Two abstract views of the newer Alcoa Building on the North Shore at the end of the Seventh Street Bridge. The one above was taken with a Lubitel TLR; the one below was taken with an Imperial plastic “toy” TLR.
Obviously old Pa Pitt is still rummaging through his large library of old pictures.
East Liberty was down on its luck at the end of the twentieth century, but this row was still filled. The buildings have not changed much since then, fortunately, since this is one of the better Art Deco streetscapes in Pittsburgh, which never really embraced Art Deco as much as many other cities did. Surprisingly enough, Sam’s (no longer Bostonian) Shoes is still here; the terra-cotta tiles have disappeared from the front of that building. Its neighbor Anthon’s is also still in business. Most of the rest of the businesses in the row have changed, but the buildings are still there, and since East Liberty is a trendy neighborhood now, they have a good chance of preservation.
This picture was taken in 1999 with a Smena 8M, a plastic Russian all-manual 35-millimeter camera that was cheaply made but surprisingly capable.
You can tell it’s Ash Wednesday because churches in all the neighborhoods are offering fish ’n’ at. This church in Brookline was Presbyterian until recently, but now appears to be nondenominational.
Brookline Boulevard, known simply as “the Boulevard” in the neighborhood, is the broadest commercial street in Pittsburgh—which surprises visitors from flat cities, where it would be at best a middling business street. It’s a curiously one-sided business strip: almost all the businesses are on the southwest side, the northeast side being primarily residential.
That may be because, for much of the neighborhood’s life, it was effectively two streets. When trolleys ran in Brookline, Brookline Boulevard was two narrow strips for cars, with trolleys in a separate median in the middle—much like Broadway in Dormont along the current Red Line. Removing the trolleys and paving the median created the exceptionally broad street.
The Brookline business district is one that is seldom thought of as a destination for shoppers from out of the neighborhood. But it should be. It has very few chain stores, but it is prosperous enough that storefronts are seldom empty for long. The result is a delightful mix of little one-off shops, cafés, and ethnic restaurants.
The tower in the distance is the lookout tower of Engine House Fifty-Seven.
“Night Scene on the Monongahela River Near Pittsburgh, Pa., Showing a Portion of the Plants of the Pittsburgh Steel Co.” A striking view from a booklet published by the Pittsburgh Steel Company in 1911.
A passenger waits for a Red Line car on the Belasco safety island on Broadway, the main street of the Beechview neighborhood. His wait will not be long.
This 4200-series car rolled up seconds after the earlier picture was taken.
Pittsburgh used to be full of safety islands like these; wherever there was a broad street, the streetcars usually ran in the middle of it, avoiding the chaos of parking and double-parking along the edges. Broadway is the only street that has kept its safety islands, since elsewhere the streetcars mostly have their own right-of-way. (Warrington Avenue, used by the Brown Line when it is active, is narrow enough that passengers board from the curb.) There are three stops along the street trackage in Beechview; two others were eliminated a few years ago. Now Belasco is scheduled to be replaced with a platform-level station, which will be a boon to handicapped riders in Beechview. That will leave only the safety islands at Shiras and the single safety island at Hampshire (outbound passengers there board from the curb).
Above we can see the inbound safety island on the left. Behind the outbound stop, incidentally, is a typical Pittsburgh cliff house: a house whose street entrance is on the top floor, with the rest of the house clinging to a steep slope down from the street.
