Father Pitt

Author: Father Pitt

  • It Snowed a Bit

    The fourth-deepest snow—about two feet in many neighborhoods—in recorded Pittsburgh history fell on February 5 and 6. The weight of the stuff brought down huge trees and cut off electric power to hundreds of thousands, some of whom are still without power three days later. (Old Pa Pitt himself is forced to post this article as a guest on someone else’s connection.) These scenes are from a woody lot in Mount Lebanon.

    The snow bowed these arborvitae trees into graceful arches, although this particular sort of grace is usually unwelcome in traditional landscape planting.

    This big maple tree came down across a driveway; here we see it already showing the marks of the bowsaw that some day will finish disassembling it.

  • “The Rosary” by Ethelbert Nevin

    After Stephen Foster, Ethelbert Nevin is Pittsburgh’s most famous composer. Like Chopin, Nevin seldom attempted anything longer than five minutes or so (Chopin did a couple of piano concertos, but who remembers them nowadays?). Also like Chopin, he died young (at the age of 39, just like Chopin). Unlike Chopin, he has been almost forgotten, but when he died in 1901 he was one of the great names in light classical music. “Narcissus” and “Gondolieri” remained in the parlor-piano repertory until people forgot how to play pianos and stopped building houses with parlors.

    One of Nevin’s most famous compositions was “The Rosary,” Here is a recording (MediaFire link) by the great viola player William Primrose, accompanied by the mediocre conductor Charles O’Connell and the Victor Symphony Orchestra. This recording was taken from a beat-up 78-RPM Victor Red Seal record, and the conversion to MP3 has muddied it a bit. If you want the original WAV file, it’s here (another MediaFire link), but be aware that it’s nearly 15 megabytes. The surface noise is not too distracting, and the performance brings out all the sentimentality that made “The Rosary” such a big hit.

    It appears that this recording has been allowed to lapse into the public domain. If there is a copyright owner who objects to Father Pitt’s making it available here, Father Pitt will be happy to remove it.

  • Phipps by Night

    A massive glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly hangs in the dome of the entrance to Phipps Conservatory. The conservatory is open until 10:00 Friday nights.

  • Snow on Belgian Block

    A frosty morning on one of the many Belgian-block streets in Beechview. In neighborhoods of this vintage (about the beginning of the twentieth century), Belgian block was usually reserved for steep hills like this one, and cheaper brick pavements used for the flat spots. Brick lasts almost as long as Belgian block, but it gives very poor traction in wet or icy conditions.

  • Lower Gatehouse of Allegheny Cemetery

    The Butler Street gatehouse was part of the original design of the cemetery in the 1840s, and it serves its function perfectly. From a busy city street we enter a romantic fantasy landscape that might have come straight from Sir Walter Scott. The contrast is almost as great as the contrast between life and afterlife.

  • Smallman Street in the Strip

    It seems typical of Pittsburgh that the city’s grandest spaces are in warehouse and industrial districts. This broad plaza, seen from St. Stanislaus Kostka church on 21st Street, is the heart of the wholesale-food business in Pittsburgh. In the last two decades it has also become a popular nightclub district. The wholesale business begins to pick up just as the clubs close in the small hours of the morning.

  • One Mellon Center

    The octagonal tower of One Mellon Center, Pittsburgh’s second-tallest building, seen from the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Grant Street. In the foreground at left is the dramatic base of the U. S. Steel Tower, whose colossal bulk is supported on impossibly spindly piers, defying gravity like something from the imagination of Rene Magritte. (From a distance, the building strikes old Pa Pitt as pedestrian, but the lobby and mezzanine are dramatic.) At right is the base of the Koppers Building.

  • The Nativity

    The Nativity, as it would have looked if it had happened on the plaza below the U. S. Steel tower.

  • Christmas at PPG

    A giant Christmas tree, a skating rink, and a whole city of glass fairy castles.

  • Ober House in Troy Hill

    Ober house in Troy Hill

    A rare “Stick Style” Victorian, this was the home of Mr. J. P. Ober of Eberhardt & Ober. The style was common elsewhere in the country, but Pittsburgh preferred heavier, stonier styles in its domestic architecture. As commonly happens to an opulent house in a working-class neighborhood, this has become a funeral home.