A two-car 47S train rolls into the Steel Plaza subway station in early rush hour.
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Subway in Motion
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Alcoa Building
The Alcoa Building, now called the Regional Enterprise Tower (Alcoa has moved across the Allegheny to the North Shore), was supposedly the first all-aluminum skyscraper. From most angles it looks like a giant stack of television sets, but with the clean modernist lines and vegetation of Mellon Square in the foreground, we can picture how the building must have looked in the architect’s imagination.
The Alcoa Building is a short walk down Sixth Avenue from the Ross Street exit of the Steel Plaza Subway Station.
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The Morgue
Frederick Osterling designed this atmospherically Romanesque morgue to match Richardson’s courthouse and jail a block away. Generations of Pittsburgh teenagers made a tradition of visiting the morgue after the prom. This curious memento mori is one of those Pittsburgh customs that old Pa Pitt must simply file away as unaccountable, not even attempting an explanation; unless it be that the visit to the morgue, by a direct appeal to all the senses at once, was intended to achieve what Mr. Andrew Marvell attempted to achieve by verse alone.
The morgue is a short walk from the First Avenue subway station.
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Bridge of Sighs
H. H. Richardson designed the county jail to match his courthouse, connecting them across Ross Street by the “Bridge of Sighs,” as Pittsburghers have called it for generations. The jail itself expresses its function perfectly: it looks like a medieval castle, impenetrable and foreboding. Now it houses bureaucrats’ offices; a new jail along the river holds the convicts.
The Bridge of Sighs is a block and a half south on Ross Street from the Ross Street exit of the Steel Plaza subway station.
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One Oxford Centre
One Oxford Centre is a typical 1980s tower that looks like a cluster of interlocked octagons. Those horizontal stripes are certainly distinctive, if perhaps a bit monotonous. The lower floors are a shopping arcade for the rich, famous, and prodigal. A skywalk connects the arcade to Macy’s (formerly Kaufmann’s) two blocks away.
One Oxford Centre is a short walk from the Steel Plaza subway station.
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Inside the Arches
The porch of the City-County Building is a massive, welcoming space. Something has to be done inside those gargantuan arches, and this is it: an abstract pattern of interlocking arcs that makes the ceiling look something like the vault of heaven, with the sun at its zenith, surrounded by cheerful cumulus clouds.
The City-County Building is two blocks south on Grant Street from the Steel Plaza subway station.
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Deco Romanesque
The County Office Building is a curious combination of Romanesque and late Art Deco, with more than a hint of the style Father Pitt likes to call American Fascist. Below, an eagle ornament on the corner holds the Allegheny County arms in its talons. On the arms: a ship, a plough, and three sheaves of grain (though they look like mushrooms in concrete).
The County Office Building is a short walk away from the First Avenue subway station.
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Chinatown
Chinatown in Pittsburgh was a tiny but lively enclave of two blocks behind Grant Street between Second and Third Avenues. Today it’s mostly lawyers’ offices. The Hong Kong Express 2 is newer, inhabiting an old Chinatown building; but the Chinatown Inn, which goes right through from Second Avenue to Third Avenue, is the sole remnant from the old days. Above, the Second Avenue side of Chinatown faces the ramp to the Boulevard of the Allies viaduct; below, the Third Avenue side faces a construction site.
Chinatown is a short walk away from the First Avenue subway station.
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First Avenue Subway Station
It may be a bit perverse to call it a subway station when it’s clearly an elevated station, but this is the section of combined streetcar lines that Pittsburghers generally call the subway. Most of it is indeed underground; First Avenue is the only elevated station downtown. Above, an inbound train arrives on its way into the subway tunnel; below, an outbound train picks up passengers.
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The Grant Building
Henry Hornbostel’s last great work was his biggest, a late-art-deco skyscraper towering next to his own City-County Building. The original lobby has been replaced by a 1980s parody of an art-deco interior, but the building is otherwise much as Hornbostel imagined it in the late 1930s. On top is a big red light that blinks “P-I-T-T-S-B-U-R-G-H” in Morse code all night—a landmark that guided commercial aircraft from a hundred miles away in the early days of aviation.
