One hundred years ago this week, Pittsburghers gathered on Seventh Street to watch a parade mark the opening of a brand-new bridge. The structure they celebrated was the longest self-anchored suspension bridge in the world at the time, an engineering achievement that announced to America that Pittsburgh could build anything. On June 17, 1926, the Seventh Street Bridge opened to traffic. Today, the world knows it as the Andy Warhol Bridge, and it just turned 100.
To mark the centennial, Allegheny County is hosting a free 100th Birthday Bash on the bridge from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, June 27. The bridge will be closed to vehicular traffic for the occasion, giving Pittsburghers the run of a span that usually carries cars and buses across the Allegheny River between Downtown and the North Shore. Art projects will be led by the Andy Warhol Museum and the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh. City Cast Pittsburgh will serve as the day's media partner and emcee, guiding the crowd through games and contests. Local artist Strawberry Luna is creating a commemorative poster for the milestone, a limited-edition piece that will mark this particular moment in the bridge's long story.
One Bridge, Three Sisters
The Andy Warhol Bridge is the oldest and longest of what Pittsburghers have affectionately called the Three Sisters since the trio was completed in the late 1920s. In 1925, Allegheny County awarded a contract to the American Bridge Company to design and construct three identically styled, self-anchored suspension bridges side by side across the Allegheny. It remains the only set of three identically designed self-anchored suspension bridges anywhere in the world. The Seventh Street Bridge, which cost $1.4 million to build and stretches 1,061 feet, opened first. The Ninth Street Bridge, now the Rachel Carson Bridge, followed in November 1926. The Sixth Street Bridge, now the Roberto Clemente Bridge, was completed in 1928.
All three are painted in Aztec Gold, an homage to Pittsburgh's official colors. On a clear day, seen from the Point or from Mount Washington, they read as a single golden statement about the city that built them. "These iconic bridges are symbols of Pittsburgh's vibrancy, culture and most importantly, its people," said Andy Masich, president and CEO of the Senator John Heinz History Center. Masich noted the broader historical moment as well: as the nation marks the U.S. Semiquincentennial in 2026, Pittsburgh's Three Sisters stand as a reminder of what American industry and ingenuity looked like at its centennial a hundred years ago.
A Bridge Named for an Artist
The renaming in 2005 was itself an act of civic pride. The Seventh Street Bridge became the Andy Warhol Bridge to honor the Pittsburgh-born artist and to celebrate the tenth anniversary of The Andy Warhol Museum, which opened on the North Shore in 1994. The Warhol, located just two blocks from the bridge's northern approach, is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist. The connection between a mid-century pop art icon and a golden suspension bridge built by steel-city engineers is distinctly Pittsburgh: art and industry, image and infrastructure, the handmade and the monumental, all within walking distance of each other.
The bridge is also the only span in the country named for a visual artist, a distinction that has drawn tourists and photographers from around the world to its Aztec Gold cables.
What a Centennial Means for Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh is a city that has spent much of the last decade reminding the world it is more than its past. The tech economy, the research hospitals, the startup ecosystem, the wave of new restaurants and neighborhoods and cultural institutions, all of these are part of a story about transformation. But the Andy Warhol Bridge centennial offers a different kind of reminder: that Pittsburgh has also always been a city capable of building things that last. A hundred years after workers finished welding its cables and laying its deck, the bridge still carries thousands of people across the Allegheny every day. It still connects Downtown to the North Shore. It still looks, from a distance, exactly as it looked in the photographs from 1926.
The June 27 celebration is free and open to everyone. For a city that spent the last year hosting the NFL Draft and welcoming the Michelin Guide, a birthday party on a bridge might be the most Pittsburgh event of the summer. Bring the kids. Bring a camera. The bridge will be closed to cars, and for a few hours, it will belong entirely to the people it has served for a century.