One PPG Place through the late-afternoon snow. Pittsburgh took Philip Johnson’s PPG Place to its heart at once. Finished in 1984, it almost instantly became the symbol of downtown Pittsburgh. Whenever you see those glass fantasy-Gothic spires, you know where you are.
The main tower of PPG Place, Philip Johnson’s masterpiece that has become the iconic symbol of downtown Pittsburgh.
The top of the CNG Tower on Liberty Avenue, which opened in 1987. One of the “postmodern” masterpieces of the 1980s boom, this is now called the Dominion Tower. Architecturally, it is a notable revival of the base-shaft-cap formula of the earliest skyscrapers.
A masterpiece of industrial architecture, the Kramer Building is a block long and beautifully proportioned. Each of the arches on the first floor is divided into two sub-arches, creating a pleasing and interesting rhythm that makes the building feel much less like a huge slab of brick. The neighborhood across the street is residential, and the building manages not to overwhelm the rowhouses facing it.
Webster Hall in Oakland, designed by Pittsburgh’s favorite architect Henry Hornbostel, was a grand hotel in its day. Now it’s turned into apartments, but church ladies all over Pittsburgh still treasure the recipe for Webster Hall Cake.
The columns of the Mellon Institute are supposedly the largest monolithic columns in the world. For scale, note, if you can make him out, the man with the backpack walking down the steps.
Somehow Charles Z. Klauder managed to create perfectly Gothic buildings with an Art Deco sensibility in every detail. His Cathedral of Learning is the most perfect Gothic skyscraper in the world; it’s organically Gothic, not just a skyscraper with Gothic trimmings.
On the same ideally landscaped square in Oakland sits Heinz Chapel, Klauder’s last work, a building with more modest dimensions but more flamboyant ornament. Its lacy spire is a remarkable work of Gothic fantasy. Its transept windows, designed (like all the other stained glass in the building) by Charles J. Connick, are supposedly the tallest stained-glass windows in the world, or among the tallest, or rather tallish, depending on which source you consult. It’s one of Pittsburgh’s favorite wedding sites, and on a Saturday afternoon weddings follow one after another as though the brides were on a conveyor belt.
The cornerstone identifies the date in figures that perfectly match the Deco Gothic spirit of the building.
These photographs were taken with a Zorki-4 bearing a Jupiter-8 f/2 lens, which is a fine camera for a day out in the city. It’s versatile, it’s built like a Soviet tank, and the lens is sharp and fast (and interchangeable with any screwmount Leica lens). And there were literally millions made, so if it does break you can just get another one.
Update: The Highland Building has been expensively restored and looks beautiful.
The Highland Building is East Liberty’s only proper skyscraper. One cannot apply such a romantic name to the Stalinist housing blocks built all over the East End to warehouse the poor in the 1960s—excrescences that are now being blown to bits one by one, and high time, too.
Designed by Daniel Burnham, the Highland Building uses the classic base-shaft-cap formula that always produces a balanced-looking building. It’s a national treasure, for the simple but sufficient reason that every building by the great Burnham is a national treasure. Pittsburgh is blessed with a larger number of Burnham buildings than any city outside his home of Chicago, and most of them are treated with the respect they deserve. This one, however, is not.
This picture of the Highland Building was taken years ago and found on an old archival disc:
The thing has sat vacant for years, prey to vandals and vermin. But that’s about to change. According to the Post-Gazette, the Highland Building will see new life as a hotel. It’s too early to celebrate: deals can fall through, money can dry up, and projects can always be abandoned. But it looks as though one of our most undeservedly neglected buildings may have found a new life at last.
The Alcoa headquarters on the North Shore, which one might describe as a modernist-revival building.
