Father Pitt

Category: Downtown

  • Horne’s

    The Joseph Horne Department Store was Pittsburgh’s second-biggest (after Kaufmann’s, “The Big Store,” now Macy’s). The original 1897 building was designed by Boston architects Peabody & Stearns, also responsible for the Liberty Market (now Motor Square Garden) in East Liberty; additions over the next few decades greatly expanded the store. It was still going strong in the 1980s, when it was connected by a pedestrian bridge to the new Fifth Avenue Place shopping arcade; but the Horne’s chain was sold to Lazarus, which closed this store after it built a new store on Fifth Avenue, and then closed the new store down a few years later.

    The building still stands, though, and you can see on the corner the brackets that hold the famous Horne’s Christmas tree, an enduring holiday tradition that has survived the demise of two department-store chains.

  • Gateway Towers

    This Brezhnev-era apartment building from 1964 has little to recommend it architecturally, but is there a finer location in the city? Point State Park is the front yard; the Gateway subway station is next door; the Cultural District is just up the street.

    Camera: Olympus E-20n.

  • Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh Downtown

    It used to be the Hilton, whose management kept flirting with bankruptcy. For some time the odd swoopy addition on the front was stalled half-finished; it is now completed and open. This is Pittsburgh’s tallest hotel, and probably the ugliest as well. But as a place to stay, it has its benefits—among them, spectacular views in all directions.

    Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS.

  • Fifth Avenue Place

    One of the more prominent of the skyscrapers from the Postmodernist boom in the 1980s. The spindle that sticks out the top has a particular meaning: it marks the height the builders had intended the building to reach. They were thwarted by the city government, which thought for some reason that it would be too tall at that height, although the monstrous U. S. Steel Building had not bothered them a decade and a half before.

    Do you like this building better with or without a leafy frame? Father Pitt is willing to oblige either way.

    Camera: Olympus E-20n.

  • Point Fountain

    On a calm day, the fountain can rise to 150 feet or so.

    Camera: Olympus E-20n.

  • Penn Avenue, Cultural District

    Penn Avenue in the Cultural District, Pittsburgh, from the corner of Sixth Street. The view includes the O’Reilly Theater and Theater Square (architect Michael Graves) and the Penn Avenue bikeway.

    Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS.

  • Two PNC Plaza

    Not one of our most famous or most distinguished buildings, but big: this is the thirteenth-tallest building in Pittsburgh—the twelfth-tallest downtown (leaving out the Cathedral of Learning in Oakland). It opened in 1976 as Equibank Plaza, and ended up in the hands of PNC after many mergers and acquisitions. Since PNC calls this “Two PNC Plaza,” its own current headquarters “One PNC Plaza,” the mixed-use skyscraper at the foot of Fifth Avenue “Three PNC Plaza,” and its new signature skyscraper “The Tower at PNC Plaza,” old Pa Pitt is forced to conclude that PNC thinks of the whole Golden Triangle as “PNC Plaza.”

  • Tower Two-Sixty

    For the first time since the 1980s, downtown Pittsburgh has two skyscrapers going up at once (the other being the Tower at PNC Plaza). The project was begun as “the Gardens at Market Square,” but became “Tower Two-Sixty” at about the time construction began. The skeleton has risen, and now the skin begins to take shape.

  • William Penn Hotel

    Here we see the William Penn Place side of the William Penn Hotel. The Grant Street front presents a solid wall to the street, but this side is divided by two light wells, which are necessary in a building that takes up a whole city block. The arched bridges connecting the upper floors are graceful touches that add to the apparent unity of the design, which is the work of Benno Janssen, one of Pittsburgh’s favorite architects for many years..

  • Dallmeyer Building, Liberty Avenue

    The Dallmeyer Building spent decades behind a nondescript modernist façade until a few years ago, when the modern accretions were ripped off to reveal this perfect gem behind them.