Heinz History Center opens its vaults for 鈥楬idden History鈥� exhibit
Brad Hundt/Observer-Reporter
PITTSBURGH-Walk into the exhibit “Pittsburgh’s Hidden History” and you feel like you’ve stumbled into one of the world’s coolest indoor flea markets.
Look on a wall and there’s a movie theater lobby card from the 1930s. Not far away, there’s a Napoleon death mask, a 1910 Honus Wagner trading card, couture clothing, an old milkshake machine and an assortment of other relics.
Many of the objects are separated by vast stretches of time – 14,000 years elapsed between the creation of a flint tool and a set of giveaway Pirate pierogies that are both on display – but they are all bound together by the fact that they are somehow related to the history of the Pittsburgh region. Another thing they have in common is most have been kept in storage and out of public view, but they have been liberated for “Pittsburgh’s Hidden History,” which is at the Senator John Heinz History Center through Sunday, Oct. 5.
According to Jeffrey Brodie, vice president of museums at the Heinz History Center, the exhibit came to life after officials at the museum pondered “what we could do to spark a lifelong love of history,” and it “provides a new opportunity to think about history from a new perspective.”
He added, “We want visitors to make connections between the items in the exhibit and the items they use every day. … Every time I come in, I see the exhibition in a new way.”
The objects on display range from the tiny to the humongous, and center on events, people and places both well-known and relatively unheralded within Pittsburgh’s history. Some of the other objects on display are:
-A key to Fort Duquesne that dates to the 1700s.
-A steamboat steering wheel.
-The getaway sleigh used in a shootout between Pittsburgh police and Jack and Ed Biddle in 1902 when the brothers escaped from the Allegheny County Jail with an assist from Kate Soffel, the wife of warden Peter Soffel. The incident was immortalized in the 1984 movie “Mrs. Soffel,” and it is on public view for the first time in a Heinz History Center exhibit.
-The green club jacket worn by Eric Springer, the first African American member of the Oakmont Country Club, when he was admitted in 1991.
-Objects from such beloved local regional sites as Primanti Bros., Kaufmann’s, Kennywood and the Original Hot Dog Shop.
Curators at the Heinz History Center have received many donations of important Pittsburgh-related artifacts over many decades, and many of those are stashed away in a climate-controlled building on Penn Avenue, not far from the History Center itself. About 90% of what the History Center has in its archives has not yet been brought out for public view in an exhibit.
“The collection holds the key to understanding the past,” Brodie said.
Throughout the run of “Pittsburgh’s Hidden History,” there will be a series of Hidden History Trivia Nights on May 15, June 12, July 10, Aug. 7 and Sept. 4. Those are all Thursdays, and the Trivia Nights will allow visitors to test their knowledge of Pittsburgh’s history. The Trivia Nights are for visitors aged 21 and over, and will have a cash bar and snacks.
For additional information on “Pittsburgh’s Hidden History,” go online to heinzhistorycenter.org.
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