Father Pitt

Category: Architecture

Towers in a Park

Towers in a park: the modernist architectural ideal. It almost never worked the way it was supposed to, but the massive effort poured into Gateway Center in Pittsburgh’s first “Renaissance” created a towers-in-a-park development that has actually kept its attractive shine for half a century.

The distinctive chrome coating of the three identical cruciform towers was an afterthought. According to Mr. Franklin Toker, they were designed for brick facing, but stainless steel was substituted at the last minute. Then, because the Korean war made stainless steel scarce, chrome-alloyed steel was what the builders could actually get.

Brick would have been a modernist eyesore; the gleaming chrome creates a constantly shifting landscape of light throughout the day. The other secret of the success of this development is in the landscaping: no expense was spared to make it both pleasant and useful, so that people would want to spend time outside among the towers.

It would be hard to overestimate how pernicious the effect of this beautiful and pleasant complex of towers was on the rest of the city. It was the talk of the architectural world when it went up; everyone pointed to Pittsburgh, where an ugly warehouse district had been replaced by the modernist ideal, as the future of urban planning.

People learn the wrong lessons from success. In this case, the lesson urban planners took from Gateway Center was not that attention to detail matters, and that it is vitally important to create a pleasant environment that people will love; no, the lesson they took from it was that old buildings should be replaced by blocks of towers. Ugly brick slabs went up all over the East End to warehouse the poor. Many of them have since been blown to bits by more enlightened urban planners in favor of real houses that real people like to live in, but the incalculable damage they did to their neighborhoods is only now being reversed.

Gateway Center is just across the street from the Gateway Center subway station.

May 6, 2009
God and Mammon

The spire of Trinity Cathedral is dwarfed by the massive Oliver Building behind it, one of Daniel Burnham’s greatest gifts to Pittsburgh.

Trinity Cathedral is half a block up Sixth Avenue from the Wood Street subway station.

May 6, 2009
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.

April 27, 2009
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 attampting 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.

April 17, 2009
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.

April 13, 2009
Romanesque in Lawrenceville

The fame of Richardson’s courthouse made “Richardsonian Romanesque” a favorite style in Pittsburgh for decades. Here a small industrial building in Lawrenceville shows that a little tasteful Romanesque detail is never out of place. (Update: This is actually the old Lawrence School, built in 1872, now converted to other uses.)

April 11, 2009
One Oxford Centre

One Oxford Centre is a typical 1980s tower that looks like a cluster of interlocked octagons. Those horizontal stripes are certainly distinctive, if perhaps a bit monotonous. The lower floors are a shopping arcade for the rich, famous, and prodigal. A skywalk connects the arcade to Macy’s (formerly Kaufmann’s) two blocks away.

One Oxford Centre is a short walk from the Steel Plaza subway station.

April 9, 2009
Inside the Arches

The porch of the City-County Building is a massive, welcoming space. Something has to be done inside those gargantuan arches, and this is it: an abstract pattern of interlocking arcs that makes the ceiling look something like the vault of heaven, with the sun at its zenith, surrounded by cheerful cumulus clouds.

The City-County Building is two blocks south on Grant Street from the Steel Plaza subway station.

April 8, 2009
Deco Romanesque

The County Office Building is a curious combination of Romanesque and late Art Deco, with more than a hint of the style Father Pitt likes to call American Fascist. Below, an eagle ornament on the corner holds the Allegheny County arms in its talons. On the arms: a ship, a plough, and three sheaves of grain (though they look like mushrooms in concrete).

The County Office Building is a short walk away from the First Avenue subway station.

April 7, 2009
The Grant Building

Henry Hornbostel’s last great work was his biggest, a late-art-deco skyscraper towering next to his own City-County Building. The original lobby has been replaced by a 1980s parody of an art-deco interior, but the building is otherwise much as Hornbostel imagined it in the late 1930s. On top is a big red light that blinks “P-I-T-T-S-B-U-R-G-H” in Morse code all night—a landmark that guided commercial aircraft from a hundred miles away in the early days of aviation.

April 4, 2009