Sunlight pours into the long passageway that connects the Steel Plaza subway station to Grant Street.
Comments
-
Sunshine at Steel Plaza
-
Remodeling the May Building Annex
When Tasso Katselas designed the annex to the May Building (which was designed by Charles Bickel), modernism was not just fashion—it was dogma. Fashions have changed and dogmas have relaxed, and the annex is being remodeled to be less aggressively different from the original building. We’ll have more pictures as the remodeling takes shape.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
Comments -
Pittsburgh in 1963
Roger Wollstadt from Sarasota, Florida, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons The skyline of Pittsburgh in 1963 was very different from the skyline today. The U. S. Steel Building had not yet risen to dwarf everything else, and the other skyscrapers that today seem to be the signature forms of the skyline would go up in the 1980s. At the extreme right, we can see the Civic Auditorium, only two years old; it would later be known as the Civic Arena, and then as the Mellon Arena.
This panorama was built from two pictures taken by Roger Wollstadt, to whom all our gratitude is due. Old Pa Pitt saw them in Wikimedia Commons and noticed that Mr. Wollstadt had taken them from the same spot, merely rotating the camera a bit to take in a different part of the cityscape. That meant they would probably combine with no visible errors, and indeed they did.
Note the Creative Commons license for the picture, which is not the public-domain dedication Father Pitt uses for his own pictures. You can do anything you like with this picture, but you must attribute Roger Wollstadt as the original author, and you must make any new versions available under the same license.
-
Return of the Old Diamond Market
From Sarah H. Killikelly: The History of Pittsburgh: Its Rise and Progress. Pittsburgh: B. C. & Gordon Montgomery Co., 1906, plate facing page 106. In the early 1800s, the Diamond was the location of the courthouse (moved to Grant Street in 1857), which put the courts at the bustling heart of the city. The market itself was a semicircle, and that unusual design has been revived for the newly reconfigured Diamond.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
Comments -
A Fourth Avenue Safari
The other day old Pa Pitt went lion-hunting on Fourth Avenue. It’s a good game to play with children or out-of-town visitors: walk down Fourth Avenue and see how many lions you can count. They’ll have fun noticing the wide variety of carved lions, but they’ll also be noticing details of the architecture around them, which can start interesting conversations. We begin with the famous Dollar Bank lions—actually painstakingly accurate hand-carved duplicates of the originals, which were the work of Max Kohler. The originals were moved inside the bank, where they will be protected from weather and accidents.
These lions decorate the Fourth Avenue front of the Colonial Trust Company building, now part of Point Park University.
A lion on the front of the Keystone Bank Building.
Very Romanesque lions on the Peoples Savings Bank Building.
Now, when we come to the Arrott Building, we have to suspend the game, because…
…there are, by Father Pitt’s estimate, more than 200 lions on the Arrott Building.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS; Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
Comments -
The New Diamond
The reconstruction of the Diamond (spelled “Market Square” on maps) is getting close to finished, and tables are set up under the newly built semicircular shelter.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
Comments -
On Leong & Merchants Association Building, Chinatown
Much of Pittsburgh’s small but dense and lively Chinatown was destroyed when the ramp to the Boulevard of the Allies viaduct was built, but some of the Chinese merchants doggedly rebuilt in the 1920s. The On Leong & Merchants Association Building was designed by Sidney F. Heckert, who gave his clients a fairly standard 1920s Pittsburgh commercial building with well-chosen decorative details to send the message that this was an outpost of Chinese civilization. Today it is home to the Chinatown Inn, perhaps Pittsburgh’s oldest Chinese restaurant and the only Chinese business left in Chinatown.
Nikon COOLPIX P100. We also have a picture of the Court Place side of the building.
Comments -
Lanterns on the City-County Building
The Forbes Avenue side of the City-County Building, with bronze lanterns that few pedestrians stop to appreciate.
Nikon COOLPIX P100.
Comments -
Prothonotary
When Harry Truman was campaigning in Pittsburgh in 1948, he was introduced to the prothonotary. He replied with the question that was always on everyone’s mind on similar occasions, but that was seldom expressed as straightforwardly as Truman could express it: “What the hell is a prothonotary?”
We never figured out a good answer to that question, so we no longer have a prothonotary. But you can still see the title over this Forbes Avenue side entrance to the City-County Building; and if you go in through that door and explain to the first person you see what a prothonotary was, perhaps you will win a prize. But be aware that an alarm will sound.
Nikon COOLPIX P100.
Comments -
Waterfall at PNC Firstside Center
