This Brezhnev-era apartment building from 1964 has little to recommend it architecturally, but is there a finer location in the city? Point State Park is the front yard; the Gateway subway station is next door; the Cultural District is just up the street.
One of the more prominent of the skyscrapers from the Postmodernist boom in the 1980s. The spindle that sticks out the top has a particular meaning: it marks the height the builders had intended the building to reach. They were thwarted by the city government, which thought for some reason that it would be too tall at that height, although the monstrous U. S. Steel Building had not bothered them a decade and a half before.
Do you like this building better with or without a leafy frame? Father Pitt is willing to oblige either way.
Penn Avenue in the Cultural District, Pittsburgh, from the corner of Sixth Street. The view includes the O’Reilly Theater and Theater Square (architect Michael Graves) and the Penn Avenue bikeway.
Not one of our most famous or most distinguished buildings, but big: this is the thirteenth-tallest building in Pittsburgh—the twelfth-tallest downtown (leaving out the Cathedral of Learning in Oakland). It opened in 1976 as Equibank Plaza, and ended up in the hands of PNC after many mergers and acquisitions. Since PNC calls this “Two PNC Plaza,” its own current headquarters “One PNC Plaza,” the mixed-use skyscraper at the foot of Fifth Avenue “Three PNC Plaza,” and its new signature skyscraper “The Tower at PNC Plaza,” old Pa Pitt is forced to conclude that PNC thinks of the whole Golden Triangle as “PNC Plaza.”
Henry W. Oliver wanted to leave a mark on Pittsburgh, and he certainly did. Virgin Alley was renamed Oliver Avenue, and he planned this building to be the tallest in Pittsburgh. It was the tallest when it opened in 1910, although Oliver himself didn’t live to see it finished. As architect, he hired Daniel Burnham, the great Chicago beaux-arts master for whom Pittsburgh was practically a second home—there are more Burnham buildings here than anywhere else but Chicago.
Both these buildings are quite utilitarian, with ground-floor storefronts and upper-floor workshops; but each is adorned with its own distinctive classical detailing. The Greek-key pattern shows up on both, but no. 819 in particular adds a profusion of other ornaments that distinguish it from its neighbors.
Once again, the narrowness of Penn Avenue makes it difficult to get a complete picture of the façades of these buildings, so the tops are a little blurry.
The Renshaw Building (left) was built in 1908; it is architecturally interesting for the way it duplicates the base-shaft-cap form of a standard beaux-arts skyscraper in miniature.
The Kirkpatrick Building was built a quarter-century earlier in 1884. A cast-iron front on the first four floors gives way to standard Victorian Romanesque brickwork in the upper half.
The Maginn Building was one of several Romanesque designs by the prolific Charles Bickel. The large windows of the upper floors indicate that it was built as some kind of workshop or small factory, of which there were many in this section of town.
Originally the East Liberty Market, this grand structure was designed by Peabody & Stearns, architects of the Joseph Horne department store downtown and the iconic Custom House Tower in Boston.
Now converted to loft apartments and known as “The Cork Factory,” this landmark of industrial architecture was designed by Frederick Osterling. Here we see it from Washington’s Landing on a grey day. Since the weather was mopey, Father Pitt decided to make this picture look as much as possible as though it could have been made in 1901, when the buildings were new; but in fact it was taken just this afternoon.
