Father Pitt

Category: Downtown

  • Firstside in the Snow

    Click on the picture to enlarge it.

    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

    2009-01-20-downtown-02

    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

    2009-01-15-ppg-01

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

  • Christmas Leftovers at PPG Place

    2009-01-15-ppg-03

    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.

    2009-01-15-ppg-02

  • Fourth Avenue

    2009-01-15-fourth-avenue1

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

  • The Puddler

    puddler-corrected

    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

    hornes-tree-on-light-up-night

    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.

  • CNG Tower

    downtown-cng-01

    The top of the CNG Tower on Liberty Avenue, which opened in 1987. One of the “postmodern” masterpieces of the 1980s boom, this is now called the Dominion Tower. Architecturally, it is a notable revival of the base-shaft-cap formula of the earliest skyscrapers.

  • View from the Rotunda

    downtown-penn-station-view

    An impressionistic view from the rotunda of Daniel Burnham’s Pennsylvania Railroad Station, now offices and condo apartments under the name “The Pennsylvanian.” Amtrak trains still arrive at a smaller modern station grafted on to the main building.

  • The Smithfield Street Bridge

    Two pictures of the Smithfield Street Bridge, both taken with the same toy digital camera.

    Lenticular or “scissors” trusses (sometimes called “Pauli trusses”) are rare on bridges anywhere. This is one of the great examples in the United States. The bridge was designed by one of the great names in bridge-building, Gustav Lindenthal. Until the 1980s, the dowstream side carried automobiles and the upstream side streetcars, but the streetcars were rerouted over the Panhandle Bridge when the subway downtown opened. After a major restoration, the bridge now caries automotive traffic on both sides.

    If you are a bridge lover, Pittsburgh is the one city you must see before you die. There are more bridges here than in any other city anywhere, and for a considerable time there was actually a government body here charged with seeing that new bridges were not only practical and safe, but aesthetically beautiful as well. An excellent introduction to the bridges of Pittsburgh is at pghbridges.com.