In order to line up with the street grid of the Strip, the 31st Street Bridge has an odd kink at the south end. Here we see it from Wiggins Street, Polish Hill.
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Demolishing a Warehouse in the Strip
Chunks of concrete dangle from exposed floors of a half-demolished warehouse next to the Sixteenth Street Bridge.
No one will miss this ugly building—or at least no one will admit to missing it. But it does point out a principle that old Pa Pitt has often stated: prosperity is more destructive to old landmarks than any other force except possibly war—and even then it depends on the war. When the city is prosperous, there is a strong incentive to replace older things with newer, more profitable things. Fortunately Pittsburgh has learned a lot about appreciating its old buildings, and much of what is going on in the booming Strip District is restoration and adaptation rather than demolition. But old buildings are in much more danger when the city is prosperous than when the local economy is stagnant.
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Street Interrupted, Part 2
An out-of-towner might think that some horrible territorial war had happened to make Beechview residents throw a concrete wall right across the middle of Sebring Avenue. But the culprit is topography again. The streets in Beechview are laid out in a grid in defiance of the hills, and the only way to make Sebring Avenue intersect Westfield Street was with terracing.
We’ve seen terraces like these on the South Side Slopes, and here is a similar construction for a similar reason in Beechview. As you might guess from the parked cars, the street is two ways on both sides of the divide, which only adds to the delightful confusion. You can turn any which way from Sebring Avenue. The only thing you can’t do is continue on Sebring Avenue.
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Street Interrupted, Part 1
Beechview’s streets are laid out in a grid. The topography rebels against grids, so streets are often interrupted for a block by stairways—as we see here on Andick Way. This is a very common phenomenon in Pittsburgh neighborhoods. The stairways appeared on published maps as streets, and in the early days of GPS that made navigation hazardous. Today most GPS systems have figured out which blocks are impassible to motor vehicles.
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The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring, Tra La
A roundup of spring flowers blooming yesterday. Above, a purple crocus. Below, a yellow crocus.
Persian Speedwell (Veronica persica), a tiny weed with exquisite sky-blue flowers. 
A daffodil. 
More crocuses. 
Hairy Bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta), a tiny cress that is one of the first flowers to bloom in late winter. One response
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Broadway Streetscape, Beechview
This view of the west side of Broadway in Beechview shows us a very Pittsburghish commercial district. The architecture is miscellaneous, including apartment buildings, commercial buildings, houses with storefront extensions, and tiny one-storey gap-filler storefronts. The street curves, so the buildings are not all perfectly rectangular. And of course this is Pittsburgh, so the whole row is on what in other cities would be called a steep slope, though in Pittsburgh we expect the Red Line streetcars to negotiate it.
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Adamesque Apartment Building in Oakland
A good apartment-building design makes its residents feel better off than they are. Here you can imagine yourself walking into a stately English home by Robert Adam, even if your portion of it is only a studio apartment.
