Designed by the huge international firm Hellmuth, Obata, & Kassabaum, this nest of octagons was one of many landmark skyscrapers that popped up like mushrooms in the boom of the 1980s.
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Old Church in the West End
Now a sports bar, so it has been converted to a different religion.
An update: This was St. George’s Episcopal Church, built some time in the 1890s or very early 1900s.
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House Building
This substantial early skyscraper right at the end of the Smithfield Street Bridge was designed by James T. Steen. It was begun in 1902 and was completed by 1905. It is now known as Four Smithfield Street.
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418 First Avenue
Update: The massive survey of historic buildings adopted by the city in 1994 tentatively identifies this building as a work of Titus de Bobula. That would certainly explain its eccentric style: Pittsburgh never had another architect like him. It would also date the building between 1903 and 1910. If we read the map correctly, it first appears on the map layer dated 1903–1906 at the Pittsburgh Historic Maps site, so this might have been one of de Bobula’s early commissions here. Our original remarks appear below.
It has not been possible to find any information about the age or architect of this curious building in the limited time old Pa Pitt was willing to devote to the task. The researchers who compiled information for the Firstside Historic District also threw up their hands. It is a mostly utilitarian small warehouse, but with angular decorations that suggest a prickly version of Art Deco. Right now you can buy it if you like, and then you might find more clues to its origin among the debris of the decades.
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Hamerschlag Hall
Hamerschlag Hall, Carnegie Mellon University, seen from the Carnegie Museum parking garage.
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People’s Savings Bank Building
The Bank Tower, as it is now called, has a brand-new painted sign on the back side. The building, finished in 1902, was designed by the prolific firm of Alden & Harlow, Andrew Carnegie’s favorite architects.
[A correction: An earlier version of this article identified Alden & Harlow as a Boston firm, but they had moved to Pittsburgh by this time, leaving their former partner Longfellow behind.]
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Bracket Fungus on a Log
Bracket fungus on a log in the woods in Bird Park. In the background, Phlox divaricata.
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