The Tower at PNC Plaza, the biggest skyscraper project in Pittsburgh since the 1980s, has just begun to rise at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Wood Street. Traditionally skyscrapers have grown in a doughnut-shaped area of the Golden Triangle, with the hole in the Fifth Avenue shopping district; but now that much of the shopping has moved elsewhere, the hole may begin to fill in.
Those plucky colonials have raised their rebel flag over the blockhouse at Fort Pitt, Britain’s most important Western fort.
“Firstside” is the row of human-sized buildings along the Monongahela (with their backs on First Avenue). It’s a little taste of pre-skyscraper Pittsburgh. The picture below puts Firstside in context.
More pictures of the Point Fountain, because it was a day of inspiring clouds.
The lobby of the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts, just before a show. Like Heinz Hall just down the street, the Benedum was built as a movie palace, but has been converted to a live theater—Pittsburgh’s largest and busiest. The Pittsburgh Opera, the Civic Light Opera, the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, and numerous traveling shows all share this magnificent venue.
After four years of rebuilding, the glorious fountain at the Point is flowing again—now with substantial improvements that make it more accessible for recreation, without changing the simple elegance of the original design.
You need a sharp eye, and a long lens, to pick out some of the details on Heinz Hall from ground level. At first the exterior appears to be rather staid, but it rewards close examination with some charmingly whimsical decorations. (The white spots visible in these pictures are snowflakes.)
Katz Plaza in the theater district: a dusting of snow highlights the contours of these eye-shaped benches by Louise Bourgeois, who also designed the waterfall fountain in the background.
If you sit on a bench whose back looks like a giant eyeball, shouldn’t you be able to see behind you?
The lobby of the former Stanley theater, an opulent former movie palace that is still the largest theater downtown. This is yet another cell-phone photo, with too much glare and grain, but it gives us some idea of what the place looks like.
The Duchess, one of the Gateway Clipper fleet, putters down the Monongahela late in an autumn afternoon.
