Downtown Pittsburgh seen from Point State Park. From this angle, you might suppose that the city did not exist at all before the Second World War—although, if you enlarged the picture, you might wonder why there was a British colonial flag flying.
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It Used to Be a Store
In the days before suburban shopping centers, every block of a city neighborhood would have its backstreet grocery store. Many of these old stores have been converted to apartments, but you can still recognize them easily. They’re often on a corner, and the ground floor in front is distinctly different, usually distinguished by space for a sign along the top of the ground-floor façade, sometimes with the shop windows filled in with siding or other later accretions. Here are two typical examples from the South Side.
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Webster Hall
A full view of the Fifth Avenue façade of Webster Hall. The design is by Henry Hornbostel, who successfully created a conservative Art Deco classicism that harmonizes with the other grand monuments on Fifth Avenue.
The building was apparently put up as fancy bachelor apartments, but soon became a grand hotel (it is now apartments again). It was famous for the Webster Hall Cake, whose secret recipe is still treasured by little old ladies all over Pittsburgh. But old Pa Pitt is delighted to discover that the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle has a whole article on Webster Hall Cake, including two recipes that claim to be close approximations. Father Pitt suspects that there are still little old ladies out there who claim to have the real thing, but these recipes are a good start.
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Carnegie Library, South Side Branch
One of Alden and Harlow’s distinguished designs for small libraries, this one has changed very little externally since it opened.
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Fifth Avenue Place from the Southwest
Seen down Liberty Avenue from the entrance to Point State Park.
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Crossing the Monongahela in a Trolley
From Station Square across the river into the subway tunnel. You can also download a full-resolution version from the Wikimedia Commons file page.
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Westinghouse Works
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How do you give a good impression of how big the Westinghouse dynamo factory is? This extraordinary film from 1904 begins with an aerial tracking shot that goes on uninterrupted for two minutes. Then we see an army of women assembling the more delicate parts, and finally quitting time, when many of the younger workers literally run out the doors.
