A beautiful species of orchid from Colombia, not often seen in greenhouses. This one was blooming a week ago in the Orchid Room in Phipps Conservatory. Phipps will be closed for a while, but old Pa Pitt is doing his best to bring us some cheerful color.
Like most public institutions, Phipps Conservatory is closed for the next two weeks at least. While we wait patiently for life to return to normal, old Pa Pitt will be reaching down into his immense stash of unpublished pictures to bring us some cheery color. These three slipper orchids were blooming just a few days ago in the Orchid Room. Above: Paphiopedilum Golden Acres.
Phragmipedium After Glo ‘John’s Happy Birthday.’
Paphiopedilum Via Casa Grande x Chans Temple.
Frederick Osterling found a niche for a while making Richardsonian Romanesque buildings in a city that couldn’t get enough of Richardsonian Romanesque once it got a look at Richardson’s courthouse. Osterling attacked the style with more enthusiasm than most, and his works are certainly more than just Richardson knockoffs. The rich detail of the Times Building (1892) is a good example of his work.
The picture above was put together from ten individual photographs. Considering the narrow street, it is a very accurate rendering of the façade; but old Pa Pitt apologizes for a bit of fuzziness near the top. Below, the two grand arches of the Fourth Avenue entrance, with their wealth of intricate carved detail. [Addendum: The carving was almost certainly by Achille Giammartini, who also worked with Osterling on the Marine Bank and the Bell Telephone Building.]
The Times Building runs all the way through from Fourth Avenue back to Third Avenue, and the Third Avenue entrance arch is certainly impressive.
Purple Dead-Nettle (Lamium purpureum) growing from the stone wall under a railroad overpass at the back of the South Side Flats. In this sheltered position, it was already blooming in early March.
It took tons of beautifully cast bronze to make the grand entrances on the original Carnegie Institute building, as opposed to the modern entrance in the Scaife Galleries addition, which takes a bunch of glass doors ordered from a catalogue.
This fine vernacular-Gothic house serves as the gatehouse and office for the Mount Lebanon Cemetery, which was founded in 1901. It’s charmingly out of place in its neighborhood, which is a later development where most of the houses date from after the First World War.
The Music Building at the University of Pittsburgh was originally a house designed by Longfellow, Alden & Harlow for the pastor of the Bellefield Presbyterian Church across the street. It has been expanded for institutional use, but with some effort made to keep the expansion in sympathy with the original house.
Old Pa Pitt published a nearly identical picture of the Victory Building a while ago, but he was unhappy with the patch of blinding sunlight that washed out one corner of it. Here is the same view in more even lighting.
Science, art, music, literature: these were Andrew Carnegie’s “Noble Quartet,” to which he dedicated his colossal gift to Pittsburgh, the Carnegie Institute. To represent these four disciplines, Carnegie’s favorite sculptor, J. Massey Rhind, gave us Galileo, Michelangelo, Bach, and Shakespeare.
An interesting question: would we make the same choices today? Perhaps. But if we were to change the list, old Pa Pitt might suggest John Brashear, Andy Warhol, Earl Hines, and August Wilson. Not that he has any regional prejudices.
Galileo dwarfs that little Atlas fellow.
Michelangelo works on a model.
Bach thinks musical thoughts.
Tunnel Park in the SouthSide Works isn’t very picturesque, especially in the winter; and yet anything can be picturesque with a layer of mist added.
