Destination Deco: Steel City Deco

About the Program

Experience the magic of Art Deco in Pittsburgh!

Join the Art Deco Society of New York this October for a private, Art Deco-filled immersive weekend in one of the best-preserved concentrations of Art Deco commercial towers outside New York and Chicago: Pittsburgh.

Discover with us the region that inspired Frank Lloyd Wright's signature masterpiece Fallingwater and see it in all its blazing autumn glory on our day-long exploration of Wright's celebrated icons.

On our three-day weekend, we will explore the best of Pittsburgh's Art Deco through a VIP tour built around the extraordinary architecture and design of the 1920s and 1930s, when the money flowed and Pittsburgh steel built the era's most enduring icons across America.

A highlight of the weekend is a private curated visit to the Carnegie Museum of Art for an up-close look at The Chariot of Aurora, the monumental Dupas and Dunand panel that once graced the Grand Salon of SS Normandie. We will not only hear about its restoration over two  years, but also stories about other treasures from the museum’s Art Deco collection.

On this in-depth adventure designed especially for lovers of Art Deco, you'll explore, tour, and dine with fellow Deco enthusiasts as we immerse ourselves in the interwar architecture that makes Pittsburgh one of America's best-kept architectural secrets. We'll see soaring skyscrapers, stunning halls of learning, and grand government buildings through a mix of special access and private tours. On the final day of our memorable weekend, we have been invited for a private tour of an Art Moderne home designed to resemble the bridge of an Art Deco ocean liner. Throughout the trip, we'll hear the stories of the industrialists and the artists and city shapers they commissioned to build their headquarters in what was the crown jewel of American heavy industry.

Space is extremely limited. Early registration is strongly encouraged.

 Day One: Downtown Pittsburgh and a "Visit" to Normandie

Friday, October 16, 2026

We begin Friday morning with a guided walking tour of the Golden Triangle, a.k.a. downtown Pittsburgh, to see its Art Deco gems. Led by a design historian, this tour will include special access inside some of the city's most iconic buildings. We will see examples of buildings from the late 1920s when Pittsburgh was an industrial colossus - a city whose mills forged the steel skeletons of skyscrapers rising across the country. All that steel money deserved a skyline to match, and Art Deco, vertical and unmistakably modern, was the style of the moment.

Many of the skyscrapers went up in a tight cluster along Grant Street, giving Pittsburgh one of the most concentrated bursts of Art Deco buildings anywhere in America. Up close, you'll see how the city's industrialists used Art Deco to stamp their mark on the skyline and the industry that built it

After our walk, we head to the Carnegie Museum of Art for a leisurely lunch in their private dining room, followed by a curated tour of their Art Deco holdings. This tour includes what is sure to be an unforgettable experience: seeing The Chariot of Aurora up close and hearing about its two-year painstaking restoration. Designed by Jean Dupas and executed in gilded lacquer by Jean Dunand, this dazzling monumental panel once stood in the Grand Salon of SS Normandie and was subsequently reinstalled on SS Île-de-France, making multiple transatlantic voyages aboard two of the most opulent ocean liners ever built.

Afterward, we visit the Cathedral of Learning, the soaring 42-story centerpiece of the University of Pittsburgh's main campus. An Art Deco + Late Gothic Revival skyscraper, this impressive structure was commissioned in 1921 and opened to students in 1931. This stunning structure remains the tallest educational building in the Western Hemisphere and the second-tallest university building in the world.

We return to the hotel and after a brief rest, depart for a leisurely dinner.

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Day Two: Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob

Saturday, October 17, 2026

Frank Lloyd Wright holds a special place for anyone drawn to early 20th-century modern design, and Fallingwater is arguably the most revered house in America.

On Day 2, we travel by private motorcoach to Fallingwater and immerse ourselves in this masterpiece, surrounded by the blazing colors of the season. Commissioned by the Kaufmann family, owners of the eponymous Pittsburgh department store, it served as their vacation home until 1963, when Edgar Kaufmann Jr. gave Fallingwater and its grounds to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. It is one of the only major Wright works to open to the public with its setting, artwork, and original Wright-designed furnishings intact.

A Fallingwater educator will lead our private tour of the icon, now celebrating its 90th anniversary, taking us through the forested grounds to study the building's intimate bond with the landscape that shaped it. Then we explore the house itself, inside and out across its cantilevered terraces. In the living room, one of modern architecture's most iconic spaces, you'll experience Wright's idea of "breaking the box". You’ll also be immersed in an exceptional collection of fine and decorative art and the custom furniture Wright designed for the house.

Lunch will be at the property's pavilion, set among the trees and woods with autumn color all around us.

After lunch, we'll take in The Kaufmann Legacy, an extraordinary exhibition of home movies from the family's years living there. It offers a special glimpse of the house as a weekend retreat and family home before it opened to the public in 1964.

Then we depart, reluctantly, from the site so many visitors have called “spiritual,” for another Wright triumph: Kentuck Knob. One of his last Usonian homes, it was built for I.N. Hagan, owner of the Hagan Ice Cream Company and a devoted patron of architecture. The Hagans first learned of Wright through Edgar Kaufmann, then commissioned Wright to build on 79 acres they had bought near Uniontown.

After a full day with Frank Lloyd Wright, we return to the hotel for a brief rest before a convivial dinner.

Day Three: Wing, Stars, and Streamlined Living

Sunday, October 18, 2026

Our final day is a guided motorcoach tour, with three different stops that show just how far Pittsburgh's modern moment reached.

We begin our day at the Allegheny County Airport terminal, widely considered one of the best-preserved Art Deco air terminals in the country. When Pittsburgh's commercial flights moved to the newer Greater Pittsburgh in 1952, this original terminal was spared modernization. No security lines, no food courts. Just white glazed brick, chevron terra cotta, zigzag tile work, and a building its architect, Stanley Roush, shaped like a plane with outstretched wings.

Then it’s on to the Buhl Planetarium (now the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh), a 1939 landmark which was funded by a bequest from successful Pittsburgh businessman Henry Buhl and cost over $1 million at the time. Its crowning glory consists of six Art Deco relief sculptures by Sidney Waugh, wrapped around the building's limestone exterior. Together they pay homage to science, to time, and to both the earth and the cosmos.

We will conclude our tour with a rare treat: a private visit inside the Art Moderne home of a retired Carnegie Mellon professor who once served as the university’s Head of the School of Art. Designed by Quentin Beck to resemble the bridge of an Art Deco ocean liner, the home's interior features glass-block accents, a streamlined fireplace mantel, and a large wraparound corner window that gives one a feeling of being outdoors under the trees.  

We conclude an unforgettable weekend with a bubbly brunch, a toast to time well spent together with our immersion into the stellar design of a remarkable city.

Why Tour with the Art Deco Society of New York?

ADSNY trips reflect the organization’s extensive knowledge and expertise in Art Deco architecture, design, and interwar culture, amassed since its incorporation in 1982. All ADSNY programs are carefully curated to provide authentic, and unique experiences, with special access to ADSNY’s experts, research, and resources.

You have the comfort of knowing you are traveling with an organization committed to sustaining and celebrating the special Deco character of the cities we visit through our use of distinctive local guides, consultation with local experts, and in our choice of dining experiences and accommodations.

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