Let's go to the Carnegie.

The place.

A neighborhood whose past is defining its present and future in way that surprised and inspired me.

This is Destination: Carnegie.

This great little restaurants and shops.

There's just so much going on.

And it's like a cool community.

Like I mean, a cool Main Street too.

Yeah, it's not just plazas with parking lots and big box stores.

It still has a main street and it's close to the city.

It's close to the airport.

It's Yeah, it's just, I don' know, it's just a certain vibe.

So what is it that you lov about Carnegie as a community?

As a neighborhood?

It's that first word you use.

Community.

I came from Chicago, which is a little bit of a tougher city.

And I was surprised at just how nice people were that firs I realized I wasn't invisible.

Going into the grocery store, someone actually saw me and said, excuse me.

And I was dumbfounded, like, oh my gosh, you can see me.

That's so Pittsburgh.

Oh, people when they come in they are surprised Oh my God, this is I we never knew it was a quaint little place.

The vibe in here on the weekends is just so fun because we've got your church ladies.

Yeah, we've got your hard hats.

We got your businessmen.

We got your punk kids.

We got your tattoo artists.

We've.

I mean, there's nobody tha doesn't feel comfortable here.

One of th things that really surprised me when I started filming here in Carnegie was the large Ukrainian community that's here now.

I hadn't spent a lot of time in this neighborhood, and I had thought that this immigrant group was new ish, but oh my gosh, was I wrong.

They've actually been here since the 1870s, and they came here not jus because of work opportunities, but because this neighborhood reminded them of home the hills, the valleys, the climate, it's very similar.

People came to work in the steel mills, coal mines, heavy industry, the railroads, most of the people who came were, you know, lookin for a better life economically.

They came to feel the need for jobs.

Carnegie is also, similar.

Yeah, like our city.

Where we from.

If you don't know English, you, almost, everywhere you can find people who know Ukrainian.

And this makes you feel like home.

You yourself are Ukrainian.

Can you talk about the impact of getting to lead in a space like this where your ancestors have also, you know, been in this fiber of a community of Ukrainians?

Yeah.

It's a joy to share my culture, which is something I think Ukrainians do well.

And I remember growing up askin other kids like, what are you?

And they told me a whole bunch of different things, but they didn't participate in any of those.

Okay.

You're German, can you speak German now?

What do you do to celebrate that you're German?

I don't know.

I ask my Irish friends and no one had good answers.

And being Ukrainian, there were just so many aspects of my life that we participated in our heritage.

And so to be part of this community and sharing it even more with the community, is a great joy.

20 years ago, in 2004, Carnegie was devastated by the remnants of Hurricane Ivan.

Even Chartiers Creek overflowed.

This downtown business district was submerged under water, and in fact, a lot of it wa just covered in mud and debris.

The way that this town came back from that floo really defined this community.

It really showed its resilience, not just in rebuilding the structures, but its enduring spirit, too.

People were literally running for their lives as the water was rising so quickly.

But that next day, peopl just poured out of the community to help everybody.

Carnegie did not have a coffee house since the flood of O four, which wiped out a cool coffee house down the street.

And so, you know, a tow without a coffee house is just.

Yeah.

And terrible.

And it also seems like what you do.

And we've heard about that from a lot of people that the flood really was like this dividing point right there was before the flood and after the flood.

My husband Bob started this diner and he was one of the very first businesses to come into Carnegie after the flood.

The streets looked like a war zone.

I mean, so, so many restaurants and businesses and homes were just leveled by it.

I mean, it took months and months and month for for people to just clear out the trash.

Another defining moment of this community happened more than 100 years ago on August 25th, 1923, the Ku Klux Klan decided to come to this town, and they called it Karnegie Day.

But with a K and thousands of them marched right down this very main street.

They were met by outraged residents, determined to push them back, and eventually they did.

And I think about what it must have been like back then, a community standing against a hate movement that meant to divide people based on differences like race, religion and ethnicity.

And you know what?

I see that here today, a community that continues to build together, even when neighbors may look or sound a little different from one another.

When I was walking through here, you guys have all these different games.

You have things that really represent a lot of different cultures and religion.

Was that super intentional t your point and why take that on?

This community is incredibly diverse.

I always feel like diversity makes things interesting.

You know, when you learn from other people.

Carnegie was always a very welcoming place, I believe, for, ethnic groups.

And in a town like Carnegie, we were able to thrive.

And, to this day.

Can you talk a little bit about what it's like having this space in this moment with the war and having refugees be a part of it?

Immediately the community of Carnegie jumped in to support us.

How can we help you?

What can we send to Ukraine?

And our church hall.

