Another elegant Renaissance palace, slightly smaller but very similar in style to the Aberdeen. Once again, the view is marred by intrusive utility cables.
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The Adrian
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The Aberdeen
An apartment building in the graceful form of a Renaissance palace.
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Bayard Manor
A Tudor Gothic apartment block in North Oakland whose details are worth pausing to appreciate.
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Bell Telephone Building, Oakland
When this dignified Renaissance palace on Neville Avenue was built, there were telephone exchanges like this all over the city, each one stuffed with operators directing calls from here to there. They were built to be ornaments to their neighborhoods rather than mere excrescences of technology. These days we dial numbers directly, but this building still belongs to the successor of the Bell Telephone Company.
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World’s Largest Monolithic Columns
These huge Ionic columns on the Mellon Institute building in Oakland are actually the largest monolithic columns in the world. Classical columns are usually made by stacking up cylinders of stone, but each one of these columns is a single piece of rock. Benno Janssen, the architect, was showing off what you can do if you have a Mellon budget.
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The Fairfax
Note that the full picture is more than 45 megapixels.
Apartment life was never as much of a big thing in Pittsburgh as it was in some other big Eastern cities, but the corner of Oakland next to Shadyside is mostly given over to large blocks of apartments like this. The Fairfax affects an English style; old Pa Pitt does not know whose arms are on the façade, but they do not seem to be the arms of Lord Fairfax.
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Grand Staircase in the Carnegie
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Hamerschlag Hall
Hamerschlag Hall, Carnegie Mellon University, seen from the Carnegie Museum parking garage.
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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.
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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.
