We're in a time of great change in Pittsburgh. PNC bank has constructed our first skyscraper in many years and the Fifth and Forbes area is finally going to be renovated. The Cultural District continues to grow and improve. Additional residential opportunities are opening with regularity, especially Downtown. The Rivers Casino is open and the new arena won't be far behind. The world is noticing us, too. Pittsburgh is being transformed.

It's time for another change, this one long overdue: the renaming of Grant Street.

Many Pittsburghers, and surely most visitors from out of town, imagine that Grant Street was named for Ulysses S. Grant. Not so. It was named for a British officer, Major James Grant (1720-1806), whose ignominious defeat by the French and their Indian allies in mid-September 1758 atop the hill that once stood near the south end of Grant Street led to his name being given to that hill, and then to the street that traversed it.

In this incident, Grant showed himself to be a failure as a commander, attacked Fort Duquesne in defiance of orders and tipped off the defenders to what he was doing. Nearly half of his 800 men were killed, wounded or captured in an encounter that accomplished nothing -- except the naming of the site of the disaster for its perpetrator.

But there's more, and it's an even worse indictment of James Grant. During the American Revolution, Grant -- first as a member of Parliament and then as a general in the British Army in America -- displayed intense anti-Americanism and an approach to warfare that makes him an unsuitable namesake for one of Pittsburgh's major streets.

For years Grant told British audiences that American soldiers were incompetent. In 1775, he insisted in Parliament that Americans could not fight and boasted that he could easily defeat them with a small force of British soldiers. Sent to America, Grant showed himself to be an ineffective general and is remembered today mainly for his repeated recommendations that Boston, New York City, Philadelphia and other coastal cities be torched to intimidate and punish the American rebels.

And this is the man after whom Grant Street is named! Can't we do better?

I think we can, and I propose that this principal thoroughfare -- arguably Pittsburgh's most prominent and prestigious address -- be renamed Steel Avenue.

This new name would be a fitting one. Grant Street has long housed the corporate headquarters of our major steel companies, most notably United States Steel, and generations of Pittsburghers have personal ties to those companies. In addition, the aptly named Steel Plaza Station sits under Grant Street, whose major landmark is a tower built of steel.

Why not make the whole street a salute to steel? After all, steel is what made Pittsburgh, both economically and in the American consciousness. What we now call Grant Street serves as a kind of sturdy backbone for our great city. Wouldn't it make more sense to recognize -- and pay homage to -- the enormous contributions that steel has made, and continues to make, to Pittsburgh by renaming our main street Steel Avenue?

We can be glad that Pittsburgh has successfully reinvented itself by developing new strengths, from health care to robotics, but we ought to recognize what steel did to provide the foundation upon which they are being built. With pride in our industrial past, we should take this opportunity to celebrate and commemorate Pittsburgh's long association with steel.

To be sure, there will be minor inconveniences -- letterhead and Web sites to be updated, for instance, but these are a small price to pay for the benefits of making the change. With a little imagination, we can think of ways -- perhaps through signage, for instance -- for Steel Avenue to recall Pittsburgh's pioneering and surviving steel companies and the thousands who labored in them. The new name would be a powerful affirmation that we remember and honor our rich heritage, rather than a forgettable British officer who flopped here in Pittsburgh and subsequently made a habit of denigrating America and Americans.

Let's make this change now, just as we have achieved the 250th anniversary of the event but before the memory of steel's many contributions to Pittsburgh's greatness begins to fade in our collective memory. Naming this thoroughfare Steel Avenue would create a unique and permanent legacy that would remind ourselves and others about Pittsburgh's steel age -- and in the process we can consign James Grant to the anonymity he deserves.

Cartoonist Rob Rogers does "Rob's Rough," an early look at his work and his creative process, exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.