300 Sixth Avenue, the former Wood Street Building, was designed by Daniel Burnham. The lower floors were given an Art Deco makeover in 1939, but here we see the more original upper floors in the funhouse mirror of Two PNC Plaza.
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Burnham Reflected
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Subway Crossing First Avenue
The “subway” is an elevated line by the time it crosses First Avenue on its way into the First Avenue station. In the background, three skyscrapers—front to back and shortest to tallest, the Jones & Laughlin Building (now the John P. Robin Civic Building), the Grant Building, and One Oxford Centre.
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Demmler Bros. Building
Demmler Brothers was founded in 1861, and the company (now in Cuddy) is still in business today. The ghost of its name is just barely visible on the front of its old headquarters at 100 Ross Street, and on the back of the building we can see layers of ghost signs advertising enameled ware, refrigerators, and stoves.
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John P. Robin Civic Building
Built in 1907, this small skyscraper (originally the Jones & Laughlin Building) was just barely spared by the Boulevard of the Allies a decade and a half later. It was designed by the always-tasteful MacClure & Spahr in the restrained Gothic style popular in the early twentieth century.
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PNC Firstside Center
PNC Firstside Center occupies a whole block of First Avenue east of Grant Street. Above, an architecturally correct composite; below, the main First Avenue entrance. The architects were L. D. Astorino Companies, who also designed the Trimont skyscraper apartments on Mount Washington.
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Under the Boulevard of the Allies
A view eastward on Second Avenue under the Boulevard of the Allies viaduct. Below, the relief and inscription at the Grant Street entrance to the viaduct.
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Keystone Athletic Club
One of Benno Janssen’s many contributions to the architecture of downtown and Oakland, this is now Lawrence Hall of Point Park University, so that two Pittsburgh universities actually have signature Gothic skyscrapers.
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Frank & Seder
Kaufmann’s was the Big Store, but Frank & Seder, facing Kaufmann’s across a whole block of Smithfield Street, was hardly small. The building is now under restoration.
The restoration has peeled away later accretions, and we can see the shadows of an old sign at the corner of Forbes Avenue.
Two layers of ghost signs still memorialize the old department store to pedestrians on Fifth Avenue.
Compare the photograph to this illustration of the store in 1927.
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Lobby of the Arrott Building
The small but richly gorgeous lobby of the Arrott Building as it appeared in 2013, before the current renovations.
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Downtown from the Strip
From the corner of Penn Avenue and 17th Street.
