2023's Squirrel Hill Treasures

It’s an honor for the Squirrel Hill Urban Coalition to be able to recognize annually four Squirrel Hill Treasures. These people and places represent what’s wonderful about our community, and each in their own way helps make Squirrel Hill the place we love so much.

We want to make sure that you know just how special our 2023 Treasures are, so we asked Luke Chinman, a writer for this magazine and a Squirrel Hill native, to talk with them. Here’s what he discovered about their lives, work, and connections to Squirrel Hill.

2023’S SQUIRREL HILL TREASURES

By Luke Chinman

DR. ELIZABETH MILLER

For Liz Miller, Squirrel Hill is more than a neighborhood—it is a community blueprint that she finds herself returning to in her professional work.

“There’s a really strong sense of neighborhood cohesion,” she says. “It’s really an amazing, hyper-local model for ways in which we can strengthen our neighborhoods and our connections to each other.”

Miller, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and physician at UPMC’s Children’s Hospital, moved to Squirrel Hill in 2011, seeking somewhere with a strong Jewish community and accessibility for elderly populations. And as is true for many a Squirrel Hill family, she had an intergenerational connection as well: her husband, Josh, has a cousin who grew up on Beechwood Boulevard, not far from where their family moved.

In her professional work, Miller has spent over 20 years in adolescent health research examining issues of health equity and interpersonal violence prevention. Aside from publishing over 330 peer-reviewed research publications, Miller is codirector of The Pittsburgh Study, a community-partnered, collective impact initiative in Allegheny County that promotes racial equity and child thriving, and academic codirector of Community PARTners, the community engagement management core for the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at the University of Pittsburgh.

“I’m always in partnership with schools, with community organizations, and with a range of community leaders,” she says. For instance, she’s joined forces with local universities to study sexual violence prevention on campuses—and that’s just the beginning.

During the pandemic, thanks to her existing community partnerships, she was tapped for virus response efforts, one of which was encouraging community members to participate in early vaccine trials. Miller worked with Asian and Pacific Islander organizations in the area to provide vaccines to restaurant and nail salon workers in Squirrel Hill, as well as the Jewish Community Center for vaccine distribution.

“It was an example of the lovely intersections between my work and my neighborhood,” she notes.

While Miller says she feels lucky to live in Squirrel Hill, she also recognizes the segregated reality of the Greater Pittsburgh region and how systemic racism hampers health outcomes, a topic which her research has explored. Miller says she loved that Squirrel Hill was a “walking neighborhood” for her kids as they were growing up, and her research examines how other neighborhoods can maintain the same levels of connectedness.

“We are currently studying ways in which we can increase neighborhood cohesion, in particular in neighborhoods that have experienced profound levels of oppression and marginalization,” she says. “It is really quite joyful to live in Squirrel Hill and the Western Pennsylvania region that are really excited about doing this research together.”

HELEN WILSON

“Beechwood Boulevard—most people just drive it and don’t think anything of it,” says Helen Wilson.

But she knows there’s a vibrant history embedded in the slaloming road: it was originally planned as a scenic drive from Schenley Park to Highland Park shown off to visiting foreign dignitaries. Many of the houses along the winding street were once owned by some of the original settlers that developed Squirrel Hill, and even today it’s the site of contentious debates over traffic patterns and urban development.

Wilson first moved to the neighborhood in 1978, working as an art teacher and hopping from school to school throughout the city. Her first interest in historical exploration emerged from this dynamic experience.

“At every school I went to I would research the history of the area and the history of the school,” she says.

with the legends and lives buried in the attached graveyard, Turner Cemetery, which remains today. Through her research, she has uncovered the stories of some of Squirrel Hill’s oldest residents. (“We know more about them than I do about my own grandfather,” Wilson jokes.)

After she retired, historical research graduated from merely a passion project to her primary focus. Wilson joined the Squirrel Hill Historical Society and shortly after assumed the role of vice president.

She has now published two books, a neighborhood history and a collection of historical photographs chronicling Pittsburgh’s hundreds of bridges that she put together with her son. She spends her days researching and writing the historical society’s monthly newsletter, which gives a deep dive into a facet of the neighborhood’s history—in July, for instance, she offered an extensive look at the history of the Irish Centre on Forward Avenue.

Wilson is also working to add the Squirrel Hill Historical Society photo collection to Historic Pittsburgh, a digital archive operated by the University of Pittsburgh’s library system. It’s a tedious process, she admits, but important both to preserving the history of the neighborhood and supporting the network of local historians she has met and worked with over the course of her career.

