Photos courtesy of Heinz History Center

Historic Tour: The Heinz History Center

Welcome to the Senator John Heinz History Center, one of the jewels of Western Pennsylvania and AJHA’s 2024 Historic Tour destination.

With four distinct museums that interpret 19,000 years of history, as a stop along the National Park Service’s Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail, and as an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, it’s no wonder that the Heinz History Center was voted the #1 History Museum in America in USA Today’s 2024 Readers’ Choice Awards.

AJHA buses will drop us off at the Heinz History Center’s main location, a 100-year-old historic warehouse that was once home to the Chautauqua Lake Ice Cream Company, in Pittsburgh’s Strip District. The facility includes six stories of exhibits on Western Pennsylvania history from pre-historic times to today as well as a non-circulating library and archives.

Our afternoon visit will include a 60-minute tour and time to explore the museum’s many special collections and exhibits. Of particular interest to AJHA members will be its newest exhibition, A Woman’s Place: How Women Shaped Pittsburgh, which highlights trailblazing  women of Western Pennsylvania who have “made an immeasurable impact in America,” from “pioneering investigative journalism to leading their country to Olympic gold.”

Detre Library and Archives

As a historian, you may be interested to know that the Heinz History Center is an active research institution, with digital and physical archives, databases, bibliographies, and programming. In fact, you can visit the Thomas & Katherine Detre Library and Archives for free with your admission ticket. Founded in 1879, the collection includes visual and print materials, genealogies, periodicals, and other artifacts. Special initiative collections explore ethnic history, including dedicated archives for African American, Italian American and Jewish history. Feel free to contact the staff or make an appointment.

A Family of Museums

Your admission also provides access to the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum, located on site, and to the museum’s other sites: the Fort Pitt Museum, located in town at Point State Park, and Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Historic Village, located an hour west of Pittsburgh—definitely worth a stop if you can extend your AJHA conference travel through Sunday.

Sen. John Heinz

The Heinz History Center is named after John Heinz III, heir to the Pittsburgh-based H. J. Heinz Company and a beloved U.S. representative and senator from Pennsylvania. As senator, Heinz was known as an advocate for the steel industry, the Social Security system and other programs that supported older Americans.

With a strong track record and broad popularity, Heinz was considered a promising candidate for governor and possibly higher office until his death in a helicopter accident on April 4, 1991, at the age of 52.

Pittsburgh’s Strip District

If time allows, you can venture out of the Heinz History Center to explore the restaurants, boutiques, breweries and more in its famous Strip District neighborhood.  

Before we go any farther, you should know the Strip District was not named for its indecorous nightlife; that would come later. Instead, the title denotes a warehouse district that runs in a 22-block “strip” of land along the Allegheny River.

Throughout the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the neighborhood was a bustling commercial area where shipping vessels, rail lines, factories and vendors jockeyed for a bit of the action in one of America’s most important industrial centers. (For a brief history, see this article from the Pittsburgh City Paper.)

Since the late 20^th century, the Strip has been re-imagined as a cultural district, though it still boasts factories and wholesale food distributors and retains much of its vibrant ethnic diversity. Some of the attractions can be found in a 2022 article from TribLive, this neighborhood guide from Next Pittsburgh or on the Visit Pittsburgh blog.

Schedule

Our tentative schedule provides plenty of time to explore the museum:

1-1:15 p.m. Board buses at the conference hotel

1:30 p.m. Arrive at museum. 

AJHA members will have the opportunity for a 60-minute guided tour.

Then, you’ll have time to explore

• • A Woman’s Place: How Women Shaped Pittsburgh
  • Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood exhibit (It’s the real thing!)
  • From Slavery to Freedom
  • Pittsburgh: A Tradition of Innovation
  • Eyes of Pittsburgh, a collection of images from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s archive
  • Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum
  • And more!

4:45-5 p.m. Board buses to return to hotel