Father Pitt

Category: Downtown

  • 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.

  • Chinatown Inn

    Chinatown, once colorful and densely crowded, mostly died between the two World Wars. What is left is the Chinatown Inn, which is in one of the buildings constructed after the new Boulevard of the Allies viaduct destroyed most of the original neighborhood.

  • Reflections in the Hartley Rose Building

    The Hartley-Rose Building on First Avenue reflects its neighbor across the street.

  • The Morgue

    The Allegheny County Morgue (or Mortuary, when the coroner was feeling fancy) was designed by Frederick Osterling to match Richardson’s courthouse. It was originally built where the County Office Building stands now, and it was moved to make way for that building, inch by inch, while the coroner and staff continued to work inside the crawling building.

  • Waterfall on First Avenue

    This waterfall fountain runs down the gentle slope along First Avenue in front of the PNC Firstside Center.

  • Obelisk at PPG Place on a Summer Morning

    The obelisk rests on four spheres like cannonballs; Peter Leo used to call it the Tomb of the Unknown Bowler.

  • One Oxford Centre (and a Lamppost)

    Seen from First Avenue across Firstside Park.

  • Top of the Tower at PNC Plaza

    The Tower at PNC Plaza, seen across the Liberty Bridge from the McArdle Roadway.

  • Pittsburgh Playhouse

    The Pittsburgh Playhouse building on Forbes Avenue is a harmonious addition to the streetscape. It manages the unusual feat of looking 21st-century and classical at the same time.

  • Lion on the Allegheny County Courthouse

    Romanesque lions guard the Allegheny County Courthouse. They would originally have been at street level before Grant Street was lowered by about a storey.