There’s a popular misconception of archives as a locked vault, says Sierra Green, an archivist at Heinz History Center. At any given time, only about 15% of the 60,000 objects in the History Center’s collections are on view, requiring staff to get creative to engage audiences and enliven Pittsburgh’s past.
Two programs — a new exhibit, “Pittsburgh’s Hidden History,” opening on Sat., April 26, and a decade-old Treasures in the Archives program on Sun., April 27 — aim to “lift the veil” and invite visitors to explore the region’s history from new perspectives. Both events arose “organically” out of discussions among archivists and museum staff and center hand-picked artifacts and primary sources.
Treasures in the Archives is an annual free program that gives a window into stories “hidden in Pittsburgh’s attic,” courtesy of presentations developed and given by History Center archivists themselves as they process collection materials. This year’s topics include the Pittsburgh Folk Festival, a look into the archives of local fiber artists Louise Silk and Barbara Trellis (whose work the Center recently displayed), and a presentation by Green about using archival materials from the Western Pennsylvania Disability History and Action Consortium to engage a group of high schoolers aspiring to be special education teachers. “In the vast majority of cases, the archivist is the one that spends the most time with a collection of source material,” Green tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “So what [we’ve] tried to do is to give our staff an opportunity to really find their own voice and perspective on a collection, knowing that that perspective is totally unique.”
Initially inspired by American Archives Month, “Treasures” aims to spotlight the “breadth and depth” of the History Center’s collections (many housed at its Detre Library and Archives), giving visitors an approachable, guided way to interact with volumes of source material. Past topics have included an overview of Kennywood’s extensive 127-year-old park records — including unfurling drawings and blueprints for the Jack Rabbit roller coaster — a first look into the “voluminous” and meticulously-kept records of forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht, and a 2019 introduction to the October 27 Archive, which documents the impacts of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, and left audience members in tears.
Green says powerful moments like these happen by inviting archivists, who often play a less public-facing, more behind-the-scenes role, to “shine a light on the work they do,” which also highlights history’s “inextricable” link to archives and primary sources more broadly.
“We see how the raw materials of history that are in the archives, they get woven into narratives around history. That’s a beautiful thing. That’s why we [archivists] exist,” Green explains. “[But] so often, when that storytelling is done well, I think folks generally take for granted or lose sight of the integral place that these primary sources have in creating these narratives.”
“As archivists who work with these materials every day, we wanted to flip the script, to tell the stories with the sources themselves as the central part of the narrative, to take the sources from the footnotes and put them in the main body of the storytelling,” Green says.
The “Hidden History” exhibit, on view through Oct. 5, 2025, showcases 300 largely unseen museum artifacts, also selected by staff, and curated like a cabinet of curiosities to “tell stories from Pittsburgh’s past.”
Similar to Treasures, “Hidden History” has a broader, more thematic focus than previous History Center exhibits, says Green, which “allowed [staff] a lot of creative freedom in the archives to [say], here are the things that we talk about around the water cooler [that] we have to share with someone. This was the exhibit to bring those to light.”
“It just so happens that this year the exhibit dovetails beautifully with the mission of Treasures in the Archives,” Green says.
At first glance, “Hidden History” takes a lighter touch, touting a “yinzsplosion” of never-before-seen museum objects and a “whimsical world of wonders” for guests to explore.
“In creating this exhibition, we thought very carefully about what we could do to spark the long-lasting love affair between our visitors and history,” said Jeffrey Brodie, the History Center’s vice president for museums, during an exhibit preview.
Exhibit visitors stop at an original 1915 ticket booth from the North Side’s Garden Theatre before entering, then are greeted by a pair of Chinese guardian lions from the former Kaufmann’s department store.
“Hidden History” displays several “rock-star artifacts,” as Green calls them. At the exhibit’s center is the infamous Biddle brothers getaway sleigh, on view for the first time, where the brothers were mortally wounded following a 1902 prison break with the warden’s wife, Kate Soffel. (Displayed nearby is a cell door from the Old Allegheny County Jail, where the Biddles were imprisoned, and featured in the 1984 film Mrs. Soffel.)
Signs from iconic Pittsburgh spots including The Original Hot Dog Shop, Primanti Bros., Kennywood, defunct Downtown gay bar Pegasus, and the South Side’s former Beehive coffeehouse are also sure draws.
But the exhibit’s open-ended nature encourages visitors to make “unexpected connections between objects that are both familiar and will be surprising,” said Brodie.
Artifacts ranging from a 1950s aluminum martini shaker to creepy porcelain doll heads to a 14,000-year-old flint tool unearthed at the Center’s Meadowcroft Rockshelter are arranged in 10 sections with evocative titles like “That’s So Old,” “Tiny Treasures,” “Shake it Up,” and “How Did I Get Here?” each represented by a symbol.
Staff tried to balance making the exhibit “very playful, but not carnival-like,” said Anne Madarasz, director of the museum’s curatorial division, building intrigue while still presenting objects in historical context and upholding curatorial standards.
An “In Bloom” section showcases objects “adorned with flora or fauna,” explained Madarasz, giving insight into the staff’s curation process. Their first picks were a flowery couch and objects from a Pittsburgh-based landscape business. “But how do we expand on that [theme]? What else blooms? … Ideas bloom. Yeast blooms. So there’s a great bread-making piece” in the section, said Madarasz. “Scary Pittsburgh” features spooky fare like vintage clown masks, a garden scythe, a Napoleon Bonaparte death mask, and The Vamp, a green figure from Le Cachot, a beloved Kennywood dark ride that operated from 1972 to 1998, but also includes a Soviet-era nuclear fallout pamphlet from New Kensington.
An interactive table game has tiles that depict artifacts from the exhibit, and invites visitors to push tiles together to make connections.
Green tells City Paper there are “Easter eggs nested within other easter eggs” throughout “Hidden History,” including a couple Treasures in the Archives cross-overs. At the April 27 event, Catelyn Cocuzzi, an archivist with the History Center’s Rauh Jewish Archives, will present the collection of Henry Ellenbogen, a U.S. representative and Allegheny County Common Pleas judge who helped Jewish Europeans escape Nazi Germany. On display is a 1938 telegram sent to Ellenbogen by Dr. Leopold Mehler, requesting the judge’s help transporting a family member to the United States before their deportation to Dachau concentration camp.
A few of Green’s own picks appear in the exhibit, including a 1947 cookbook by Pittsburgh chef Bessie Gant, and Amy DeLancy Selders’ Disability Advocacy Quilt (both in a “Food for Thought” section), which contains 27 squares with images and quotations from disability rights history.
Of both the History Center’s upcoming programs, Green says, “We’re really looking forward to sharing out stories in our collections, bringing items and materials to life in ways only artifacts and archival collections can.”
Each year, Treasures in the Archives ends by affirming that stories don’t emerge on one day a year. In addition to the five floors of exhibits at the History Center, Green says there are “almost an infinite amount of Western Pennsylvania history topics that you can explore within our archives.” The sixth-floor Detre Library and Archives are free to enter without museum admission. “You can think about the archives as a history lab, as a place of open exploration,” Green says.
This article appears in Apr 23-29, 2025.
