by saying, \u2018You\u2019ve made this day a special day by just your being you. There\u2019s no person in the whole world like you, and I like you just the way you are.\u2019 And I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health.\u201d<\/p>\n Rogers\u2019 kindness has been his legacy, with the concept of \u201clook for the helpers\u201d becoming especially popular in times of crisis. He is the subject of a USPS stamp, an exhibit at the Heinz History Center in the Strip District and the 2019 film \u201cA Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,\u201d in which Tom Hanks portrayed Rogers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ways that famous Pittsburghers such as Andrew Carnegie and H.J. Heinz shaped the world of industry and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-234703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}