Gilding the capitals of your Ionic porch columns is a subtle way to tell the world, “I have more money than I know what to do with.” Note the half-round extrusion in the shadows on the right-hand side.
-
Second Empire Houses on Sarah Street, South Side
Two Second Empire rowhouses whose upper floors are fairly well preserved. The one on the right has had some adventures on the ground floor, possibly including a storefront at some point. Note the wooden shingles on the house on the left.
-
Fallowfield Station and Viaduct, Beechview
The Fallowfield station on the Red Line in Beechview is a kind of parasite on the Fallowfield viaduct. The Fallowfield Avenue end is at street level; the other end of the station is about five storeys above street level. Stations on the Red Line are currently getting a little bit of renovation.
The Fallowfield viaduct is one of three major viaducts, along with a bridge and a tunnel, that are necessary to bring the streetcars from downtown into central Beechview.
The viaduct is as important to pedestrians as it is to streetcars—so important, in fact, that, when the walkway was closed for repairs for a while a few years ago, the Port Authority gave free rides between Fallowfield and Westfield at the other end of the viaduct.
Outbound streetcars approach the viaduct from a curve.
-
Interior of First Baptist Church at Night
First Baptist Church, built in 1912, was designed by Bertram Goodhue, one of America’s greatest Gothic architects, and also the designer of the Cheltenham typeface, familiar today as the headline face of the New York Times. The Perpendicular Gothic interior includes one of the most visually beautiful sets of organ pipes in the city. At night everything takes on an added air of ancient mystery.
2 responses
-
Victorian Row on Sarah Street, South Side
A fine block of rowhouses on the north side of Sarah Street.
-
Conestoga Building
Designed by Longfellow, Alden, and Harlow, this was our first steel-cage building and thus the seed from which dozens of skyscrapers grew.
-
Hotel Lieb, South Side
Here are some utility cables with an old hotel behind them. The Hotel Lieb was a neighborhood hotel in the common Pittsburgh sense of being a bar with a few rooms above, because liquor licenses were fiendishly hard to get for bars but easy for hotels. It was built in the early 1900s at the intersection of Sarah Street with the oddly angled 29th Street, and the unusual angle is mitigated by cutting off the corner and putting the entrance there.
