Father Pitt

Category: Downtown

  • The Skyline at Sunset

    Above, a fairly large panorama made from five individual pictures. Below, a “high-dynamic-range” picture made from three separate exposures.

  • Chatham Center

    This picture from five years ago (but old Pa Pitt just dug it out of his archive, where it lay forgotten) shows the unobstructed view of Chatham Center from the Middle Hill. Chatham One is the building with the name at the top; the square tower to the left of it is Two Chatham Center.

  • Glimpses of the Skyline

    The skyline of downtown glimpsed from the northwest through fall foliage.

  • Tower at PNC Plaza on a Fine Day

    As seen from the Diamond or Market Square, the surface of the tower reflects the cumulus clouds scudding through the sky.

  • The View from Mount Washington, in Two Colors

    The skyline on a perfect day, rendered in old-postcard colors.

  • The View from Mount Washington, in Black and White

    It was a perfect day for skyline pictures, with puffy white clouds filling the sky. This is how it looked in black and white.

  • United Steelworkers Building

    The United Steelworkers Building in a picture from last December. The architects were Curtis and Davis, who did nothing else that old Pa Pitt knows of in Pittsburgh.

  • Letterbox

    A brass letterbox, meticulously polished, in the lobby of the Frick Building. Many buildings downtown have letterboxes like these, with mail chutes coming down from the upper floors.

  • Fortune and Her Wheel

    This window by the celebrated stained-glass master John La Farge looks out over the lobby of the Frick Building. The metaphor of Fortune’s wheel is an odd one for a self-made gazillionaire to choose: Henry Frick was not known for his modesty, and yet the message seems to be that he was just lucky rather than clever.

  • Lobby of the Frick Building

    Everything in the Frick Building is gleaming white marble, with just enough accents to keep the interior from becoming entirely invisible. Above, the staircase at the Grant Street entrance. Below, the revolving doors and clock at the Grant Street entrance.

    The lobby is shaped like a T, with a hall from the Grant Street entrance ending at the long hall from Forbes Avenue to Fifth Avenue, seen here from the Forbes Avenue entrance.

    Even Henry Frick himself is gleaming white marble, rendered by the well-known sculptor Malvina Hoffman in 1923.