A beautiful basilica-style church remarkable as much for its site as for its architecture. It stands on an eminence on the precipitous South Side Slopes, with a magnificent view of the city skyline. The west front is precisely at the upper end of Monastery Street, making a startling vista for lost tourists who find themselves turning off Brosville Street. The interior is full of rich marble and gorgeous sculptures, with a pipe organ installed right at the front of the church by a former rector who considered music important.
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St. Paul of the Cross Monastery Church, South Side Slopes
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St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church, South Side
The South Side Church Crawl brought a good number of tourists to see a number of South Side churches. This is probably the church that says “South Side” to Pittsburghers in general; its distinctive domes are prominent from the Liberty Bridge, the McArdle Roadway, and across the river.
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803 Liberty Avenue
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust lives in this gorgeously restored building with a wonderfully checkered history. It has been, among other things, a hotel and an adult bookstore, where (presumably) all the books were over 21 years old.
Camera: Samsung Digimax V4.
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A Cave
A small cave in a hillside in the Allegheny Cemetery. The worn path from the entrance indicates use by some animal—and indeed it would seem to be an irresistible shelter.
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819 and 821 Penn Avenue
Both these buildings are quite utilitarian, with ground-floor storefronts and upper-floor workshops; but each is adorned with its own distinctive classical detailing. The Greek-key pattern shows up on both, but no. 819 in particular adds a profusion of other ornaments that distinguish it from its neighbors.
Once again, the narrowness of Penn Avenue makes it difficult to get a complete picture of the façades of these buildings, so the tops are a little blurry.
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McNally and Bonn Buildings, Penn Avenue
These two buildings, like many in the Cultural District, are going residential. Though the styles are radically different—the McNally Building light and classical, the Bonn Building heavy and Romanesque—they are only three years apart: the McNally building was put up in 1896, the Bonn Building in 1893.
Penn Avenue is a very narrow street, and getting a picture of the whole front of a nine-story building involves a lot of fiddling, most of it done by the Hugin stitching program automatically. Thus the picture is a bit fuzzy toward the top.
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Hoffstot Building and Neighbor, Liberty Avenue
The Hoffstot Building (left) and its neighbor at 813 Liberty Avenue both have the large windows that indicate workshops of some sort on the upper floors. No. 813 has grown some curious postmodern excrescences at the top and an industrial-looking awning at ground level. It also preserves the left edge of a demolished building, now replaced by a one-story shop, that must have been interestingly ornamental.
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