The Facebook group Death Stairs is dedicated to staircases likely to murder those who set foot on them. Though there is a variety of subgenres—consider ultramodernist glass stairs with no railings or risers, for example, or the DIY witch stairs of an amateur carpenter's first tiny house project—one source dominates the group's imagination: Pittsburgh. Though now known for its inexpensive livability and peculiar blend of high culture and down-to-earth Yinzage, its legacy as an industrial town spread over mountainous terrain persists in its proliferation of decrepit and blatantly lethal public staircases. Fodor's Travel honored them recently with a profile.
In the early 1900s, factory workers needed an efficient way to trek from their communities (most of which are tucked into valleys or perched upon peaks) to the smoke stacks stationed along Pittsburgh's flats and shores. Imagine walking a mile in a millworker's shoes. Traversing this uneven topography required a clever engineering solution, one that could weave and climb and radically link the city's hill to its mills. The answer: a curated maze of urban stairways.
The first official steps were constructed in 1911 and this essential infrastructure became Pittsburgh's primary means of public transportation, forming a cooperative city actively thriving on its blue-collar steam. The stairways completely revolutionized transit, conquering geographical boundaries and providing pedestrians with navigation paths around the challenging landscape so robust that they would continue to expand for centuries to come. Today, Steel City proudly boasts over 800 staircases and counting, more than anywhere else in the world.
I have several sets not far from my house. One I often jog, in fair weather: 160 concrete steps down a sharp hillside from one neighborhood to another. Just looking down it in winter is to know fear. By my favorite set is one hidden in the woods that have overground the grounds of a long-disused elementary school; the full photo is embedded below.
