Father Pitt

Category: Downtown

  • Hartje Brothers Buildings

    Hartje Buildings

    Two nearly identical buildings side by side on Wood Street, both built around the turn of the twentieth century for the Hartje Brothers, a big paper company. Charles Bickel was the architect, and here he compressed the usual American skyscraper formula of base-shaft-cap into seven floors.

    The corner building has a long front on the Boulevard of the Allies; we saw it about a year and a half ago, but here is the same picture again.

    Boulevard of the Allies side
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    A short time after these buildings went up, the Hartje Brothers called on Bickel again to design a twelve-storey skyscraper a block away at Wood Street and First Avenue, which we have used as a textbook example of the Beaux Arts skyscraper.

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  • Cast-Iron Front on Wood Street

    101 Wood Street

    A well-preserved cast-iron front, though the building has lost its hat. Father Pitt would probably paint it a different color.

    101 Wood Street
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Marine Bank Building

    Marine Bank

    Built in 1890, this rich feast of stonework was designed by Frederick Osterling in his Richardsonian Romanesque phase.

    Romanesque capital

    The carved ornaments are by Achille Giammartini, including old Pa Pitt’s favorite gargoyle in the city.

    Dragon gargoyle
    Foliage ornament
    Marine Bank Building
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Steel Plaza

    Steel Plaza from the mezzanine

    Some pictures of Steel Plaza taken on a weekend when it was momentarily almost empty. The largest and most complex of our subway stations, Steel Plaza was built as a transfer station between the main line and a short spur to Penn Station—which, although it is not in regular service, is still kept up for special events and emergency detours. In the picture above, the Penn Station spur is in the foreground.

    Steel Plaza

    Here we see the two lines converging toward their junction in the tunnel beyond the station.

    Steel Plaza
    Lower-level platforms

    To add to the complexity, the station was designed to take the old PCC cars as well, which had only street-level doors. These lower-level platforms have been out of use since 1999, when the last PCC cars were retired, but the space isn’t useful for anything else, so the platforms are still there.

    Lower-level platforms
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  • 5 and 6 PPG Place

    Boulevard of the Allies faces of 5 and 6 PPG Place, Pittsburgh
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • YWCA

    YWCA in downtown Pittsburgh
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    “One of the most handsome modern structures in Pittsburgh, this building is oriented inward, with a blank wall on each street facade above the ground floor windows.” So said James D. Van Trump in “The Stones of Pittsburgh,” and Father Pitt defers to Mr. Van Trump’s superior taste. The wedge-shaped sign above the entrance is a relatively new addition, put up in 2016, but it fits well with the spare modernism of the rest of the building. The architects were Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, one of the biggest firms in the business and most famous for supertall buildings like the Sears Tower and the Burj Khalifa.

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  • Top of Penn Station

    Penn Station
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    The top of Penn Station seen from the Bigelow Boulevard bridge over the Crosstown Boulevard.

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  • U. S. Steel Tower

    U. S. Steel Building from Ross Street

    A slightly distorted wide-angle view from Ross Street.

    U. S. Steel Tower
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Top of One PPG Place

    Top of One PPG Place
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • The Stanley

    Entrance and marquee

    The Stanley was designed as a silent-movie palace, but opened in 1928, just as talkies were making a revolution in the movie business. The architects were the Hoffman-Henon Company of Philadelphia. It was the biggest theater in Pittsburgh when it opened, and as the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts it is still our biggest theater now.

    Stanley Theater
    Marquee
    Benedum Center
    A picture of the Loew’s Penn, now known as Heinz Hall, that got stuck in here by accident. Father Pitt would have taken it out, except that a kind commenter identified it, and old Pa Pitt does not like to disappear his mistakes,
    Niche
    Benedum Center
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    The skyscraper behind the theater is the Clark Building, which was built at the same time and designed by the same architects as part of the same development package.

    More pictures of the Stanley Theater.

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