This is perhaps the street with the best view in North America. The luxury condos along Grandview Avenue account for a tiny fraction of the population of Mount Washington, but about half the neighborhood’s total wealth.
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Grandview Avenue, Mount Washington
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Back Slopes of Mount Washington
The thin line of luxury condominiums along Grandview Avenue is most of what people downtown see of Mount Washington, but the back side is a typical and very pleasant working-class Pittsburgh neighborhood. Half a block may make a difference of half a million dollars in a resident’s annual income.
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The View from Beechview
Little glimpses of the downtown skyline pop up unexpectedly in hilltop neighborhoods. Here, from a back street in Beechview, we see Mount Washington, with the U. S. Steel Tower and the BNY Mellon Center poking their heads up behind the hill.
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Liberty Tunnels, South Portal
The new portals for the Liberty Tubes are nearly finished, and they look splendid—almost exactly the way they looked when the tunnels opened in 1924. The unfortunate mid-century boxes are now only a memory.
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Washington and Guyasuta
With one of the grandest views in North America spread out before them, real-estate magnate George Washington and Chief Guyasuta discuss their plans for the construction of Heinz Field. The sculpture, a bronze by James A. West, is called “Points of View.” Father Pitt suspects the title may be a pun of some sort.
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Victorian Woodwork on Mount Washington
The entrances to a pair of 1880 rowhouses on Grandview Avenue, showing all the fun you can have with wood in even so simple a structure as a porch roof.
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Dolphin Fountain
A classical dolphin in a long-dry fountain at the entrance to Grandview Park, on the edge of the cliff at Mount Washington.
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Snow at Chatham Village
Chatham Village is a 1930s utopian community on the back slopes of Mount Washington. Though it was built to be housing for everyman, the simple good taste of the architecture and the beauty of the rolling grounds have made it more valuable than the surrounding neighborhood.
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Night and Day
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.