I think we had four tons of goods, before I could arrange for trucks to come pick them u and ship them over to Ukraine.

Can you tell people from from Pittsburgh and people who are going to watch the show in the United States, how it feels to feel welcomed by a new community?

I think that, first of all, it's make you feel comfortable when you saw that people smiling to you and we check that in USA.

Almost all people always smiling.

People here, many who are descendants from immigrants themselves, really feel as though they have been welcoming to the new wave of immigrants starting to call Carnegie home and they are so excited to see what they're bringing to this community.

Carnegie, like so many o the neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, is changing, and it is in part because of new people and new community members and new immigrant groups moving in and sort of mingling with group that have been here a long time.

So what is it that you hope for Carnegie as a whole moving forward?

My hop is that we remember our roots, that we remember what it was like to struggl to open a store front, to sell what was important to us.

Those Ukrainian foods that I now they're popular, you see pierogi and Carnegie or Pittsburgh and everyone knows.

But before that was a thing and you looked at it skeptically.

I hope we remember what that felt like to be looked at that way.

We have some groups coming on to Main Street that are selling headdresse that we Ukrainians don't wear.

It's not part of our garb, but I hope that we're receptive to seeing that kind of stuff, because another group is coming i and living the American dream, which we've been blessed to be a part of.

I also originally am from Bombay, and so I've been all around the place now.

I'm not going anywhere.

I love this community.

What is it that you know that caught your attention and really grabbed at your heart?

So first of all the community has accepted me.

You know, this woman is a brown foreign woman, so to say.

I'm a been an American citize since 95, but still, you know, people ask, where are you from?

You know that's that's okay, that's okay.

So, the community just embrace me, you know?

And that was all heartwarming.

Here we've got, an Indian restaurant.

We've got a Seoul Korean restaurant, we've got a kebab house.

That's an Afghan house.

We've got our our little typical American diner here.

We've got the Ukrainian club across the street.

I mean, we really are just, have everything to offer here.

And it' because of the immigrants.

It's because of these communities that are growing here.

You know, there's a mosque here.

There is an Indian community center.

There's all these differen eclectic restaurants popping up.

What do you think from in term of the new wave of immigration coming to Carnegie?

What has the response been?

I think it's been amazing.

Underneath your skin, you're all the same.

Yeah.

We all have the same sort of hopes and dreams.

Yeah, I can say that in clinic.

You, people, what I met, they like big heart, open people.

What are some of the challenges that you see facing Carnegie, and how do you hope, that people come together to overcome them?

I think some of the challenges are that we might forget our own history, and become entitled.

So I'm a third generation American.

I basically live very comfortably as an American without knowing, what my grandparents did, struggling, coming ove or that my great grandparents.

And so when we forget that thing, it's har to see other people's struggle.

Then we might get a sense of entitlement that we belong and they don't.

That makes me a little nervous.

I think that we're getting some new groups in and we're reliving those stories of the beginning struggles.

And so we as a community are going to welcome them in and be okay with it.

These aren't outsiders.

These are our own people.

And even from other countries, we may not speak the same language.

We may not have the same customs and the like, yet we understand why they cherish theirs as we cherish ours.

It's really touching to see how the new immigrants living in Carnegi feel appreciated and welcomed.

And I mean, that's really fitting, considering that Andrew Carnegie himself was an immigrant and he gifted this place the Carnegie Free Library and Music Hall to the people of this town in exchange for naming the community after him.

That was a bold move by a complex man, and while he wasn't perfect by any means, he stood against many value so many workers hold dear today.

He also gave away 90% of his fortunes to charities, helped build universities and encouraged others of great wealth and privilege to do the same.

His vision of investing in pension funds for both steel workers and teachers alike is representative of the bes of what we can be to each other, and that really does represent the values of present day Carnegie and their collective dream of accepting on another and thriving together.

Okay, final question is it Carnegie or is it Carnegie?

Oh, it's absolutely Carnegie.

No, it's Carnegie is just not.

Father John, Is it Carnegie or is it Carnegie?

We need to know.

Okay, well, this is 2025.

So now I say Carnegie.

But I was kind of being a stick in the mud coming from the East Coast.

My brother played in Carnegie Hall.

And it was a great bragging point, but now I'm learning and evolving, and I've converted to Carnegie.

Hey, this is the big one.

How do you pronounce Carnegie?

Is it Carnegie or is it Carnegie?

When you ask, are you asking if you live in Carnegie?

Well, no, just.

Well, yeah.

How do you pronounce.

It's Carnegie, it's Carnegie, it's Carnegie.

I think we're putting this to bed.

It's Carnegie.

Yeah.