Father Pitt

Category: Downtown

  • The Kaufmann’s Clock

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    The store is called Macy’s now, but you’ll hardly find a real Yinzer who can bring himself to call it that. It will always be Kaufmann’s, the biggest department store in Pittsburgh, taking up a whole city block and slopping over into the next. With a dozen floors of retail space, it’s still bigger than some whole suburban shopping malls.

    This clock, at the corner of Fifth and Smithfield, is Pittsburgh’s legendary meeting place. It can still get crowded underneath with people who’ve promised to wait for someone “under the Kaufmann’s clock.” And it’s always working, which is a boon for people who, like old Pa Pitt, often forget to stuff their watches into their pockets in the morning.

    Macy’s is a short stroll from the Grant Street exit of the Steel Plaza subway station.

  • In the Subway

    Click on the picture to enlarge it.

    The streetcar lines from the South Hills all converge downtown and go into a clean and pleasant subway. Steel Plaza station, shown here, is where the short line to Penn Station (served only in rush hour) branches off the main line. Here a not-in-service car from Penn Station sits at the platform waiting for its next assignment.

  • Gateway to the Smithfield Street Bridge

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    [Updated, with many thanks to “Mercator” for a helpful comment.] The 1915 gateway of the 1883 Smithfield Street Bridge, as seen through the snow of a January afternoon. The Pauli or lenticular truss is unusual; in Pittsburgh, with its more than 500 bridges, this is the only one. The oldest steel bridge in the United States, this was designed by Gustav Lindenthal, who knew a thing or two about bridges. The original span was half the width; for the better part of the twentieth century, the bridge carried automobiles on the downstream side and streetcars on the upstream side. In the 1990s (after the streetcars had been rerouted into the subway by way of the Panhandle Bridge), the bridge was refurbished and painted in bright Victorian colors to replace the utilitarian gray that had coated it for decades. This is our most popular bridge for pedestrians; it connects downtown with the shops and restaurants at Station Square.

    Click on the picture to enlarge it.

  • Firstside in the Snow

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    Firstside, the block-long row of human-sized buildings along the Mon Wharf, is a small taste of the Pittsburgh of the nineteenth century, before behemoths with steel skeletons rose to dizzying heights. But even here we see the seeds that would sprout into skyscrapers. The brown cube-shaped building with the fire escapes at the right end of the row is the Conestoga Building, the first building in Pittsburgh built on a steel cage, and one of the first few in the world. This kind of construction indefinitely extended the height a building could support, while simultaneously the elevator removed the human limit of about six flights of stairs.

  • PPG Place from Across the Mon

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    One PPG Place through the late-afternoon snow. Pittsburgh took Philip Johnson’s PPG Place to its heart at once. Finished in 1984, it almost instantly became the symbol of downtown Pittsburgh. Whenever you see those glass fantasy-Gothic spires, you know where you are.

  • Looking Up at PPG Place

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    The main tower of PPG Place, Philip Johnson’s masterpiece that has become the iconic symbol of downtown Pittsburgh.

  • Christmas Leftovers at PPG Place

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    The coldest weather of the year couldn’t keep a few intrepid skaters off the rink at PPG Place. The Christmas tree is still up, hiding the obelisk that Peter Leo likes to call the Tomb of the Unknown Bowler.

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  • Fourth Avenue

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    The famous Fourth Avenue bank towers rise behind the fantastical glass castles of PPG Place.

  • The Puddler

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    Made entirely of glass, this art-deco mural, or sculpture, shows a “puddler,” a man who stirs the molten iron ore until it’s tasty enough to make good steel. The location should be obvious from the photograph, but note that the Puddler himself is around the corner over the Wood Street entrance.

  • The Horne’s Christmas Tree

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    Every year, the old Joseph Horne department store turned one corner of the biulding into a Christmas tree. The department store is gone, but the new owners have kept up the Christmas-tree tradition.