Father Pitt

Category: Downtown

  • Dimling’s Ghost Sign on Exchange Way

    Dimling’s Candy Shops sign

    Old Pa Pitt recommends wandering in back alleys as a hobby. You never know what you might find, from antique sculpture to ghost signs. Dimling’s hasn’t had a candy shop here for more than fifty years, but this sign still sits on the back of the building the shop once occupied, facing Exchange Way at the intersection with Tito Way.

    When it was prospering, Dimling’s Liberty Avenue shop occupied two buildings and covered them with tiles that made the entire Liberty Avenue façade a giant billboard. The picture above is a detail of a much larger photograph taken by the Pittsburgh City Photographer in 1965: it may still be encumbered by copyright (although probably not, unless the copyright was renewed), but if the city of Pittsburgh wants a fee for using it Father Pitt can probably afford a quarter or so.

    By the 1970s, the buildings were still a billboard for Dimling’s, but a photo from 1973 shows that the tenants were Arthur Treacher’s, an adult theater, and a massage parlor.

    The wheel of history kept turning, however, and the restoration of Liberty Avenue brought these buildings back to respectable use. Peeling away the tiles revealed the old Victorian fronts, which have been lovingly restored and now make up part of the extraordinary Victorian streetscape of Liberty Avenue in the Cultural District.

    800 block of Liberty Avenue
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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  • Fulton Bell Foundry

    120 Boulevard of the Allies

    This building seems to date from before the Civil War, possibly the 1850s. It was designed in the very free interpretation of Italian Renaissance that was popular at the time; later architects would have studied their historical precedents more closely, and later architects than those would have repudiated historical precedent altogether.

    The building originally belonged to the Fulton Bell Foundry, which made bells for decades in downtown Pittsburgh. It’s a remnant of Victorian Second Avenue. All the remnants of Second Avenue downtown are on the south side of the Boulevard of the Allies; the street was widened in the 1920s by tearing out the buildings on the north side.

    Lintels

    The well-preserved carved stone lintels have been lovingly cleaned.

    Fulton Foundry
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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  • Third Avenue

    Third Avenue from Stanwix Street, Pittsburgh
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    Looking eastward up the whole length of Third Avenue from Stanwix Street.

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  • The Largest Antebellum Building Downtown (Probably)

    2 Market Square

    This building was probably put up shortly after the Great Fire of 1845, to judge from the fact that it appears in an engraving of the Diamond as it was before 1852. Few buildings from before the Civil War are left downtown, and this is almost certainly the largest.

    View of the Diamond before 1852
    “Old Pittsburgh Court House and Market. Taken down 1852.” Source: Allegheny County: Its Early History and Subsequent Development. By Rev. A. A. Lambing, LL. D., and Hon. J. W. F. White. Pittsburgh: Snowden & Peterson, 1888.

    The building in the engraving is not quite the right dimensions, but the engraver (at the firm of John C. Bragdon, Pittsburgh’s busiest engravers) was probably working from hasty sketches.

    Note the volutes and incised decorations in the lintels over the windows, bringing the building up to date with the latest trends in Greek Revival style.

    Window
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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  • United Steelworkers Building

    United Steelworkers building

    It occurred to old Pa Pitt this afternoon that he had never seen a complete picture of the front of this building. It took several photographs and some technical fussing to get the composite picture above, but here you are.

    Entrance
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    We also have pictures of the building from Mount Washington and from Gateway Center Park, as well as pictures of the base of the building.

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  • Building the Tower at PNC Plaza

    Early construction on the Tower at PNC Plaza

    The Tower at PNC Plaza will be ten years old this year. It occurred to Father Pitt that he had enough pictures in his collection to make up a visual story of the construction of the building, so here they are. Above, the progress as of February 18, 2014.

    Before topping out

    June 27, 2014, before the construction of the cap began.

    In August, 2014

    August 29, 2014.

    In early March, 2015

    March 2, 2015.

    Mid-March

    March 10, 2015, with bonus bus coming toward you.

    On St. Patrick’s Day, 2015

    March 17, 2015.

    June 13

    June 13, 2015.

    September 10, 2015

    September 10, 2015, just a few weeks before opening.

    November 12, 2020

    The completed tower on November 12, 2020.

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  • West Side of the Diamond

    West side of the Diamond
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    The west side of the Diamond or Market Square, seen from Graeme Street.

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  • Snow Flurry

    Liberty Avenue in the Strip looking toward downtown Pittsburgh
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    A snow flurry downtown as seen from the Strip.

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  • Three and Two Gateway Center

    Three and Two Gateway Center

    Three and Two Gateway Center seen from Gateway Center Park.

    Three Gateway Center

    Three Gateway Center.

    Three and Two Gateway Center

    A wintry view with silhouettes of bare trees.

    Three Gateway Center
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    Three Gateway Center seen from Forbes Avenue near the Diamond.

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  • May Building

    May Building

    Old Pa Pitt’s New Year’s resolution is to bring you more of the same, and to try to get better at it.

    The May Building was designed by Charles Bickel, probably the most prolific architect Pittsburgh ever had, and a versatile one as well.

    Wreath on the cornice

    The famous Sicilian Greek mathematician and philosopher and inventor and scientist Archimedes was nicknamed “Beta” in his lifetime, because he was second-best at everything. That was Charles Bickel. If you wanted a Beaux Arts skyscraper like this one, he would give you a splendid one; it might not be the most artistic in the whole city, but it would be admired, and it would hold up for well over a century. If you wanted Richardsonian Romanesque, he could give it to you in spades; it might not be as sophisticated as Richardson, but it would be very good and would make you proud. If you wanted the largest commercial building in the world, why, sure, he was up to that, and he would make it look so good that a century later people would go out of their way to find a use for it just because they liked it so much.

    Cartouche on the May Building
    May Building and addition

    The modernist addition on the right-hand side of the building was designed by Tasso Katselas.