Father Pitt

Category: Oakland

Cathedral of Learning on a Winter Morning

Morning sun illuminates the Cathedral of Learning.

February 24, 2020
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.

January 17, 2020
Butterflies in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Thousands of drawers like these are in the Carnegie, one of the world’s top natural-history museums. Every once in a while the curators take out a few drawers from the bug collection and display them on the wall near the Grand Staircase.

December 19, 2019
Complementary Masses

If you stand in just the right place, the sculpture outside the Carnegie Museum of Art seems to be almost an exact inversion of the Cathedral of Learning.

December 15, 2019
Grand Staircase in the Carnegie

The Grand Staircase is the heart of the old Carnegie Institute building, and no expense was spared in making it lavishly artistic. The murals are by John White Alexander, a Pittsburgh native who was in his day almost as well regarded as John Singer Sargent.

December 12, 2019
Heinz Chapel

More pictures of Heinz Chapel, the last major work of Charles Z. Klauder, who designed the whole Gothic city of buildings at the heart of the Pitt campus.

October 7, 2019
Reflections in the Software Engineering Institute

Three landmark buildings reflected in a corner of the Software Engineering Institute on Fifth Avenue: St. Paul’s Cathedral, Webster Hall, and the Mellon Institute.

October 2, 2019
Music Building, University of Pittsburgh

Built in 1884, this was originally a mansion designed by the prolific and always tasteful firm of Longfellow, Alden & Harlow. It was a gift from his wife to the pastor of the Bellefield Presbyterian Church across the street. It pays to marry a millionaire’s daughter.

September 30, 2019
The Mellon Institute

Benno Janssen, whose many designs helped define the Oakland Civic Center, created perhaps his most monumental work here. The huge columns are cut from single pieces of stone—the largest monolithic columns in the history of the world. And Father Pitt, through the magic of computer stitching software, brings you perhaps the only complete face-on photo of the block-long Fifth Avenue façade on the entire Internet. Below, a picture from the corner of Bellefield and Fifth.

September 30, 2019
Masonic Temple

Now the University of Pittsburgh’s Alumni Hall, this grand temple was designed by Benno Janssen, who gave us many other Pittsburgh monuments, including the Pittsburgh Athletic Association next door.

September 18, 2019