Father Pitt

Category: Oakland

  • Grand Staircase in the Carnegie

  • Hamerschlag Hall

    Hamerschlag Hall, Carnegie Mellon University, seen from the Carnegie Museum parking garage.

  • The Twentieth Century Club

    Like almost every other substantial building in this part of Oakland, the Twentieth Century Club—once Pittsburgh’s premiere women’s club—now belongs to the University of Pittsburgh. This picture was taken a little more than a year ago.


    Map

  • Fifth Avenue, Oakland

    A picture taken back in February, but held in reserve (or forgotten about) till now: looking west on Fifth Avenue in the Oakland monument district. On this side is the Fifth Avenue bus lane, soon to be integrated into the new Oakland BRT line; across the street is a corner of the Masonic Temple (now Alumni Hall) and the Pittsburgh Athletic Association under renovation.

  • Log Cabin on the Pitt Campus

    This is an old log house—probably about 200 years old—brought in from the rural exurbs of Armstrong County to represent the log cabin that has long played a prominent part in Pitt’s origin story. From 1787 until its first building was ready, the Pittsburgh Academy used a log building. That building is long gone, of course; this one was donated by a rich alumnus. It looks a bit silly among the sophisticated Gothic extravagances of the Stephen Foster Memorial, the Cathedral of Learning, and Heinz Chapel.

    These pictures were taken back in February; for some reason old Pa Pitt never got around to publishing them until now. They are rendered in two-color old-postcard style for no very good reason other than that they looked better that way.

  • Bronze Doors on the Carnegie Institute Building

    It took tons of beautifully cast bronze to make the grand entrances on the original Carnegie Institute building, as opposed to the modern entrance in the Scaife Galleries addition, which takes a bunch of glass doors ordered from a catalogue.

  • Romanesque Capital on the Music Building

    The Music Building at the University of Pittsburgh was originally a house designed by Longfellow, Alden & Harlow for the pastor of the Bellefield Presbyterian Church across the street. It has been expanded for institutional use, but with some effort made to keep the expansion in sympathy with the original house.

  • The Noble Quartet

    Science, art, music, literature: these were Andrew Carnegie’s “Noble Quartet,” to which he dedicated his colossal gift to Pittsburgh, the Carnegie Institute. To represent these four disciplines, Carnegie’s favorite sculptor, J. Massey Rhind, gave us Galileo, Michelangelo, Bach, and Shakespeare.

    An interesting question: would we make the same choices today? Perhaps. But if we were to change the list, old Pa Pitt might suggest John Brashear, Andy Warhol, Earl Hines, and August Wilson. Not that he has any regional prejudices.

    Galileo dwarfs that little Atlas fellow.

    Michelangelo works on a model.

    Bach thinks musical thoughts.

    Shakespeare scans a huge folio for plot ideas to pillage.

  • Cathedral of Learning on a Winter Morning

    Morning sun illuminates the Cathedral of Learning.

  • First Baptist Church

    The First Baptist Church in Oakland was designed by Bertram Goodhue, a disciple of Ralph Adams Cram, the greatest figure in American Gothic architecture.