Father Pitt

Category: Downtown

  • New Subway: Gateway

    The new subway line to the North Side is rolling, and the stations are beautiful and functional. We begin with the wonderfully airy new Gateway station, which is flooded with natural light from the glassy superstructure above.

    The mural “Pittsburgh Recollections” by Romare Bearden has been removed from the old Gateway Center station and reinstalled here at Gateway.

    The old Gateway Center still survives as a ghost station; watch carefully for it between Wood Street and Gateway. Its name also survives in a curious way; it sounds as though the original recorded station announcement has been clumsily edited. As you come up on the new Gateway station, you hear a voice saying, “Approaching Gateway Ce—.” [UPDATE: This voice announcement has since been re-recorded without the ghostly sibilant.]

  • Downtown from the North Side

    Chunks of ice drift by in the Ohio in this view of downtown Pittsburgh from the Carnegie Science Center.

  • “Industry” Mural in the Allegheny County Courthouse

    “Industry” by Vincent Nesbert, whose murals for the Allegheny County Courthouse were finished in 1940. In the foreground, the stairway that leads to the basement, which for most of the building’s history has been the street entrance because of the re-grading of Grant Street.

  • Firstside from the Mon

    Downtown Pittsburgh seen from the Monongahela side, with the mighty river rolling in the foreground.

  • Fort Duquesne

    This marker sits right in the middle of what was once Fort Duquesne, the French attempt to hold a vast inland empire that the British coveted. The British attempts to dislodge the French began a world war unprecedented in its scale; we call it the French and Indian War, but in other parts of the world it’s known as the Seven Years’ War. The marker shows the plan of the fort and the French names of the rivers; note that the French, logically enough, considered the Allegheny a part of the Ohio, and the Monongahela a tributary. Had the outcome of the war been different, not only would Pittsburghers—or rather Duquesnois—speak French, but we would have only two rivers.

  • Buhl Building

    There’s nothing quite like the Buhl Building, on Fifth Avenue at Market Street. Here we see the east side of it. This side faces an alley, but there’s no stinting on the decoration, which looks like it was copied from a Wedgwood plate.

  • Christmas in the Steel City

    You can do all sorts of things with metal if you put your mind to it, but it helps if you adapt your design to the material. You can make an artificial Christmas tree with realistic steel branches and needles, and it won’t look nearly as artistic as this simple but effective stack of hamster balls, which is currently sitting in one corner of the refurbished Diamond.

    The Diamond is a short walk from the Wood Street subway station.

  • Gingerbread Landscape in the Wintergarden

    The Wintergarden at PPG Place is full of gingerbread houses—and gingerbread skyscrapers, gingerbread inclines, gingerbread Russian cathedrals, and anything else that can be rendered in gingerbread.

  • The New Diamond

    The Diamond (or “Market Square” as it’s called on maps) has been torn up and rebuilt. Forbes Avenue no longer goes through it; instead, all traffic must skirt the edge of the square. The plan has been radically simplified, making the space more versatile. Whether it was worth all the money spent on the rebuilding is a question best left to political writers rather than your humble servant.

  • Westinghouse Building

    The old Westinghouse Building, designed by Harrison and Abramovitz, specialists in black steel hulks. Here we see it from the Monongahela side.