“If you don’t know the history,” Wilson says, “you’re not going to understand what’s going on now, and it’s going to affect how you treat things in the future.”

ELLEN P. KESSLER

When Ellen Kessler was growing up in Squirrel Hill, she used to sneak into classes at the Carnegie Museum of Art with her friend, watching the other kids learn to draw.

“To picture myself as someone who could be a participant in making decisions—being a part of looking to the future and honoring the past of an organization of this magnitude—was beyond what I could have ever imagined,” she says.

Nonetheless, Kessler spent six years as Board Chair at the very museum she used to frequent in her childhood, stepping down from the role last year. She remains a life trustee of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and sits on the committee that reviews the art museum’s new acquisitions.

Armed with a communications major, Kessler initially pursued a career in advertising and public relations in California, but when it came time to raise a family, her roots in Squirrel Hill drew her back east. As her kids got older, they roamed the same streets that she did in her adolescence. “Stores have changed, things have come and gone, but the sense of community has not,” she remembers.

Since she’s returned to her hometown, Kessler has thrown herself into the nonprofit space, translating her background in marketing into fundraising and development for a variety of organizations that provide services for the Pittsburgh region.

Among her many roles, she’s served as a trustee and officer of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, which allocates grants to strengthen the region’s healthcare services; served on the board of Steeltown Entertainment, an organization that equips young people with filmmaking skills to help them break into the industry; and been a board member at Winchester Thurston School, which her kids attended. And Kessler calls it “full circle” that she was a board member for The Children’s Institute, where she remembers volunteering when she was 16 years old.

But her strongest affinity lies with the arts, kindled early by her father, who collected fine art when she was young.

“I think there is a special place both for arts institutions and the people who are involved, because they care deeply about continuing to have a voice in this world and making a difference,” she says. “Artists really reflect our society.”

Some of her most rewarding work, Kessler adds, is listening to passionate curators make their case for an acquisition and later noticing it hanging on a gallery wall after the acquisition has been approved.

But why Pittsburgh over a city like New York, which might boast a larger art scene? Kessler says that while she loves to travel to see art around the country, it’s the Carnegie’s world-class collection and the neighborly nature of Squirrel Hill that keeps her in Pittsburgh.

“When I come home from the airport, and I turn into Squirrel Hill, I have this sense of calm,” she says. “I have this sense of being home among tree-lined streets—and this sense of community.”

JCS PITTSBURGH

It’s difficult to boil down the work of Squirrel Hill-based nonprofit Jewish Family and Community Services (JFCS), but President & CEO Jordan Golin does it well.

“JFCS helps people who are struggling with life challenges and life transitions,” he says. “Some of these are things that most of us will experience at some point in our lives, and some of these are things that only some of us will experience.”

The organization was founded in 1937, primarily to serve the needs of Jewish refugees fleeing Eastern Europe, but over the last eight decades, its scope has expanded dramatically. And while JFCS pays special attention to the unique needs of the Jewish community— providing mental health resources following the 2018 shooting at Tree of Life synagogue, for instance— the majority of those who access the organization’s services are not Jewish.

Today, JFCS is keenly aware of the constantly changing demands of the Pittsburgh region, and its alwaysevolving offerings are a result.

“We try to keep an eye on what unmet needs are out there in the community,” Golin says. “The needs of the community are always changing, and so our services are always changing.”

When Pittsburgh’s steel industry collapsed in the 1980s, leaving many mid-level managers jobless, JFCS established its career services department, which continues to aid both job seekers with their search and local business with recruitment.

Similarly, in response to an influx of refugees during the war in Afghanistan, JFCS strengthened its immigrant and refugee services. The organization assists immigrants at almost every step of their journey, meeting them at the airport, identifying places for them to live, connecting children with school systems, and helping adults find work, in addition to any legal representation they may need to stay in the United States. And as the war in Ukraine continues, Golin says, the organization has adapted to serve the unique needs of incoming Ukrainian refugees.

Most recently, JFCS has taken on the teen mental health crisis, which Golin notes has been even more pressing during the pandemic.

To change that, JFCS started UpStreet during the early days of the pandemic, a virtual drop-in center where teenagers could chat with mental health professionals without any barriers or costs. As the pandemic receded, the organization also opened a brickand-mortar operation in Squirrel Hill where teens can meet with therapists in person.

These are just the tip of the iceberg: JFCS operates the Squirrel Hill Food Pantry and offers a range of services for Pittsburgh’s elderly population as well.

“We’re always trying to reach as many people in the Greater Pittsburgh region that need the kind of help that we provide,” Golin says.