Editor’s note: The position of Pittsburgh as a leading hub for research has come under question byfederal reductions in scientific funding but also highlighted in an artificial intelligence summitThe city’s shift from heavy industry to education and medical sectors is frequently linked to the 1990s. However, the idea actually dates back further, to a time when mills were still the mainstay—and to a plan that could have created a different Pittsburgh—and a very different Oakland—than what exists today.
In a passage from his new book “Beyond Steel: Pittsburgh and the Economic Factors of Change,” Christopher P. Briem examines one of the earliest proposals for an innovation park similar to the Research Triangle, located in the heart of what was once the Rust Belt. Panther Hollow, a wooded valley between the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, did not end up receiving a roof or a nuclear reactor. However, the ambitious and costly plan to revitalize Pittsburgh, beginning with Pitt’s backyard, might be one of the most overlooked chapters in the city’s transformation.
Although older than Carnegie Tech (now known as Carnegie Mellon), which has origins tracing back to 1787, the University of Pittsburgh in the early 1950s mainly served as a regional educational institution. In 1955, it appointed Edward Litchfield, dean of Cornell University’s business school, as its 12th chancellor, a position he took on the subsequent year.
The board of directors at Pitt brought in Litchfield to help transform Pitt into one of the world’s top universities. During his first speech to the university in 1957, the new chancellor highlighted the need for “a more organized focus on establishing research institutes across all our schools and colleges.”
It was a dream that seemed distant from the real world back then. In the year Litchfield was appointed, Pitt’s total research contracts with the federal government were just under $2.5 million, an figure that would increase five times during his time and surpass $1 billion in the early 2000s.
Litchfield’s approach developed into a broader vision for Pittsburgh’s future. In May 1962, he suggested the creation of a significant new joint research center within the city. He stated that a new all-inclusive research park was vital to “ensuring the diversification of industry that has become necessary for our economic development.” The proposal was directly inspired by the successful academic-industry research partnerships found at the Stanford Research Park in Palo Alto, California, and the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.
A key element of Litchfield’s vision was avoiding the suburbs — like where many corporate research centers in the area were located — where land was easily accessible. He felt that the main reason for the success of such research centers was their closeness to well-established research universities, and in Pittsburgh, these universities were located within the city.
He suggested constructing a new research park in Oakland, situated directly between the city’s two biggest educational institutions, Pitt and what is now CMU. The problem was that Oakland was already very crowded and didn’t have room for any significant new development, let alone a large research park.
The solution involved situating the new research center inside the Panther Hollow ravine, which cut through the neighborhood and divided the universities. The initial plan was to place a roof over most of the one-mile-long ravine, with a multi-story construction project turning it into “the world’s greatest research park.” Litchfield established the Oakland Corporation, a private development company, to advance this ambitious endeavor.
The entire project was anticipated to require ten years to finish, with an initial expense of more than $250 million — equivalent to almost $2.6 billion in 2025 — which made it one of the most ambitious undertakings ever suggested by a university at that time. If the whole project were constructed according to Litchfield’s plan, estimated costs would have climbed to $750 million. The “Valley of Tomorrow” — the name given to the Panther Hollow initiative — was expected to ultimately feature a nuclear reactor along with a computing center and data storage facility, all intended for shared use by both academic and private-sector organizations.
As forward-thinking as geotechnical engineering was, the more significant advancement lay in linking technical expertise with regional growth. Litchfield maintained that “scientists require — and demand — regular interaction with academic institutions and other cultural assets.” Through Panther Hollow, the chancellor sought to “bring together all the research centers in the Oakland area… to assist in addressing Pittsburgh’s economic challenges.”
It is unclear how many members of Pittsburgh’s business community felt they had any significant issues to address.
The proposal for the Panther Hollow Research Park turned out to be overly ambitious to carry out. It was just one aspect of an expensive expansion of research facilities at Pitt, which resulted in financial difficulties that worsened during the 1960s. Along with limited backing from local business and academic figures, these challenges led to the postponement of the project’s planned opening. In the end, ongoing financial shortfalls at the university became hard to manage, a key reason behind Litchfield’s departure as chancellor in 1965.
Nevertheless, the foundation for a much larger academic research initiative in Pittsburgh had already been established, along with a significant transformation in economic development policies across the country. At the federal level, the enactment of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980 assigned a crucial role to university research in regional economic growth. Concurrently, state governments started new initiatives that emphasized advanced technology as a way to stimulate economic expansion. In February 1981, the administration of Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburgh introduced the idea of creating the state’s Ben Franklin Partnership Challenge Grant Program, which would serve as a blueprint for state-level technology-focused economic development programs. Tactics that are now considered standard were once considered groundbreaking when first introduced in Pittsburgh over six decades ago.
“Beyond Steel” will be released by Kent State University Press on February 3, 2026, with A debut gathering at White Whale Books in Pittsburgh.
Chris Briem serves as a regional economist with the University Center for Social and Urban Research [UCSUR] at the University of Pittsburgh and can be contacted atcbriem@pitt.edu.
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