Points in Pittsburgh

Prohibition, Ayn Rand and Roberto Clemente

Cathedral of Learning at University of Pittsburgh

This is the first article in a new series about America’s steel city. Pittsburgh hosts the baseball club with one of the world’s greatest athletes on its roster for 18 years. Pittsburgh’s where this native Pittsburgher learned in earnest about Prohibition’s horrors. Pittsburgh’s where my parents were born, met, married and attended university, including classes in this tower. They worked at various industrial companies—in skyscrapers and steel mills—and started a family here. The city links to native St. Petersburger Ayn Rand. I’m visiting Pittsburgh for research as I write this.

Pittsburgh hosted a Smithsonian Institution exhibition about Prohibition several years ago, which I attended at the riverside Heinz History Center in the Strip District. The chilling display and tutorial, which was partly based on Last Call by Daniel Okrent, moved and inspired me. This monstrous law, which triggered the income tax, propelled matriarchalism and f…