Pittsburgh Getaway and Hotel Guide

If you mentioned Pittsburgh to many people years ago, the image it conjured up was either of a dirty steel mill city or one that was working its way into a more diversified economy and nice place to live without the industrial dirt it was long known for.

Today, Pittsburgh is well into its third redevelopment renaissance, as home to nine members of the Fortune 500, with two new sports stadiums, a planned new convention center, the Andy Warhol Museum and a plethora of other cultural activities. Hand in hand with that are numerous new hotels and expansions at existing hotels as developers and hotel owners are spending millions of dollars to keep up with demand for rooms. When the new convention center is completed at the edge of downtown, there will also be a new hotel with 500 to 750 rooms.

While steel is what has made Pittsburgh famous over the years, it has also been identified as the home of Public Television’s Mister Rogers and the place where Heinz Ketchup is made. But it’s much more than that. Its natural beauty and hilly topography make it stand out among cities.

What is always striking about Pittsburgh on the ride in from Pittsburgh International Airport is that once you get past the airport corridor and the nearby typical suburban sprawl, you travel through a small mountain via the Fort Pitt Tunnel. Then, presto - on the other side of the tunnel sits the city’s downtown, with a breathtaking view of the skyline and the three rivers that give the city added spice: the Allegheny, Monongahela and the Ohio.

Those rivers mean lots of bridges and easy walking between downtown and nearby neighborhoods, and to the North Shore’s new PNC Park (for Pirates baseball) and to the adjoining but as yet unnamed new Steelers (football) stadium. (The old dual sport Three Rivers Stadium was torn down to make way for the new stadiums.) Nearby on the North Side sits a Victorian style bed & breakfast, one of several B&Bs located throughout the city.

For the visitor interested in history, Pittsburgh has found a way to develop into the future without destroying the past, and the same goes for hotels, too. For instance, a $44 million renovation of a 1906 downtown building with a grand marble staircase resulted in a new 300-room hotel with a view of PNC Park.

For the business and leisure traveler alike, the hotel action is centered in the downtown area and nearby suburbs. Most of the downtown hotels are of the big chain variety, but since Pittsburgh is largely a city of neighborhoods, there are many smaller and funkier places to stay throughout the region. These run the gamut from Pittsburgh’s only hostel all the way to a long-time independent hotel recently acquired by a chain where prices average $179 to $249 a night; on a recent late spring weekend the rates were $109. A small chain hotel right outside the city costs $59 a night the same weekend. At other hotels, inquiries for rates elicited the suggestion to check ahead as they change frequently.

Depending on how close you want to be to your ultimate destination in Pittsburgh, hotel locations include the airport corridor, nearby Moon Township, the Greentree suburb, the North and South Sides of the city, Station Square (also South Side), Shadyside (a long-time hip, trendy neighborhood), Oakland (near the education and hospital centers at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University), Monroeville (eastern suburb), and the North and South Hills (north and south suburbs).

There is a visitor’s center right as you enter downtown on Liberty Ave., a main drag that features a long-standing chain hotel near Point Park (a park on the convergence of the three rivers) and the Gateway Center complex, part of Pittsburgh’s first Renaissance.

If the recent past is any indication, both the business and leisure visitor to Pittsburgh will have plenty to do here, with a wide option of hotels to choose from.

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