Father Pitt

Category: Oakland

  • Yarn Graffiti

    yarn-graffiti1

    Hye Jin Lee, a student at Carnegie Mellon, has woven colorful patterns into the fence along the Junction Hollow Bridge in Oakland.

  • Carnegie-Mellon Through the Steam

    2009-03-22-roberts-hall

    Steam from the Carnegie heating plant in Junction Hollow below veils Hamerschlag Hall and Roberts Hall at Carnegie-Mellon.

  • Hygeia

    2009-02-21-hygeia1

    In honor of the physicians who served in the First World War, Hygeia, goddess of health and proper sanitation, raises her torch in Schenley Park. Phipps Conservatory is in the background.

  • The Entrance to Phipps Conservatory

    2009-02-21-phipps-01

    For about a century, Phipps Conservatory, the gift of Andrew Carnegie’s friend Henry Phipps, belonged to the Ciry of Pittsburgh. After it was turned over to a private nonprofit group, Phipps started to grow and flourish like a tropical vine. This new entrance, opened a few years ago, is a perfect match for the splendid Victorian glasshouses behind it. Yet it is also unmistakably contemporary. This is a textbook example of architecture that is sympathetic to its surroundings without being slavishly imitative. (Not, old Pa Pitt hastens to add, that there is anything wrong with slavish imitation once in a while.)

  • Hebe Among the Orchids

    2009-02-21-phipps-04

    Hebe, Greek goddess of youth, cupbearer of Olympus, stands among the Phalaenopsis orchids in the Sunken Garden at Phipps Conservatory.

    2009-02-21-phipps-03

  • A Map of Oakland

    Father Pitt mentions Oakland more often than any other neighborhood, probably because Oakland, as the intellectual and cultural center of Pittsburgh, is more fun to look at than any other neighborhood. Here is a helpful map (click to download in PDF format) that shows most of the Oakland sights mentioned by Father Pitt so far. Print it on an ordinary letter-size sheet of paper, carry it with you, and take some better pictures than the ones old Pa Pitt has to offer.

    oakland

  • Shakespeare at Work

    shakespeare

    William Shakespeare hard at work on something brilliant. One of the larger-than-life Noble Quartet in front of the Carnegie in Oakland, Shakespeare represents Literature (along with Michelangelo for Art, Bach for Music, and Newton for Science). The picture was taken with a cheap toy digital camera, then turned to grayscale because the cheap digital colors were just awful.

  • Complementary Masses

    oakland-cathedral-of-learning-sculpture

    An abstract sculpture in front of the Carnegie Museum of Art perfectly complements the mass of the Cathedral of Learning in the background. This photograph was taken a few years ago, when the Cathedral of Learning still proudly bore its coat of soot from the age of heavy industry.

  • Webster Hall

    Webster Hall in Oakland, designed by Pittsburgh’s favorite architect Henry Hornbostel, was a grand hotel in its day. Now it’s turned into apartments, but church ladies all over Pittsburgh still treasure the recipe for Webster Hall Cake.

  • Monolithic and Megalithic

    Mellon Institute

    The columns of the Mellon Institute are supposedly the largest monolithic columns in the world. For scale, note, if you can make him out, the man with the backpack walking down the steps.