Row houses along the south bank of the Monongahela River tell you where you are, the South Side Flats, a neighborhood built on the flat land to house workers of the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company. J&L was founded in 1853 and grew into one of the largest steel producers in America. At its peak the South Side Works employed tens of thousands of men.
The neighborhood was dense with row houses, taverns, and churches serving the immigrant workers — mostly Slovak, Polish, and Croatian men who came to Pittsburgh for the wages the furnaces paid. Carson Street, the main commercial artery, was the longest main street in Pittsburgh. When J&L closed its South Side operations in 1985, the neighborhood faced severe economic distress.
But unlike some Pittsburgh steel communities, the South Side proved resilient. Its Victorian housing stock survived intact, and the neighborhood attracted bars, restaurants, and young residents through the 1990s and 2000s. The South Side Works on the former mill site brought retail and offices to the riverfront.
Carson Street on a weekend night is one of Pittsburgh's liveliest strips. The row houses behind it hold families whose grandparents came from Slovakia to work in furnaces that no longer exist.