
A block of modest storefronts from 1883, built in the Italianate style.
A small but very tasteful church (finished in 1909) that faces the beautiful expanse of West Park across North Avenue. The architect, according to this brochure, was Robert Maurice Trimble, a native of Allegheny.
Seen across Lake Elizabeth. This monument was “Erected to the memory of the 4,000 brave men of Allegheny County who fell in the great struggle to preserve the integrity of our Union.” Even today, four thousand men would be a huge number from this one county, and Allegheny County did not have more than a million people in it back in the 1860s.
Near the memorial was a bridge over the railroad, now gone, with the approaches blocked by chain-link fence. Some enterprising romantic discovered that the fence makes a fine billboard for a message spelled out in padlocks.
Zinnias have become very popular in the last few years, and we never need an excuse for flower pictures.
Goldenrod is everywhere in September, which makes the bees very happy. Here we see a bee having the time of her life with a Tall Goldenrod (Solidago altissima).
A picture taken back in February, but held in reserve (or forgotten about) till now: looking west on Fifth Avenue in the Oakland monument district. On this side is the Fifth Avenue bus lane, soon to be integrated into the new Oakland BRT line; across the street is a corner of the Masonic Temple (now Alumni Hall) and the Pittsburgh Athletic Association under renovation.
The United Steelworkers Building in a picture from last December. The architects were Curtis and Davis, who did nothing else that old Pa Pitt knows of in Pittsburgh.
This is an old log house—probably about 200 years old—brought in from the rural exurbs of Armstrong County to represent the log cabin that has long played a prominent part in Pitt’s origin story. From 1787 until its first building was ready, the Pittsburgh Academy used a log building. That building is long gone, of course; this one was donated by a rich alumnus. It looks a bit silly among the sophisticated Gothic extravagances of the Stephen Foster Memorial, the Cathedral of Learning, and Heinz Chapel.
These pictures were taken back in February; for some reason old Pa Pitt never got around to publishing them until now. They are rendered in two-color old-postcard style for no very good reason other than that they looked better that way.
Summer scenes in the middle of Saw Mill Run, which is a substantial river in the spring, but dries out enough in the summer to allow walking across it from rock to rock.