Points in Pittsburgh
Points in Pittsburgh
The Industrialist hotel in Pittsburgh’s downtown financial district
My favorite new Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania hotel is a small downtown hotel with a rare and glorious name: the Industrialist. When I stayed there during a recent visit, I felt at home. A front desk clerk provided what housekeeping—a reduced service across the hospitality profession—could not. Bartenders Justin and Carlos took care of drinking and dining service in the Rebel Room, which is named after the capitalist who thinks different to make money. The Industrialist, like Autonomia, debuted in 2021.
With a weight scale and yoga mats in the fitness room, which affords a city view, I was able to maintain exercise and weight goals. No workspace in the room, no pool, no stevia and government rules prohibiting servicing rooms with stationery—fresh milk and cream were forbidden by asinine regulations in the Maker’s Lounge—are slight drawbacks. But the staff, which was slow to serve due to the labor shortage, made up for the downside. Bill the night clerk filled me in about the train from Philadelphia. Diana gave a guest family a coloring book with details on the building’s history.
“The Arrott Building, completed in 1902, is one of Pittsburgh’s earliest skyscrapers,” the coloring book explains about the Industrialist’s historic building. “It has a unique lobby of veined marble, glittering inlaid Cosmati mosaic tile, and richly-molded bronze.” Autographed editions of Pittsburgh writer Mark Houser’s 2020 book, MultiStories: 55 Antique Skyscrapers and the Business Tycoons Who Built Them, is available for sale at the front desk. Houser traces the Industrialist’s structural legacy to Pittsburgh’s quintessential self-made capitalist:
The Arrott Building was created for America’s bathtub king. Not that tubs were in James Arrott’s plans from the outset. An Irish immigrant from County Donegal, he started a fire insurance business when he arrived in Pittsburgh in 1859. But when an iron foundry he insured burned down, Arrott and two partners bought it, rebuilt it, and renamed it Standard Manufacturing. To its existing catalog of iron kettles, pots, pans, and pipes, they added a new product line: enameled iron bathtubs.
Homeowners went mad for the gleaming white tubs, which looked so much more sanitary than the tin tubs generally in use. The two tubs a day the foundry could produce were not nearly enough to satisfy demand, so Arrott looked to expand his manufacturing facilities. In 1899, with a factory turning out 200 tubs a day as well as pots, pans, kettles, pumps, sinks, toilets, and a variety of other enamelware, he orchestrated a merger with his competitors, forming a conglomerate that would become American Standard.
Houser’s book describes the 18-story tower as architect Frederick Osterling’s first true skyscraper, where a “rank of grimacing, bellowing faces line the rooftop, perhaps meant to resemble stylized [American Indian] chiefs on the warpath, a decorative theme not uncommon in the era.” Houser adds that Bathtub King James Arrott “only got to enjoy his skyscraper for a few months before dying of a stroke.” But he notes that Arrott’s sons took over the profitable business until they were persecuted in 1910 for maintaining what the U.S. government dubbed a “bathtub trust.”
By 1950, another immigrant, “an Albanian named George Speros,” bought the Arrott Building with his downtown sandwich shop profits. Eventually, the Autograph Collection-themed Industrialist opened in the building, which Houser writes “remains the centerpiece of an ensemble of attractive antique skyscrapers in the city’s former financial district.”
These pictures show the interior and exterior of Pittsburgh’s downtown skyscraper and hotel—the Industrialist—which is where this writer’s temporarily residing once again as I write this. I’ll update readers with any new insights and observations in my travelogues and other articles. Meanwhile, browse previous Points in Pittsburgh below.
Visit the Industrialist in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Points in Pittsburgh
John Kane at the Heinz History Center:
Sarris Chocolate Factory:
Roberto Clemente Statue, Bridge and Life and Flight 93 War Memorial:
Prohibition, Ayn Rand and Clemente:
This is where we breakfast or where we had a drink before the game right?