Pittsburgh has more public staircases than any city in the United States, and two locals are working to share the history of those “vertical bridges” and the people who feel connected to them.
Paola Corso is always looking to take the next step. The Harrison native writes about and photographs staircases not only for their beauty, but for their functional use as a journey to get from one place to another. “I am always looking for steps,” said Corso, who lives in Brooklyn,
Paola Corso recalled a walk through her late father’s neighborhood in Brackenridge.
“Luckily, it was windy that day, and I spotted a pair of concrete steps under some leaves,” said Corso, a poet, photographer, literary activist and Harrison native. “I thought about the days my father and grandfather walked those steps.”
She wrote a poem about the journeys Mariano Corso and his father, Anthony Corso, took on those slabs of concrete to and from what was then known as Allegheny Ludlum’s Brackenridge Works.
The work begins “Snapshot of my father as a young man standing at the top of hillside steps wearing a double-breasted suit and tie, pants creased, shoes polished, his back to the steel mill in the valley behind him, his back to the jackhammer he used to drill. …”
Photo: Paola Corso Steps leading up to the Rachel Carson Bridge, connecting Downtown Pittsburgh to the North Side
Every time Paola Corso’s grandmother saw a church, she made the sign of the cross. Corso adopted her grandmother’s tradition when she crossed a bridge over one of the three rivers in Pittsburgh: “In the name of the Allegheny, the Monongahela, and the holy Ohio, amen, became Corso’s personal prayer. In
Vertical Bridges (Six Gallery Press), a new collection of poems and photos, Corso brings a similar reverence to one of Pittsburgh’s hidden landmarks: the steps that connect city neighborhoods.