Patterned after York Minster, this English Gothic church sits on the peak of the ridge, so that its outsized towers are visible for miles.
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Mount Lebanon Evangelical Presbyterian Church
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Looking North on Washington Road, Mount Lebanon
Mount Lebanon is what old Pa Pitt calls an urban suburb. It is outside the limits of the city of Pittsburgh, but otherwise the core of it is a city neighborhood, with an urban business district. (An urban business district, in Father Pitt’s definition, is one in which the businesses line up abutting the sidewalk, with no parking lots in front of them.) “Uptown” Mount Lebanon is a pleasant place for a stroll, with many restaurants and specialty shops to lure you off the sidewalk. And as we can see in this picture, it is actually one of the broadest urban business districts in the entire metropolitan area. In Washington, D.C., this would be merely average, but Pittsburgh has very few spaces that can accommodate a commercial street this wide.
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Art Deco Buildings on Washington Road, Mount Lebanon
Uptown Mount Lebanon has one of the best collections of Art Deco architecture in the area. These two buildings sit side by side on Washington Road at the corner of Alfred Street. With some confidence, old Pa Pitt identifies the Gothic fantasy on the right as an old movie theater, although he would be happy to be corrected.
Update: Father Pitt is corrected. The building on the right was the William Hall office and apartment building, designed in 1929 by Geisler & Smithyman. The one on the left was the Medical Arts Building, as we can guess from the splendid terra-cotta panels.
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Fountain at Clearview Common, Mount Lebanon
Clearview Common is a little parklet at the corner of Washington Road and Alfred Street in the middle of the Uptown Mount Lebanon business district. It makes an urban oasis out of a vacant lot, and this fountain is one of its distinctive features.
Pittsburgh natives are probably not aware that, to outsiders, one of the most surprising things about the city and its inner suburbs is the ubiquity of shoe-repair shops.
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Mount Lebanon Station
A southbound Red Line car leaves the Mount Lebanon subway station, as seen from the Alfred Street crossing.
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Tower of St. Bernard’s, Mount Lebanon
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Reflections in 650 Washington Road
Clouds reflected in the windows of a modernist office building (built in 1965) in uptown Mount Lebanon.
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Mount Lebanon Subway Entrance
The entrance to the Mount Lebanon station on the Red Line. The station is at the end of a winding subway tunnel cut through the rock (although Pittsburghers never call it a “subway,” reserving that epithet for the downtown section of the system). To get to the station from the Washington Road business district, you have to enter here, go down a flight of stairs (or an elevator), cross an alley, and go down another flight of stairs (or another elevator). Below we see the alley crossing and the station beyond it.
This entrance was built in the fashionable postmodernist style of the 1980s, when the streetcars were moved from Washington Road into the subway. Old Pa Pitt is impressed by the architect’s forethought in providing for the entrance to be tightened with a giant screwdriver if it should ever start to come loose from the ground.
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A Walk in the Park
The Bird Park Drive end of Bird Park, Mount Lebanon.
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A Walk in the April Woods
Bird Park, a stream-valley park in Mount Lebanon, is a good place to look for spring flowers, and a fine place to take a little healthy outdoor exercise.
