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Monongahela, Allegheny and Ohio. The names sing of the nation's pioneer past and the great westward thrust. Carnegie, Frick, Heinz, Westinghouse and Mellon. The names speak of financial empires, of the industrialization that built this country into a manufacturing complex whose products find their way into every corner of the globe. Steel City, Smoky City and Renaissance City. The names reflect not only the past of Pittsburgh but its pride in the present and its faith in the future. Pittsburgh, whose mills produced more steel during the Second World War than Germany and Japan combined, has found it hard to shrug off the Smoky City stereotype in the minds of many. Today, a modern office-building complex, Gateway Center, built, owned and managed by H&S client The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, is located at the apex of the Golden Triangle downtown business area focused on the point of land where the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers meet to form the Ohio. And, thanks to a cleanup program begun in the late forties, the air is almost as clear today as it was when, in 1753, Virginia Governor Dinwiddie dispatched Major George Washington to the area to determine the intentions of the French and the extent of their penetration of the region. By the following year the present site of Pittsburgh, with its commanding view of the rivers, had become a battleground between the French and English. Washington himself had reported on the military advantages of locating a fort at the point. A small party of English began erecting a stockade on the site chosen by Washington in the spring of 1754, only to be driven out by a superior force of French and Indians before construction was completed. The French then occupied the area and built Fort Duquesne. Several months later the first blood of the French and Indian War was shed in a battle between the French and Indian forces and troops of the Virginia militia led by Washington. For the next four years possession of the area was hotly contested by the opposing sides. In November of 1758 an Enjoying view of Pittsburgh from the Mt. Washington Overlook are (1. to r.) Frances Laybourn, staff accountant Barb Stahl, senior David Laybourn, and staff accountant Lee Shull. David came to Pittsburgh from the DH&S office in Bristol, England, under the exchange visitor program. Because of its extensive international practice, the Pittsburgh office is one 10 of the more popular for exchange visitors.