These stunning Art Deco reliefs by Sidney Waugh decorate the old Buhl Planetarium, now part of the Children’s Museum. The Carnegie Science Center , which replaced the Buhl Planetarium as our chief science museum (and has the old Zeiss projector from the Buhl Planetarium on display), is big and exciting, but it was not built at a time when the meeting of science and art was as fruitful as it was in the Moderne era.
Edward Manning Bigelow was, by all accounts, as corrupt as any other Pittsburgh politician of his day. But he had two things that earn him a place in history: a vision of Pittsburgh as a great city, and a silver tongue with little old ladies. Seeing that Pittsburgh was rapidly expanding to the east, he determined that a great city must have a great park. Right in the way of the eastward expansion was Mary Schenley’s broad expanse of empty land. Mary Schenley was heiress to the O’Hara glass fortune, but she had abandoned Pittsburgh and moved to England. Bigelow went there and persuaded her to donate her land to the city. In her honor, we call it Schenley Park, and—just as Bigelow imagined it—it’s a beautiful oasis of fields, forests, and art in the middle of the city. One of those works of art is this statue of Bigelow himself, which stands in the middle of the street in front of Phipps Conservatory. Here we see it surrounded by the golden late-fall leaves of Ginkgo biloba.
Almost no one ventures behind the Westinghouse Memorial, but a special reward awaits those who do. Instead of a blank wall, we find reliefs as detailed as the ones in front. We can see the backs of the standing figures, and the leafy ornament that surrounds the figures and the panels turns out to arise very logically from tree trunks in the rear. Since the effect from the front would be the same if the rear were blank, there seems to be no real reason for having gone to this much trouble—except that knowing what’s behind changes our perception of the front. The front view has a kind of aesthetic truth that it would not have if the ornament did not have its logical foundation in the rear.
The Westinghouse Memorial has been splendidly restored, although the pond in front of it is drained and overgrown.
When George Westinghouse died, his reputation was at a low point—largely because of the constant attacks by Thomas Edison, who could never forgive Westinghouse for having been right about alternating current. But Westinghouse was beloved by his thousands of employees, whose contributions raised this treasure of American art. The architects were Henry Hornbostel (Pittsburgh’s favorite architect for decades) and Eric Fisherwood. The main sculptures were by Daniel Chester French, arguably the most famous American sculptor of all time. The panel reliefs were by Paul Fjelde.
This cast of Beaux-Arts titans could have made a heroic statue of George Westinghouse riding an air brake, but they decided on something more subtle. The monument is a beautiful allegory. An all-American boy (surely one of French’s best works) stands in the prow of a boat, his hat in one hand and books in the other, and learns about the incredible accomplishments of the genius Westinghouse, opened up in front of him like a scroll. You can read the wonder on his face, and in the careless way he crumples his hat, as if he had completely forgotten it was in his hand. (Notice how his sweater is pushed up from all that absentminded fiddling with the hat.) The message is clear: future generations will judge Westinghouse by his fruits, and they will be astounded.
This memorial in Schenley Park to our national flag is one of the few memorials on which you can find the exact cost of the memorial inscribed: $1881.63.
This little out-of-the-way park on a steep knob overlooking the West End Valley has one of Pittsburgh’s least-known memorials by one of Pittsburgh’s best-known sculptors. Frank Vittor, creator of some of our most prominent public art, designed this memorial for the soldiers who fought in the First World War.
The Federal Reserve Bank on Grant Street is actually one of our purest Art Deco buildings. It’s a Moderne interpretation of the style old Pa Pitt likes to call American Fascist.
This monument in the Victorian Romantic style is such a jumble of metaphors that old Pa Pitt is reluctant to try to untangle it. A number of elements—calla, ferns, cushion, scroll, drapery, rustic seat—are rendered individually with great realism, but thrown together in an extraordinarily unlikely way. The monument can be found (but probably won’t be found by most people) in a nearly forgotten German Lutheran cemetery on a hillside in Beechview.
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.
The Nativity, as it would have looked if it had happened on the plaza below the U. S. Steel tower.
