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Rhododendron
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Potomac Station
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East End Electric Light Company, East Liberty
Here is a relic of the genesis of the Electric Age. In the early days of electric light, the East End Electric Light Company supplied the rich East Enders with current to light their mansions. In 1899 it built this large substation, which is still in use by Duquesne Light today. Although it is clearly industrial, the building was put up at a time when an industrial building had to be ornamental as well as useful. It was therefore built in the style the ancient Romans might have used it they had built electric substations in their cities.
Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans 35mm f/1.4 lens; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. -
FNB Financial Center
The biggest skyscraper project since the Tower at PNC Plaza, this was billed as the nucleus of new development that will finally make good on the promises of prosperity made when the Lower Hill was cleared out in the 1960s. The design was by Gensler, a huge architecture conglomerate also responsible for the Tower at PNC Plaza.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.
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Condemned Houses on Bedford Avenue, Hill District
Some day these houses will disappear. They are typical of middle-class houses that sprouted on the Hill in the 1890s, making use of the Second Empire mansard roof to give these narrow houses two more bedrooms on the third floors. Generations of condemnation notices have been pasted on them. They would be worth restoring if they were moved to another neighborhood, and perhaps they have some hope here, now that the Hill is growing new construction and looking more hopeful. But it isn’t likely that they’ll win their race with the wrecking ball.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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Crafton Station on the West Busway
With St. Philip’s Church in the background.
Most Pittsburghers probably don’t think of the busways as very interesting phenomena, so give old Pa Pitt a few moments of your time and he will try to make even a busway interesting.
First of all, Pittsburgh is one of the very few cities that did “bus rapid transit” routes as real metro lines for buses. The three busways—South, East, and West—don’t mix with street traffic or even have at-grade intersections.
Second, although the busways as busways are products of the late twentieth century, they all have roots much earlier. We started building the West Busway in 1851. It is a curious fact of our busways that they are almost one-to-one replacements for the old commuter-rail routes that started working in the middle 1800s. Even the stations are mostly in the same places; the Crafton busway station is just a few yards from where the railroad station used to be.
Part of the West Busway is a subway tunnel between Sheraden and Ingram. Construction on the Cork Run Tunnel began in 1851; after many interruptions; it was finally finished in 1865.
So if you ride the West Busway today, you are riding 174 years of history. Take time to think about that the next time you have to get somewhere, and you may conclude that even busways can be interesting as well as useful.
The West Busway crossing Crennell Avenue at the Crafton station. Camera: Olympus E-20N.
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Stone Maidens, Allegheny Center and Mount Washington
When the new Post Office and Federal Building was designed in 1889 (it opened in 1892), the sculptor Eugenio Pedon, who had the franchise for decorating federal buildings, contributed two identical groups of allegorical statues to go over the entrances: Navigation, Enlightenment, and Industry. When the building came down in 1966, the groups were rescued and split up. One set of Navigation and Enlightenment ended up here at Allegheny Center, where they’re known as the Stone Maidens.
The old Post Office and Federal Building. If you enlarge the picture, you can see the Pedon statues above the entrance at the fourth-floor level.
Navigation. If the faces and bodies seem disproportionately elongated, remember that we are meant to be looking up at them from far down in the street; the sculptor adjusted his perspective accordingly.
Enlightenment. The twin statue of Enlightenment ended up at the corner of a Rite Aid parking lot on Mount Washington. Below we see her trying to hold back the clouds of darkness, which goes as well for her as it always does.
Kodak EasyShare Z981; Nikon COOLPIX P100. One of the statues of Industry ended up at Station Square, and old Pa Pitt will try to remember to get her picture soon and complete the set.
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Carnegie Carnegie
Officially the Andrew Carnegie Free Library, or the Carnegie Free Library by the inscription over the door, but the name “Carnegie Carnegie” is obvious and irresistible and adopted for the library’s Web site.
When the two Chartiers Valley boroughs of Mansfield and Chartiers merged in 1894, they decided to name the new town Carnegie after what was probably the most familiar name in the Pittsburgh area. In return, Andrew Carnegie gave them the jaw-dropping sum of $200,000 for this magnificent building (designed by Struthers & Hannah), plus money for books and—unusually for Carnegie—an endowment. His usual agreement with towns that took a library from him was that the town must undertake the upkeep, thus making the citizens ultimately responsible for their library; but in a few steel towns (where we suppose he felt more personally responsible) he endowed the library with enough of a fund to keep it going indefinitely.
Like Carnegie’s other steel-town libraries, this one was not just a library. It also had a music hall, a gymnasium, and a lecture hall.
Note the terra-cotta lyre over this window on the music-hall front of the building. Today the music hall is still delighting audiences, and the library sticks to its mission of being a welcoming place to go read a book.
Columns of the Composite order, the most elaborate of the five classical orders, send the message that this is not just a library but a palace for the people.
The lobby lets us know that we have entered a building of unusual richness. Marble panels cover the walls, and mosaic tile decorates the floor.
The Greek-key pattern in the tile is repeated in the risers in the stairs.
On the second floor of the building is an extraordinarily well-preserved post of the Grand Army of the Republic, and Father Pitt will try to return soon for some pictures of the room.
The interior of the library itself mimics the experience of being a rich man with a big library—like old Col. Anderson, whose library was Carnegie’s model. You walked in, sat in front of a big fireplace, and had servants bring you books, and for an hour or two you were just as wealthy as Carnegie himself.
Open stacks have eliminated the servants, but the fireplace is still there, with a familiar face over the mantel.
In days of gaslights and low-wattage early electric bulbs, natural light from outside was still important for a reading room. Fortunately no one ever had the money to block up these windows.
All the windows are surrounded with elaborate terra-cotta decorations.
Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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Webster Avenue, Hill District
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. Another long view for utility-cable collectors.
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Mary Berkstresser Negley House, Highland Park
The Negleys were early settlers in what would later become the East Liberty area: Alexander Negley came here in 1788. This house, now the Farmhouse in Highland Park, was built about two centuries ago for his widow Mary Berkstresser Negley.
