Pittsburgh’s public art: Follow our mural tour & get inspired
Pittsburgh’s streets are home to dozens of public pieces of art that add color to Steel City. Here’s a mural tour to follow for yourself!
While Pittsburgh has a number of beautiful and engaging art museums, you’d be remiss to ignore the dozens of public art projects on building walls throughout the city. Pittsburgh’s street art includes dozens of murals, large and small, across the city limits and beyond. Check out some of our favorites, but next time you’re strolling in the city, keep your eyes peeled — maybe you’ll stumble upon your next favorite mural!
1. The Two Andys mural – Downtown
The Two Andys is a mural that depicts two Andys central to Pittsburgh lore: famed pop artist Andy Warhol and industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. Warhol was born in Pittsburgh in 1928 before moving to New York to pursue an art career. Carnegie immigrated to Pittsburgh from his native Scotland in 1848 and eventually helped birth the “Steel City.” The mural was painted by artists Sarah Zeffiro and Tom Mosser in 2005. You can find it in the 600 block of Smithfield Street in downtown Pittsburgh.
2. Black Lives Matter mural – Downtown
The Black Lives Matter mural underneath a bridge and along the Allegheny River in downtown Pittsburgh originally began as graffiti. The artists who first painted the 12-foot-high capital letters reading “Black Lives Matter” in 2020 were house painters, not commissioned mural artists. But soon, other artists were brought in, including Black artists, to add to the mural, with faces of Black people killed by police painted on the bridge beams. And though the city didn’t give explicit permission for the piece that was originally “just sending a message,” according to the artists, the mural is now an important piece of Pittsburgh’s public art.
3. The Strip Mural – Strip District
The mural celebrating the Strip District depicts everything there is to love about Pittsburgh’s Strip District, a lively neighborhood near downtown that is full of international grocery stores, fun restaurants, and a great time for pedestrians on the weekends. Completed by Carley Parrish and Shannon Pultz in 2010, The Strip Mural shows a number of people wandering about an outdoor shopping area, which includes bevies of vegetables outside storefronts, street musicians, resident illustrations, and a glimpse of downtown Pittsburgh. The mural is beautiful and colorful, and it makes you want to spend your next Saturday morning with it and the rest of the Strip District. Find it in a parking lot in the 1900 block of Penn Avenue.
4. Randyland murals – North Side
Randyland, the residence and passion project of Randy Gilson, is a Pittsburgh find in itself because Randy has spent decades adding color and life to his home and garden in the North Side’s Mexican War Streets. Part of the public art museum includes murals, like the colorful and exuberant Outside Celebration Mural that welcomes visitors to Randyland and gives them just a hint of what lies ahead.
5. City of Asylum houses – North Side
City of Asylum, located on Pittsburgh’s North Side, hosts residency programs for writers exiled from their home countries. The nonprofit also supports the visual arts, as many of the houses for writers are decorated with murals in a public art project that forms—in City of Asylum’s words—”a public library of published houses.” You can see the row of these houses made new by artists on the North Side’s Sampsonia Way. Each house has a different theme: there’s the House Poem, the Winged House, the Pittsburgh-Burma House, the Jazz House, and the Comma House. (Psst: Our favorite is the Jazz House!)
6. Maxo Vanka murals – Millvale
The murals of Maxo Vanka aren’t located on the street or even outdoors, but considering these murals are among the most special artworks in the city, we’re making an exception and including them in our mural tour. Vanka was a Croatian American artist commissioned to create the 25 fresco murals that can still be seen within St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale, just across the Allegheny River from Pittsburgh. In 1937 and then again in 1941, Vanka painted beautiful religious iconography alongside imagery strongly condemning war, inequality, and worker exploitation. You can join public tours of the murals on Mondays and Saturdays for $15 per person.
7. Legends of Pittsburgh baseball mural – Oakland
Under a bridge on Ross Street at Boulevard of the Allies, you can find a mural depicting a series of legendary Pittsburgh-area baseball players from the Pittsburgh Pirates as well as the Homestead Grays, who were part of the segregated Negro Leagues through the 1940s. The mural, painted by Michael Malle, is near the site of Forbes Field, the original field where both the Pirates and the Grays played. Some of the famous players you may recognize include Josh Gibson, Willie Stargell, Bill Mazeroski, Roberto Clemente, and Honus Wagner.
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