Pittsburgh is rich in great jazz pianists. Erroll Garner has been getting more attention lately, and Mary Lou Williams has seen a well-deserved revival. But no one seems to be talking about the one Father Pitt considers the greatest of all. So here, to jog some memories, is Earl Hines playing his own song “A Monday Date” in a recording from 1928. The record was much loved, so there’s a little fuzz around the edges. But the sound is otherwise excellent, and the genius of Fatha Hines glitters in every astonishing bar.
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Allegheny Center
The curious urban clutter of Allegheny Center, a grand plan to build a completely new urban center for the North Side that, like most such plans from the 1960s, had at best only partial success. It destroyed almost the entire core of the old city of Allegheny, replacing it with modernist blocks and apartment warehouses. The clock tower at middle left marks the old Allegheny branch of the Carnegie Library, which stands at the end of a row of buildings preserved amidst the destruction. In the foreground, some of the millionaires’ mansions of Allegheny West.
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Seeds of Clematis terniflora
Autumn Clematis (Clematis terniflora) produces great quantities of seeds, which accounts for the fact that we see it more and more in the wild, and that it has been tagged as an invasive species in some places. The seeds themselves are some of the most beautiful constructions in the world of seeds—they look like a school of tropical fish.
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Cathedral of Learning from Across Schenley Plaza
One of the most remarkable things about the Cathedral of Learning is that it is an isolated skyscraper. There are very few places in the world where a skyscraper can be examined by itself, and few skyscrapers so much worth examining as this, which Father Pitt has often declared the only convincing application of Gothic style to the skyscraper form.
