The elevator doors in the City-County Building give us an allegorical history of the growth of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County and their civic buildings, ending with the current courthouse and the City-County Building itself.
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Allegorical History of Pittsburgh Civic Architecture
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Fifth Avenue Place by Night
Looking up at Fifth Avenue Place from the intersection of Forbes and Stanwix.
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Last Glimpses of Gateway Center Station
Father Pitt found time for a few last pictures of Gateway Center just hours before the station closed forever. In two years or so, we’ll have a big new station, but old Pa Pitt will still secretly miss the little old one just a bit.
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Gateway Center Mural by Romare Bearden
“Pittsburgh Recollections,” installed when the Gateway Center station opened in the middle 1980s, takes us from canoes down the Allegheny to these marvelous modern mainframe computers with their gigantic reel-to-reel tape drives full of data, by way of the French and Indian War, Conestoga wagons, the riverboat era, a banjo that doubtless accompanied songs by Stephen Foster, and the age of steel. The Port Authority is raising money to have the mural restored and reinstalled at the new Gateway Center station. (UPDATE: The mural has been restored and reinstalled at Gateway station.)
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End of the Line for Gateway Center
A kind reader who signs himself “Matt” had an excellent suggestion:
Any interest in photographing or featuring the old Gateway Center Station one last time before it closes forever this weekend?
It was never a beautiful or impressive space, but of our trio of odd underground stations, Gateway Center was the oddest. It will soon be replaced by a gleaming new station that will doubtless be more convenient and more beautiful. But old Pa Pitt confesses that he was always sneakily proud of the old Gateway Center station when he brought out-of-town visitors downtown. They might come from cities with more expensive or more comprehensive subway systems, but few subway stations are as just plain weird as Gateway Center was. Notice, for example, the low-level platform, now closed off by a rail, that was built to accommodate the old PCC cars when they still ran the Overbrook route—a feature shared by all three of the underground stations downtown.
The weirdest aspect of Gateway Center, of course, was the loop. Visitors riding the subway for the first time were always alarmed to see the station they wanted flashing by on their left, as though the car had somehow just missed it. Then came the long squealy loop that threw everybody to the right-hand side of the car, and finally the car re-emerged into the station, this time with the platform on the right side.
We’ll see more pictures of the old Gateway Center station shortly. Meanwhile, the subway ends at Wood Street until further notice, except for the next few weekends, when it ends at First Avenue.
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Fort Duquesne Bridge
The companion to the Fort Pitt Bridge, the Fort Duquesne Bridge crosses the Allegheny, giving the Point a pair of golden wings. The picture was taken with a Kodak Retinette.
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Smithfield Street Bridge
A view from the sidewalk shows the intricacy of Gustav Lindenthal’s famous Pauli truss. Taken with a Kodak Retinette.
The Smithfield Street Bridge is just across Carson Street from the Station Square subway station.
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Crowds in Point Park
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Looking Up at the PPG Tower
Looking up at Philip Johnson’s PPG Tower, the centerpiece of PPG Place and the de-facto symbol of downtown Pittsburgh, from the Diamond.
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The Diamond
This little corner of the Diamond (the Diamond is called “Market Square” on maps) looks like the Pittsburgh of olden times, before steel-cage construction made skyscrapers sprout everywhere. Taking away the neon and the road signs, it could be a Victorian engraving. Father Pitt begs your forgiveness for the cheap lens on this digital camera, which makes straight lines impossible. (Update: With better software, we have been able to eliminate most of the distortion. For comparison, the original image is reproduced below.)
The Diamond is a block up Forbes Avenue from the Gateway Center subway station.