An inherited camera with fifteen-year-old film took this picture of the front of the South Side Works theater at night. It’s a bit grainy, but recognizable.
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Neon at the South Side Works
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Top of the CNG Tower
The top of the CNG tower seen from the Diamond, or “Market Square” as it’s usually called in print. While the rest of the country gripes about slow times, downtown Pittsburgh seems to be in the middle of a building boom, and construction equipment is likely to invade just about any photograph.
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Subway in Motion
A two-car 47S train rolls into the Steel Plaza subway station in early rush hour.
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Alcoa Building
The Alcoa Building, now called the Regional Enterprise Tower (Alcoa has moved across the Allegheny to the North Shore), was supposedly the first all-aluminum skyscraper. From most angles it looks like a giant stack of television sets, but with the clean modernist lines and vegetation of Mellon Square in the foreground, we can picture how the building must have looked in the architect’s imagination.
The Alcoa Building is a short walk down Sixth Avenue from the Ross Street exit of the Steel Plaza Subway Station.
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Dandelion
Every suburban homeowner’s most detested enemy, the dandelion is also one of our most stunningly beautiful wildflowers. Old Pa Pitt offers these photographs as an example of the rewards that await us when we learn to overcome our prejudices.
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Grape Hyacinths
Grape hyacinths are perfect garden flowers: they pop up, show off, and multiply without asking for any special care.
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Phlox Wallpaper
Creeping phlox (Phlox subulata) in a size big enough to make into your desktop wallpaper.
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The Morgue
Frederick Osterling designed this atmospherically Romanesque morgue to match Richardson’s courthouse and jail a block away. Generations of Pittsburgh teenagers made a tradition of visiting the morgue after the prom. This curious memento mori is one of those Pittsburgh customs that old Pa Pitt must simply file away as unaccountable, not even attempting an explanation; unless it be that the visit to the morgue, by a direct appeal to all the senses at once, was intended to achieve what Mr. Andrew Marvell attempted to achieve by verse alone.
The morgue is a short walk from the First Avenue subway station.
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Violets
A patch of violets glows as the afternoon sun hits a grassy hillside in a small city park.
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Bridge of Sighs
H. H. Richardson designed the county jail to match his courthouse, connecting them across Ross Street by the “Bridge of Sighs,” as Pittsburghers have called it for generations. The jail itself expresses its function perfectly: it looks like a medieval castle, impenetrable and foreboding. Now it houses bureaucrats’ offices; a new jail along the river holds the convicts.
The Bridge of Sighs is a block and a half south on Ross Street from the Ross Street exit of the Steel Plaza subway station.