Pittsburgh Connection

You might have watched Mister Rogers' Neighborhood as a kid, but did you know that he was a Pittsburgh native? Born in Latrobe, PA, Fred Rogers lived in the city most of his life. He filmed his beloved television show at WQED studios in Oakland.

Another hero from the hometown? Batman. Or more accurately, actor Michael Keaton, who played Batman in the 1990s, is a Pittsburgh native. But, that's not Pittsburgh's only connection to The Caped Crusader. In 2012, The Dark Knight Rises with Christian Bale was filmed here.

In addition to Fred Rogers and Michael Keaton, stars like Jeff Goldbum, Zachary Quinto, George Romero, August Wilson, and Christina Aguilera are also from the area. Recent movies filmed all or part in Pittsburgh include The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Jack Reacher (2012), The Avengers (2012), The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), The Fault in Our Stars (2014), Concussion (2015), and Fences (2016), to name just a few. W&J College has been part of the action, too. Several scenes from the Netflix series Mindhunter were shot on W&J's campus in 2017.

On a variety of rankings - travel, eats, livability - Pittsburgh looks pretty great. Pittsburgh is the only U.S. city in the London issue of National Geographic Traveler's cool cities to visit in 2019. Also in 2019, Pittsburgh was also deemed "Food City of the Year" by af&co. And, after you graduate, we hope you'll stick around. Lending Tree ranks Pittsburgh among the top three best cities in the U.S. for first-time homebuyers, and the Economist's Intelligence Unit's livability survey ranks Pittsburgh as the most livable location in the Continental U.S. (Only Honolulu outranks us and - let's be fair - it's hard to beat that island sun...)

There's a lot of fun, creative energy around Pittsburgh, making it a city that's seen a lot of firsts. The first Motion Picture theater opened here. The first Internet Emoticon - The Smiley - was created here. So was the Mr. Yuk sticker; the first Big Mac; the pull-tab on aluminum cans; and the Polio vaccine. The world's first Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton is on display at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The first simultaneous heart, liver and kidney transplant was performed here.
What will you do first?