Father Pitt

Category: Downtown

  • Allegheny County Courthouse

    Allegheny County Courthouse
    Samsung Digimax V4.

    From the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue (and try to explain that to an out-of-towner).


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  • One Mellon Center

    One Mellon Center
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Or BNY Mellon Center, or whatever it is called now that BNY Mellon is just BNY, seen from across the Mon.


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  • A Broad View of Steel Plaza

    Steel Plaza station

    An “ultra-wide” view of a Red Line car coming into Steel Plaza station, thanks to the five-megapixel “ultra-wide” auxiliary camera on Father Pitt’s phone.


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  • Chatham Two

    Two Chatham Center
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.

    Burt Hill Kosar Rittelman, a firm that began in Butler and grew to be an international architectural titan, would become famous in the middle 1980s for postmodernist buildings like Liberty Center. This building, however, is prepostmodernist. It opened in 1981, and it is a straightforward modernist box with a Miesian look. Although it doesn’t arrest our attention the way some of the firm’s later projects do, it was a harbinger of Renaissance II, the building boom of the 1980s that remodeled Pittsburgh with a postmodernist skyline.


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  • New Logo Going Up on the BNY Mellon Client Service Center

    New logo on BNY Mellon Client Service Center
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.

    The grand old name of Mellon is slowly disappearing from our landscape as BNY Mellon completes its rebranding to just BNY.

  • Entrance to the Steel Plaza Subway Station

    Entrance to Steel Plaza
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.

    The Grant Street entrance to Steel Plaza station: a study in angles.


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  • S. S. Kresge Building

    S. S. Kresge Building

    S. S. Kresge was never the presence in Pittsburgh that Murphy’s was, but all the five-and-dime stores had outlets downtown. Murphy’s, Kresge’s, McCrory’s, Woolworth’s—they were all similar operations, and all the founders knew each other. G. C. Murphy, in fact, had worked for S. S. Kresge and John G. McCrory before setting out on his own.

    The S. S. Kresge Company is better known to younger people (meaning under the age of seventy or so) as the parent corporation of Kmart.

    Inscription: “S. S. Kresge Co.”

    The whole front of the building is done in terra cotta, including this inscription.

    Pediment with lion’s head
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.

    The pediment, though it seems undersized for the building, is filled with rich decoration.


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  • Lantern on the Frick Building

  • Terra Cotta on the Kaufmann’s Building

    Ornamental head

    The giant Kaufmann’s department store grew in stages over decades. This part of it was designed by Charles Bickel, who decorated it with exceptionally fine terra-cotta ornaments.

    Arch with “Kaufmann’s” inscription
    Lion’s head
    Arch and ornaments
    Capital with cherub
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.

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  • Ornamental Bronze on the Frick Building

    Ornaments over the Fifth Avenue entrance to the Frick Building
    Kodak Easyshare Z990.

    Ornamental patterns, including a fine Vitruvian scroll (the wave pattern in the middle), over the Fifth Avenue entrance to the Frick Building.


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