Pittsburgh Community Spotlight – Beechview

Hello everybody, how are you? We are here on a beautiful sunny Pittsburgh afternoon. It’s Thursday and the weekend’s almost here. Everybody is getting ready to have fun.

You can feel the wind blowing, leaves are on the ground, and the first edge of autumn is in the air. It’s windy — I haven’t been here before in the autumn, and with so many trees in this city I’ll bet when the leaves finally turn it looks wild!

This video is going to focus on another community in this great area — Beechview.

Beechview is on the south side of town across the river.

Pittsburgh has an interesting history of manufacturing. Glass was one of the first things made in Pittsburgh.

Beechview is on the south side of the river. That area was developed later. Pittsburgh’s original site, Fort Pittsburgh, is on the inside of the “Y” where Three Rivers stadium is situated.

Beechview grew slowly at first but expanded quickly when they began to manufacture gum, originally industrial gums. Over time they added the famous chewing gum that we know the company for today, one of the most popular in history. Pittsburgh’s Beechview area is where it all started — they named the town after the original plant.

That means that Pittsburgh was one of the first test markets for a consumer food product. They would ask the residents, “Would you like to try this new gum?” They put samples in barbershops, in restaurants, everywhere people went they left gum samples.

That was one of the great things about living in Pittsburgh. You could get free samples of gum everywhere you went. Some kids had 50, 60 packs of gum on them all the time. One kid put packs of gum in his shoes to patch the holes and keep his feet warm during the cold Pittsburgh winters.

The company has grown to a worldwide concern, but the heart is right here in Beechview.

The town is situated on a very steep riverbank. You need a four-wheel vehicle just to get to the factory. The steep bank inspired local kite-flying, hang-gliding and parasailing aficionados to blow bubbles with Beechview gum to float out over the city. In the early 1920s, you’d see people floating over the city, hanging from gum bubbles in their teeth.

On some weekends, especially if the wind kicked up, you’d see 4000-5000 people floating over Pittsburgh just using their Beechview gum. People today ask: how is it possible to blow a bubble so big it could lift you in the air? Remember that the company started in industrial gums, so they knew how to make chewing gum strong enough that a bubble could hold a human in the air.

Smaller people often carried another person with them, maybe their little brother, laughing the whole time, 4-5 thousand feet above the earth having a good old time.

Of course, you don’t want to poke the bubble when you are mid-air! Occasionally birds flew into the bubbles. An eagle hit one, a blue heron another. Both people went falling to earth. Fortunately, there is a lot of water in this area — the major rivers and tons of little tributaries. Both gum-bubble riders hit the water somewhere and survived.

Now, I’m not from this area. I got this information from a guy at the auto parts store. I was buying a car battery hold-down and a guy next to me was replacing a muffler. We started talking and he related the entire Beechview history as I’ve shared it here.