A well-grown specimen of Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) is an extravagantly beautiful sight in the fall, covering stout tree trunks with a blanket of fiery red. If you love Poison Ivy, rejoice! The more we suburbanize the landscape, the more opportunity we create for this splendid vine, which naturally grows only at the edge of the woods.
Looking up at the masterpiece of Charles Z. Klauder, still the most convincing Gothic skyscraper in the world.
Fall is just beginning to work its magic in the suburban forests. This little stream runs through the Kane Woods Nature Area in Scott Township; a little farther on it runs into Scrubgrass Run, which runs into Chartiers Creek, which runs into the Ohio River, which runs into the Mississippi, which runs into the Gulf of Mexico.
There’s a good crop of mushrooms this fall, and some of them are extraordinarily beautiful. (Some of them, like these splendid orange Jack-O’-Lanterns, are also poisonous.)
The Heinz Memorial Chapel at the University of Pittsburgh, designed in fantasy-Gothic style by Charles Z. Klauder, who designed a whole complex of fantasy-Gothic buildings for Pitt with the Cathedral of Learning at its center.
A view on the Squaw Run in Fox Chapel, just as fall begins.
Built in 1906, St. Thomas in Oakmont has a proper clock tower made of fine old Pittsburgh black stones, with a proper clock that (unfortunately) has stopped.
The Wilkins family took the word “mausoleum” quite seriously and attempted a scale model of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, which is probably the inspiration for more constructions in Pittsburgh than any other classical edifice.
Mr. Shields decided to take his favorite pinup girl with him to the grave. A stout wooden beam apparently holding up the ceiling of the mausoleum stands in the way of the view of this window; Father Pitt has therefore stitched this picture together from two separate pictures, and the seam is obvious. But the window is unusual enough that we can tolerate a substandard photograph.
