The plaza at the center of PPG Place is now filled with a skating rink in the winter. But a few years ago, before the skating rink, on Light-Up Night it used to be filled with luminarias—paper bags weighted with sand and lit by candles. (Luminarias, normally associated with Latin American culture, are an old tradition in Pittsburgh for some reason.)
Streets in downtown Pittsburgh are extraordinarily narrow by American standards. Here Oliver Avenue cuts through a narrow gorge formed by some celebrated buildings (the Union Trust Building, the William Penn Hotel, the Oliver Building) and some slightly less celebrated buildings.
The Gulf Building, an Art Deco tower with a top modeled after the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, is rendered here in old-postcard colors through the marvel of modern digital technology.
A light fixture on the Frick Building. Henry Clay Frick intended this to be the best commercial building in America, so naturally his architect, the great Daniel Burnham, specified the best light fixtures in America.
The Dollar Bank has never been the biggest or richest bank in the city, but the lions that flank the entrance certainly inspire confidence.
Looking up into the rotunda of the Union Trust Building gives one the uncanny sensation of falling up into the vortex.
It is the civic duty of every Pittsburgher who entertains out-of-town visitors to take them up to Mount Washington and show off the skyline. These two pictures were taken a few years ago, but the overall impression changes little.
The skyline of downtown Pittsburgh seen from West Park. The bare branches, jagged buildings, and high contrast of a cloudy winter day make the picture, taken with an old and slightly leaky folding camera, look like a steel engraving.
The Granite Building on Sixth Avenue is an exuberant riot of textures. Whatever ornamentation could be done with granite, it has been done here.
