On the northern edge of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where hills level out and cascade into the Allegheny river, there sits a house unlike any other. It’s unremarkable in architecture, being a style of two-story brick row home replicated across the state and much of the eastern seaboard, but is notable instead for a maximalist layer of yellow paint, signage, sculpture and metalworking which turns this ordinary if even run-down house into a dreamlike structure of self-expression.
It’s called Randyland.
I stumbled upon Randyland during a one-night stay in Pittsburgh, after my plans to visit the Andy Warhol Museum had failed and I was left to find an art exhibit which was not closed on Tuesdays.
Randyland is not only open all days of the week, but completely free to enter.
The unusual home greets you with busy hand-painted signage offering advice (I find the “Brain Manual” particularly useful) and outlining a few reasonable rules. No art for sale, no music videos, and— here’s a good one:
First through the backyard gate at 10 in the morning was me, in shorts and a hoodie, mouth wide open and staring at musical instruments. I won’t share any more photos of the inside, because I want to keep it a mystery and encourage you to visit, but for a moment, imagine a massive patio awning where brass instruments and colorful music note carvings hang above your head.
Randyland is a magical place.
I worked my way through this colorful garden of sorts, noticing bizarre “plants” made of reclaimed plastic toys next to well kept organic shrubbery and flowerbeds. I took my time, wandering around, and eventually other visitors trickled in through the wooden gate, eyes popping in fascination.
After leaving a donation, I was ready to leave, but as I took the steps out of the sandy garden-level display, I heard a voice.
“Hey guys, good mornin’! Do you like the place?”
Randy Gilson was shirtless and covered in paint, and he quickly volunteered his life’s story to me and another visiting couple. The three of us were eager to listen.
We stood around as he told us the Randyland story: a troubled kid raised by a single mother alongside 5 siblings who, one day at the age of nine, “woke up” and “decided to be a good boy.”
After a complicated childhood, Randy explains, he took notice of North Pittsburgh’s many vacant lots. Randy started the Old Allegheny Garden Society, turning vacant properties into community gardens. Since the 1980s, he’s tended to over 800 gardens in the region. In the mid 1990s, he bought his now-famous Randyland property for only $10,000.
The Steel City, occupying a unique position in the American geographical lexicon somewhere in-between midwestern and east-coast, undeniably shares the socioeconomic reality of the Rust Belt. Steel, after all, rusts.
Down to 300,000 residents from a height of over 600,000 in the 1950s, Pittsburgh shares empty acreage similar to neighborhoods of Detroit or New Orleans.
And yet there exists incredible opportunity here. While mythical artist neighborhoods of the past (Manhattan’s Lower East Side, San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury District) have long been paved over by luxury developers capitalizing on, and in turn obliterating the creative momentum in these places, the Rust Belt remains, to an extent, affordable.
Abandoned urban areas are often a product of economic inequality, and it can be hard to reconcile unjust practices of the past with present day reality. Even so, there is a possibility to leverage this places for greater social equity in the future.
Here’s one recent story from the New York Times about one woman who campaigns for people of color and queer folks to move to Peoria, Illinois, seeing their affordable housing stock as an opportunity to move out of generational poverty.
In my mind, Randy Gilson represents a sort of pure Urbanism— radically changing spaces to serve a wider community, for the purpose of human growth and harmony.
I’ll leave you with something Randy said to me on that humid morning I was lucky enough to meet him.
“A word is not a word. A word is a bridge. A word is a connection. A word is a step.”
It’s easier than it seems to build the steps towards a more colorful city.