The stairways that snake along the South Side Slopes are like labyrinthine installation art, with no famous artisans to take credit, no names to give them distinction. What marks these staircases are weathered imperfections and rubble: spotted with moss and shaky with age, they've been refined by thousands of pedestrians for scores of years.
   Now lost in their brooding silence, the staircases are as reclusive as the neighborhoods they connect. Cars rarely disturb these streets, and walkers are even more obscure. The staircases of Pittsburgh are old, sometimes impossible to find, and a good number are gated-off for safety reasons. Residents of the slopes still use them but few non-residents traipse up and down anymore.
   It's best to start at the top, because going down gives you time to take in the view of the sprawling flats of South Side, the skyscrapers of Downtown, and the vague rolling hills above Oakland. An average staircase follows a straight line, like the one that descends from Newton Street to Windom. Houses linger above and below, and the slope has been cleared over the years, yielding heaps of scraggly bushes piled atop decaying stumps. Like many staircases, the steps are concrete planks, with space beneath to catch your feet if you're not careful. Underneath, you can see plastic cups and broken bricks, the relics of many passersby. Handy as this staircase is, it's not much to look at.
   The most glorious specimens crawl along the cliffs, twisting around and around, reminiscent of the impossible architecture in traditional Chinese watercolors. Several excellent staircases extend from Arlington Street, which is embedded with a large section of T tracks. One set turns an abrupt corner, angling downward, and ends in a pit that was once a building's foundation. It may be cut short, but like all ruins, it connects us to an earlier day, when that shattered wall was somebody's front stoop.
   There is a beautiful pair that runs along complementing hills, jutting out of Arlington and ending at Windom. They are long and twisting, pausing to make way for brief horizontal tiers. Their close proximity to adjacent houses deems the Slopes' staircases the finest in the region: climbers are offered intimate views of lawns and terraces. Reaching over a rusted handrail, you can touch a cord of wood sitting behind a back door. A wooden chair lies near the top, along with crushed cans and shattered bottles.
   When you descend, you have to push through tangled vines and low-hanging electrical wires. The base is even home to several condemned cars. If every discarded object tells a story, these staircases are a playground of curiosity.
   Windom is the beginning point of the most peculiar staircases on the Slopes. The entrance (there is only one) is gated-off with orange mesh, and a sign forbids entry. Circumnavigate the mesh, and you'll find a battered staircase that just ends, finally crumbling away to decomposing railroad ties stacked haphazardly below. The staircase once continued down to the still-used train tracks between the Slopes and the Flats, but the second half is now extinct.
   This type of staircase is the most provocative: by the simple act of deteriorating, it admits that all things, even concrete, must end. You could perceive it as a metaphor for the Pittsburgh of past generations, once as stolid and unrelenting as a machine, now allowing bushes to grow up through the cracks. The day the staircases are forgotten completely—no longer tread by local residents, only studied by observers—they will silently become Real Art. If there is justice, plaques will one day be hung to identify them as historical landmarks, though to point them out endangers their unique obscurity. Unmarked, the staircases bear their own cragged personality, like a tough-loving grandfather, watching over a city that has gradually ceased to watch them back.

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