In the 1930s, the great Frank Vittor, who had absorbed more than a little of the Art Deco spirit, designed the standard drinking fountain for Pittsburgh city parks. The main design, appropriately enough, was a classical dolphin (which looks nothing like a real dolphin). A surprising number of the original run of fifty fountains remain; this one is outside the Schenley Park visitor center, across the drive from Phipps Conservatory. They have recently been fitted with pushbutton valves (they used to run continuously), but otherwise they remain almost unaltered from Vittor’s original design.
These ornaments in relief adorn the exterior of Heinz Hall, formerly the Loew’s Penn movie palace, and now home to the Pittsburgh Symphony. The creation of this first-rate concert hall began the long transformation of the decaying theater district into the bustling and lively cultural attraction it is today.
Heinz Hall is a short walk around the corner from the Wood Street subway station.
The County Office Building is a curious combination of Romanesque and late Art Deco, with more than a hint of the style Father Pitt likes to call American Fascist. Below, an eagle ornament on the corner holds the Allegheny County arms in its talons. On the arms: a ship, a plough, and three sheaves of grain (though they look like mushrooms in concrete).
The County Office Building is a short walk away from the First Avenue subway station.
For ten years from 1978 to 1988, Richard Caliguiri (pronounced, in defiance of all orthography, “Cal-i-JOOR-ee”) was mayor of Pittsburgh. During that time, even though the steel industry collapsed and hundreds of thousands of jobs vanished, downtown Pittsburgh went through the most prosperous period in its history. In 1988, he died of Pennsylvania Politician’s Disease, otherwise known as amyloidosis, just before the prosperity ended, assuring his canonization as the most beloved mayor in the city’s history. This statue by the famous portraitist Robert Berks stands on the steps of the City-County Building. He’s looking over a map of his beloved Golden Triangle, a map that changed considerably during his time in office.
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.
