Looking up into the rotunda of the Union Trust Building gives one the uncanny sensation of falling up into the vortex.
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Falling Up
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Night and Day
It is the civic duty of every Pittsburgher who entertains out-of-town visitors to take them up to Mount Washington and show off the skyline. These two pictures were taken a few years ago, but the overall impression changes little.
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Curves and Angles
The dome of the Allegheny Observatory, Observatory Hill, painted gold by the declining sun.
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Egyptian Fantasy
The Winter mausoleum in Allegheny Cemetery is an Egyptian-revival fantasy. The bronze doors show Mr. Winter himself as a pharaoh embarking on his journey through the underworld.
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Fun with Granite
The Granite Building on Sixth Avenue is an exuberant riot of textures. Whatever ornamentation could be done with granite, it has been done here.
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The Fort Pitt Blockhouse
The only building left from the original Fort Pitt, and the only pre-Revolutionary structure left in downtown Pittsburgh, is this modest little blockhouse, which somehow survived a century and a half of being surrounded by warehouses before Point State Park grew around it. These photographs were taken with an Ansco Speedex folding camera.
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Graceful Curves
The Lecture Hall, part of the giant Carnegie Institute complex in Oakland. The graceful curve of this unexpected projection from the building is balanced by an equally graceful curve in the sidewalk.
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Gothic Fantasy
The spire of Heinz Chapel on the University of Pittsburgh campus reaches toward heaven.
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Day and Night
Two views from the northern end of the Sixth Street Bridge, now officially the Roberto Clemente Bridge. This is one of the famous Three Sisters; Pittsburgh is the only place in the world, it seems, where you can find three identical suspension bridges side by side. The pictures were taken to test a fifty-year-old Argus C4, which apparently passed the test.
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The Dirty Old Cathedral of Learning
The Cathedral of Learning, the fantastical Gothic skyscraper at the heart of the University of Pittsburgh, has recently been cleaned of all the soot and grime from the old days of big steel. The building is beautiful now, but the old grime had its own character and beauty. Here are a few pictures of the Cathedral of Learning before the cleaning.
