Father Pitt

Westinghouse Building

The Westinghouse Building (now known by its street address, Eleven Stanwix) was designed by Harrison & Abramovitz, who completely changed Pittsburgh’s skyline in the years between the Second World War and the Postmodernist era of the 1980s.

Years ago old Pa Pitt said that the building reminded him of two Mies van der Rohe buildings stacked one on top of another. The building has a Miesian colonnaded porch, but there is an essential difference, and the difference is in favor of Mies.

In a Mies building, the porch creates a useful space that is a transition between outside and inside. You can set up tables on the porch if you like, and they will be out of the weather. People caught in a storm can run to the porch and be sheltered until security chases them back out into the rain. But here the porch is shallow and nearly useless. It does not provide shelter, and the space between the columns and the building is so tight that it eliminates the possibility of using the porch for much. The tables above are pleasant on a clear day, but they are exposed to the weather, and you would not want to sit there in the rain.

In fact, as insulting as it is to say this to a pair of distinguished modernists like Harrison & Abramovitz, this porch is merely decorative.

We also have pictures of the Westinghouse building from Mount Washington, and from the Monongahela River.

December 30, 2024
Westinghouse High School, Homewood

Possibly more famous people, and especially musicians, have gone to Westinghouse than to any other high school in Pittsburgh. We might compare it to the famous Austin High in Chicago for the number of great jazz lights who came out of it—and arguably the ones from Westinghouse have been more influential. So far only Billy Strayhorn has a historical marker outside the school, but there’s room for a forest of markers, or—since this is an Ingham & Boyd school—an orderly orchard of markers.

Ingham & Boyd designed the building in their usual severely classical and ruthlessly symmetrical style. When you walk in these doors, you know you are entering something important, and even the Bulldog banners cannot diminish the formality of it.

The two mottoes inscribed on the front of the school fit perfectly with the architecture. Mottoes and style convey the same message: there is one standard of absolute truth, and you will enter into the truth here.

November 28, 2023
Westinghouse Building

Designed by Harrison & Abramowitz, who also gave us the markedly similar U. S. Steel Building, this is now known as 11 Stanwix Street. Above, from Gateway Center Park; below, from Mount Washington.

February 20, 2023
Westinghouse Works

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How do you give a good impression of how big the Westinghouse dynamo factory is? This extraordinary film from 1904 begins with an aerial tracking shot that goes on uninterrupted for two minutes. Then we see an army of women assembling the more delicate parts, and finally quitting time, when many of the younger workers literally run out the doors.

July 5, 2021
Decorations on the Rear of the Westinghouse Memorial

The Westinghouse Memorial is one of our best works of public art, and the thoroughness of the execution is one of the best things about it. It is meant to be seen from the front, but if you wander behind it you will find, not a blank wall, but lovingly detailed bronze decorations that almost no one ever sees.

Camera: Olympus E-20n.

July 16, 2015
Westinghouse Memorial High School, Wilmerding

This Art Deco school occupies a prime location right on the town square—or town quarter-circle—in Wilmerding. After Wilmerding joined other municipalities to send its children to East Allegheny High School, this became an elementary school; then it was abandoned and sold. Old Pa Pitt hopes the new owners understand that they possess one of western Pennsylvania’s better Art Deco buildings, one that deserves careful preservation.

Camera: Olympus E-20n.

January 12, 2015
Westinghouse Memorial (part 2)

Almost no one ventures behind the Westinghouse Memorial, but a special reward awaits those who do. Instead of a blank wall, we find reliefs as detailed as the ones in front. We can see the backs of the standing figures, and the leafy ornament that surrounds the figures and the panels turns out to arise very logically from tree trunks in the rear. Since the effect from the front would be the same if the rear were blank, there seems to be no real reason for having gone to this much trouble—except that knowing what’s behind changes our perception of the front. The front view has a kind of aesthetic truth that it would not have if the ornament did not have its logical foundation in the rear.

August 6, 2011
Westinghouse Memorial (part 1)

The Westinghouse Memorial has been splendidly restored, although the pond in front of it is drained and overgrown.

When George Westinghouse died, his reputation was at a low point—largely because of the constant attacks by Thomas Edison, who could never forgive Westinghouse for having been right about alternating current. But Westinghouse was beloved by his thousands of employees, whose contributions raised this treasure of American art. The architects were Henry Hornbostel (Pittsburgh’s favorite architect for decades) and Eric Fisherwood. The main sculptures were by Daniel Chester French, arguably the most famous American sculptor of all time. The panel reliefs were by Paul Fjelde.

This cast of Beaux-Arts titans could have made a heroic statue of George Westinghouse riding an air brake, but they decided on something more subtle. The monument is a beautiful allegory. An all-American boy (surely one of French’s best works) stands in the prow of a boat, his hat in one hand and books in the other, and learns about the incredible accomplishments of the genius Westinghouse, opened up in front of him like a scroll. You can read the wonder on his face, and in the careless way he crumples his hat, as if he had completely forgotten it was in his hand. (Notice how his sweater is pushed up from all that absentminded fiddling with the hat.) The message is clear: future generations will judge Westinghouse by his fruits, and they will be astounded.

August 5, 2011
Westinghouse Building

The old Westinghouse Building, designed by Harrison and Abramovitz, specialists in black steel hulks. Here we see it from the Monongahela side.

September 6, 2010
Westinghouse Building

Back in the days when Westinghouse was a giant international conglomerate, this was its world headquarters. It was designed by Harrison and Abramovitz, the same architects responsible for the similarly black and steely U. S. Steel building. Here we see it from the immaculately tended landscape of Equitable Plaza.

Old Pa Pitt can’t help thinking that the Westinghouse building looks like two Mies Van der Rohe buildings stacked one on top of the other.

The Westinghouse Building is at the other end of Equitable Plaza from the Gateway Center subway station.

May 7, 2009