Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania

Wilkinsburg sits just east of Pittsburgh and owes its explosive growth to one man: George Westinghouse. When Westinghouse established his Union Switch and Signal plant nearby in eighteen eighty-one, then launched Westinghouse Electric in eighteen eighty-six, workers flooded in. The borough incorporated in eighteen eighty-seven and by nineteen fifty its population had grown to more than thirty-one thousand.

The proximity to Westinghouse's electrical empire earned Wilkinsburg the nickname the Electric City, a title it wore proudly into the mid-twentieth century. Like many industrial suburbs, its fortunes dimmed as manufacturing declined after World War Two. Today Wilkinsburg wrestles with questions of redevelopment and even merger with Pittsburgh, but the century-old brick rowhouses and church spires still speak to the moment when Westinghouse's current first lit this corridor east of the city.