Mellon Square is one of the few open spaces downtown, and the only way a whole block could be opened up was by, in effect, making an inverted building under it. Several layers of parking garage are under the square, and the Smithfield Street side, which is below the level of the square, has a row of storefronts along the street.
The first structural use of aluminum was this ornate tracery spire on the Smithfield Congregational Church by Henry Hornbostel. Unfortunately the decorative stamped concrete that covers the rest of the church is crumbling, and it will cost millions to repair. The church has been shrouded in mesh for years now, but the spire still proudly catches the early-morning sun.
A view down the whole length of Wood Street from Liberty Avenue, early on a rainy morning.
This is one of several works by Harrison and Abramovitz on Pittsburgh’s skyline—the most prominent, of course, being the U. S. Steel Tower, which dwarfs everything else. This one was built in 1953, making it probably the first of their works here. It was also the first aluminum-faced skyscraper (appropriate for the biggest aluminum producer in the world). To Father Pitt, it always looks like a stack of 1950s television sets.
It is one of old Pa Pitt’s endearing quirks that he likes to take pictures with a bus coming toward the viewer.
The Stanley was the most magnificent theater ever built in Pittsburgh, and as the Benedum Center it continues to be one of the busiest. It was built to designs by the Hoffman-Henon Co. of Philadelphia at the very end of the silent era, opening in 1928. The old animated sign on the Penn Avenue side is lovingly maintained.
Maurice Spitalny directed the house orchestra here in the late 1930s and into the 1940s. His brother Phil was more famous nationally for his all-girl Hour of Charm Orchestra, but Maurice had a long and successful career. He wrote one song that everyone in America has heard: “Start the Day Right,” which is used in at least a dozen different Warner Brothers cartoons.
The Clark Building, designed by the Hoffman-Henon Co of Philadelphia, was built in 1927 at the same time as the Stanley Theater by the same architects. This late-Beaux-Arts skyscraper has for a long time been the center of the jewelry district downtown, with at least a dozen jewelers in the building (“over thirteen,” a sign on the building says, meaning, what, fourteen?) and more within a block or so.
The former State Office Building was designed by the firm of Altenhof and Bown (also responsible for the 1964 Federal Building on Grant Street; otherwise they seem to have specialized in schools). There was some grumbling when the state sold the building to private developers to be turned into luxury apartments, since space had to be found for the state employees, and some analyses suggested that the state would spend far more on leasing space than it would have spent on renovating the building. But it is certainly a first-rate location for apartments.
The chandelier at the Benedum Center, which began life as Pittsburgh’s most splendid movie palace, the Stanley.
