Father Pitt

Category: Downtown

  • Fort Pitt Blockhouse

    Old Colonel Bouquet was proud enough of his little blockhouse that he carved his name in the stone above the door. Or rather he had one of his minions do it, because officers don’t have to do things like that for themselves.

    The rafters in the roof are almost all original. When the fort became superfluous in the late 1700s, the little building was sold off and ended up a private dwelling.

    Eventually the Daughters of the American Revolution bought the place and stripped away the later accretions. Now the blockhouse  looks much as it did when Col. Bouquet was in charge.

    Bouquet, by the way, may have been proud enough to put his name on the blockhouse; but finding that he had the honor of naming the fort and the little trading town that instantly appeared beside it, he chose to name them both after William Pitt, prime minister at the time, who was largely credited with the British victories against France all over the world.

  • Benedum-Trees Building

    The top of the Benedum-Trees Building, one of the famous bank towers that made Fourth Avenue one of the wonders of the world at the very beginning of the age of skyscrapers. The Fourth Avenue historic district is a few blocks’ walk from the Steel Plaza subway station.

  • Under Construction

    Not since “Renaissance II” in the 1980s has so much construction been going on downtown. Now, as then, a subway line is a big part of it, but new landmark buildings have also gone up, and the Diamond, as we see here, is being completely redesigned. (Planning maps call it “Market Square,” but the best way to explain it to suburbanites and visitors is to say that it’s spelled “Market Square” and pronounced “Diamond.”) While the rest of the country was plunged deep into recession, Pittsburgh was having its biggest building boom in a quarter century.

    Update: The Diamond is now finished and reopened.

  • Reflections

    The Clark Building and the Keenan Building, two Liberty Avenue landmarks, reflected in an ugly building across the street.

  • Sidewalk of Liberty Avenue

    Twenty years ago, Liberty Avenue was still a street parents warned their children about, the seedy heart of the seediest part of downtown. Now it’s one of our signature boulevards, with a parade of old and new architecture that makes it one of America’s great cityscapes. Much of that revitalization can be credited to the conscious effort of a few urban dreamers who dared to imagine a great future for an area most Pittsburghers preferred to ignore.

  • One Mellon Center

    The octagonal tower of One Mellon Center, Pittsburgh’s second-tallest building, seen from the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Grant Street. In the foreground at left is the dramatic base of the U. S. Steel Tower, whose colossal bulk is supported on impossibly spindly piers, defying gravity like something from the imagination of Rene Magritte. (From a distance, the building strikes old Pa Pitt as pedestrian, but the lobby and mezzanine are dramatic.) At right is the base of the Koppers Building.

  • The Nativity

    The Nativity, as it would have looked if it had happened on the plaza below the U. S. Steel tower.

  • Christmas at PPG

    A giant Christmas tree, a skating rink, and a whole city of glass fairy castles.

  • Christmas at the Courthouse

    Christmas decorations are going up in the Allegheny County Courthouse. Father Pitt apologizes for distorted lines in these pictures, caused by the cheap lens on a cheap digital camera.

  • Wood Street Station

    Two colliding grids make up downtown Pittsburgh’s street layout, and the collision happens at Liberty Avenue, giving us a fine array of odd-shaped buildings. This triangular structure, built as a bank, now houses the Wood Street subway station below and the Wood Street Galleries, an important contemporary art gallery, on the upper floors.

    While the Gateway Center Station is closed, Wood Street is the terminus of the subway downtown.

    This picture was taken with a Kiev-4 camera, a Ukrainian rangefinder that Father Pitt loves with an unreasoning passion. He would like to state for the record that the hideously rusted car in the foreground is not his fault.