#lovepgh

Today, July 1st 2026, has officially been designated as “Anthrocon Day” by the Mayor of Pittsburgh! We are deeply grateful for our partnership with the City of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, and the numerous partners that helped make this happen for the past 20 years 💛🖤 #LovePGH

HAPPY 4/12 DAY, PITTSBURGH!

Best people in the world. Best sports teams in the world. Best skyline in the world. Best bridges in the world. Best fountain in the world. Best rivers in the world. Best EVERYTHING in the world!!

In an age of digital romance, there are still ways that humans have found to communicate their love for one another. A love lock or love padlock is a padlock which sweethearts lock to a bridge, fence, gate, monument, or similar public fixture to symbolize their love. Its key is thrown away to symbolize unbreakable love.

The practice of ‘love-locking’ first begin at least 100 years ago. There is a Serbian tale of a romance gone awray during World War I, after a woman’s fiancé, a soldier, falls in love with another woman on duty, only to break off the engagement. Honoring the woman’s broken heart and becoming weary of their own, other young women from Vrnjačka Banja wanted to show a way of protecting themselves and started to affix padlocks to railings of the bridge called Most Lubavi.

The Oakland neighborhood has been placing these locks on the Schenley Bridge since the early 2000s. Here, you can see hundreds of multi-colored, shaped, and sized locks that line this popularly traveled space leading to areas such as Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History, Carnegie Mellon University, Phipps Conservancy, Carnegie Public Library, and the University of Pittsburgh.

#FromTheBlog: Bedford Square: A Historical Landmark In Pittsburgh’s South Side

Ocreations’ one year anniversary settling in at 19 Bedford Square is just around the corner. Over the past ten years, ocreations has continued to grow and evolve. In 2016, Shawn and Emilia O’Mara formed oprop LLC, a property company, and purchased 19 Bedford Square, also known as South 12th Street in Pittsburgh’s historic South Side Flats neighborhood.

Records indicate that the building was built sometime between 1865 and 1880. It’s been vacant for nearly 30 years and its last known tenant was Seebacher’s Poultry, hence the building’s nickname, the “Chicken Shack.” Seebacher’s Poultry was established in 1952 by president, James J. Seebacher. It was a place that sold fresh poultry. Customers selected a live chicken and watched as it was slaughtered onsite.

19 Bedford Square was also the setting for the 1988 American movie, Dominick and Eugene, which starred: Ray Liotta, Tom Hulce and Jamie Lee Curtis. The building and the historic square were the perfect location to film the movie, a drama based in Pittsburgh about twin brothers with a complicated relationship. In 2006, the movie 10th and Wolf, a film about the Philadelphia Mafia starring: James Marsden, Giovanni Ribisi and Dennis Hopper, used Bedford Square and the building as a backdrop in select scenes. And in 2016, Jesse Mader, vice president of ocreations, used the interior of the building for two music videos, and for his cinematic wedding video.

Nestled just one block from East Carson Street, 19 Bedford Square is also adjacent to the historic South Side Market Building, which once served as a farmer’s market, butchery, store and bustling meeting place for the Polish, Ukrainians, Italians, Germans, Serbians, Croatians, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Russians, Irish and others who immigrated to Pittsburgh’s South Side.

Originally built in 1893, and then rebuilt in 1915 due to a fire, the South Side Market Building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is one of the last two remaining 19th-century market houses in Pittsburgh. The building has had over a century of use, and currently stands as a recreational center for senior citizens.

Other neighbors in Bedford Square include barber shop Hair on Bedford Square, WESA Radio, Bloom Cigar Co., and Prizum Creative. All of these businesses respect and embrace the historic value of the location in which they conduct business.

Since its earliest days, Bedford Square has clearly been a gathering place for people in the community to connect, a place to do business and a place for the arts. It has been almost a year since the ocreations team moved in, and it is definitely the best destination for timeless and transformative design.