After much expensive restoration and renovation, the Arrott Building (designed by Frederick Osterling) has reopened as a hotel called “The Industrialist.” The exquisite lobby has been carefully preserved. The picture above is huge, stitched together from several photographs to make what may be the only complete head-on picture of the Wood Street façade of the building on the internet.
A splendid banking hall with façades by Frederick Osterling. The Wood Street one above is one of his late works, from 1926. Many of the banks along Fourth Avenue went for height, building some of the first skyscrapers; the Colonial Trust Company went for length. Its main hall extends all the way through from Fourth to Forbes, with elaborate façades at both ends; it later extended a perpendicular arm to Wood Street. Below, the Fourth Avenue façade from 1902, also by Osterling. We can see how much his ideas of classical architecture had changed in 24 years. In 1902 he chose the Corinthian order and elaborated it with every kind of ornament of which classical architecture is capable; in 1926 he chose the Ionic order and kept the ornamentation to a minimum.
This is very definitely a corner building, and architects MacClure and Spahr made the corner the most identifiable thing about it. That curved corner runs all the way up to the top, and the main entrance is right on the corner of Fourth and Wood.
Notice the capitals on those prominent columns. How do you adapt square Doric capitals to a fairly tight curve? Making them octagonal is a solution that might have given Vitruvius a stroke, but works very well in this context.
The building is now luxury apartments under the name “The Carlyle.”
In the suburbs the trees are mostly bare, but some trees in sheltered spots downtown are still in the process of changing. This is a little parklet next to the Dollar Bank building on Fourth Avenue.
Carved brackets and other ornaments on the entrance to one of the splendid Fourth Avenue bank towers.
The ornate top of the Benedum-Trees Building on Fourth Avenue, reflected in the glass front of the Patterson Building on Third Avenue. This is a two-color rendition, like an old postcard or a two-strip Technicolor movie. We are going to see quite a lot of Fourth Avenue and nearby in the next few days.
The exceedingly improbable Skinny Building, which is five feet eight inches deep, seen in wintry December light. The picture was taken two years ago, but Father Pitt didn’t like the harsh lighting and high contrast in the original picture. Looking at it again just recently, he thought perhaps the lighting could be made into the subject of the picture if it were a black-and-white picture.
The building has been sold to PNC, which plans to display art in the upper floors.
This year’s Christmas tree lights up in animated falling-snowflake patterns.
Downtown in autumn light with autumnal colors, as seen from the West End Overlook in Elliott.
Like most of old Pa Pitt’s pictures, these are donated to Wikimedia Commons. If you go to the Commons hosting page for the very wide picture above (you may have to push the “More details” button), you can see that Father Pitt has made use of one of Wikimedia Commons’ clever features. Hover over the picture, and you will see yellow rectangles; hover over those, and labels will appear for prominent landmarks.
