Looking up from under the rotunda of Penn Station, which is now converted to apartments and offices. If you want to catch a train, you have to go out back by the trash cans, where a small modern station has been grafted onto the main building.
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A Kaleidoscope of Glass and Iron
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Presbyterian Gothic
First Presbyterian Church sits on Sixth Avenue next to Trinity Cathedral (Episcopal) and just across the street from the Duquesne Club. These are the bastions of old money in Pittsburgh, and plenty of that money went into the elaborate Gothic ornamentation of the church building, not to mention its famous stained glass by Tiffany.
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Stones of the Courthouse
A few years ago, when the Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail (the masterpiece of H. H. Richardson) was being restored and the jail turned into offices for county bureaucrats, one of the high stone walls was taken apart, giving us a glimpse of the stonework. It turns out to be brick with a facing of large granite blocks, as we see here.
Incidentally, Pittsburghers who visit Minneapolis will find a startlingly familiar building: the Minneapolis City Hall is an unabashed copy of the Allegheny County Courthouse.
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Luminarias
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.)
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A Canyon in the City
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.
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The Gulf Building
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.
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A Light Fixture
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.
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Romanesque Stares Back
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Your Money Is Safe
The Dollar Bank has never been the biggest or richest bank in the city, but the lions that flank the entrance certainly inspire confidence.
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Falling Up
Looking up into the rotunda of the Union Trust Building gives one the uncanny sensation of falling up into the vortex.
