Doo Dah Day(s)
Doo Dah Days celebrates the music of Stephen Collins Foster, a composer and Pittsburgh native. It is held the second Saturday in July in Lawrencville, the neighborhood now within the Pittsburgh city limits where Foster was born in 1826.
One of my now-retired coworkers belongs to the Lawrenceville Historical Society and told me about Doo Dah Days a few years ago.
We had perfect weather so Sal and I packed up the kids and drove the ten minutes that it takes to get to Allegheny Cemetery from our house. The cemetery itself has an interesting history, and you can read about it here. It is the final resting place for many notables, including Stephen Collins Foster.
Stephen Foster lived from composed Oh! Susanna, Camptown Races, and Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair, among other songs with which you may be familiar. He died in 1864, and his music was popular with soldiers fighting the Civil War. As a result the festival organizers encourage attendees to dress in period attire. We did not. However, one woman walked by us wearing a full hoop skirt and took the time to show Sarah and Emmy the many layers of her dress from pantaloons to pettiskirts to hoop skirt. They were quite impressed, and loved her button-up boots as well.
We also took a narrated trolley ride through the cemetery and the guide pointed out various graves and statues of interest along the way. Of particular interest to Sal was Josh Gibson's grave. I was impressed by the mausoleums along Millionaire's Row. We also saw a grave marker that I'd been wanting to find for some time, the final resting spot of the young women and girls who were killed in the Allegheny Arsenal explosion on September 17, 1862. I've written several blog posts about the explosion itself and this article is also interesting.
Here are my posts:
Back to Doo Dah Days and the cemetery tour . . .
We stopped at the Temple of Memories to view the stained glass window commemorating Stephen Foster. Emmy also pointed out another window which depicts the Passion of Christ according to Matthew and wanted me to take a picture.
After our tour, we walked around the park area of the cemetery, listened to a band playing Foster's songs and other period pieces, and then found the Tropical Sno food cart. I know Gus and Yia Yia's is an iconic symbol to Pittsburghers, but I have never had a better sno cone than what we bought from Tropical Sno. You can find them on Facebook; they're based in Allison Park.
Sal and I agreed that we would like to visit the cemetery again sometime and walk (or bike) throughout so that we can see more graves up close and really take the time to explore and reflect.
Here's a photo summary of our day.
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