This year the Artists’ Market was moved to Fort Duquesne Boulevard, which felt much less claustrophobic than last year’s location on Penn Avenue. To judge by the crowds, it was a big success.
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Three Rivers Arts Festival
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Squonk Performs Hand to Hand
Thirty years ago, Squonk Opera was a struggling alternative band performing in the standard struggling-local-band venues. But at some point early on, the group discovered that they could actually succeed by rebranding themselves as performance artists and getting commissions from arts organizations. Since then the “wacky provincial opera company,” now calling itself just Squonk, has been a regular at artsy events all over the world, but especially the Three Rivers Arts Festival.
Jackie Dempsey, keyboards, is one of the two original members of Squonk. Steve O’Hearn, who plays a variety of implausible wind instruments, is the other. Squonk will be performing Hand to Hand on Sunday, June 11, at 2:00 p.m. and again at 4:00 p.m. They claim that these are the world’s largest puppet hands, and who is going to argue?
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Setting Sun
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Three PNC Plaza
Designed by Lou Astorino, this is our twentieth-tallest skyscraper (tied with Three Gateway Center), which is not a remarkable record. It was, however, the tallest building that went up in Pittsburgh during the long pause between the 1980s boom and the current boom that began with the construction of the Tower at PNC Plaza. The somewhat taller building to the right is One PNC Plaza, built in 1972 to a design by Welton Becket Associates.
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U. S. Steel Tower
Three views of the U. S. Steel Tower from Duquesne University. Below, with Chatham Center in the foreground.
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Tower of the Courthouse
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Back of the City-County Building
The back entrance to the City-County Building would seem spectacular if we didn’t know what the front looked like. Below, the building seen from Ross Street.
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First Avenue Station
Above, the First Avenue subway station (which is an elevated station, but it’s on the part of the line we call the “subway”) from First Avenue. Below, a CAF 4300-series Blue Line car comes in from the Panhandle Bridge.
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W. W. McBride Paper Company Ghost Signs
The seven-storey building at the corner of Ross Street and Third Avenue was the home of the W. W. McBride Paper Company. Multiple layers of painted signs make it hard to read any one of them, but the name “W. W. McBride” is clear enough.
The Century Cyclopedia of History and Biography of Pennsylvania (1904) has an extensive biography of William Wilson McBride, and we quote the part that has to do with the firm and the building:
In 1890 Mr. McBride bought a half interest in the well-established paper business of Morrison, Cass & Company, of Pittsburg, which owned large paper mills at Tyrone, Pennsylvania. The other half interest was retained by John Cooper, of Pittsburgh, who had been a member of the original firm, and the business was carried on under the name of Cooper & McBride. After four years Mr. McBride bought out his partner and became the sole proprietor, operating under the title of W. W. McBride & Company. In June, 1902, the business was incorporated as the W. W. McBride Paper Company. During 1901 he built a fine seven-story brick building at the corner of Ross Street and Third Avenue, containing the offices, sales department, and storage rooms.
By 1923, according to the Pittsburgh Historic Maps site, the McBride Building had become the Bowman Building, so these signs must all date from before that time.
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Allegheny County Morgue
By a splendid exercise of bureaucratic irony, the old morgue now houses offices of the county health department. It was designed by Frederick Osterling and built—on Forbes Avenue—in 1901. In 1929, it was moved to its current location on Fourth Avenue.
Frederick Osterling’s Romanesque buildings nearly always give us a monster or two to admire.
