Sometimes the back of a theater bears no resemblance at all to the front of it. That is certainly true of the Denis in Mount Lebanon. The main entrance is on Washington Road, and it looks like a small storefront. Walk around the corner and down Alfred Street, and you will find this massive wall, which the architect has identified as a theater by adding Art Deco stripes in the bricks.
Liberty Avenue, Bloomfield, as it appeared in 1999. The picture was taken with an old folding Kodak Tourist camera.
One way to deal with a vacant lot in a business district is to make a tiny park out of it. Seldom are these tiny parks made to such a high standard as Clearview Common, a grand name for a single vacant lot. But not many jurisdictions have as much money as Mount Lebanon has to work with. The little park is at the corner of Alfred Street and Washington Road, Uptown Mount Lebanon, and it is a very pleasant place to sit and enjoy take-out from one of the many nearby restaurants.
Looking north from Alfred Street on Washington Road, Uptown Mount Lebanon, toward the tower of St. Bernard’s.
Ozark Witch Hazel (Hamamelis vernalis) blooms in any warm spell from January through March, filling the air with a delightfully strong perfume. When the weather freezes again, the petals curl up and wait for another warm spell. The bush is not native to Pittsburgh, but it is requires no care once it is established, and it does not make a pest of itself.
The Gateway station is full of fascinating geometries. These pictures were taken shortly after the station opened in 2012.
Edmond Amateis was the sculptor who created this whimsical fountain for the Mellon estate. These pictures were taken in November of 2008 with a Kodak Retinette.
You used to come down these stairs from the street to enter Gateway Center, and if you were lucky you would hear the sound of wheels squealing around the loop, indicating that you were just in time.
The old Gateway Center station closed forever on October 30, 2009, as the new line to the North Side was under construction. These pictures were taken on the old station’s last night in service. A new Gateway (not Gateway Center) station, much larger and more pleasant, is open now, but the old Gateway Center is still there as a ghost station, almost unchanged since the day it was abandoned. If you are leaving Gateway headed for Wood Street, you can see the old station on the right side of the car.
Approaching the platform…
The last time old Pa Pitt glanced out the window at the ghost station, those posters on the right were still there.
There was only one platform. Gateway Center was the end of the line, so the cars came in from the east (above), passed the station, went around a squealy loop, and came back in from the west. Watching the car pass straight through the station often gave out-of-town visitors a moment of panicked confusion.
Here we are looking toward the loop, listening to the squealing wheels as our car comes around for us.
At last our car enters the station. Note the lower-level platform, blocked off by this time, that was built to accommodate the old PCC cars, some of which ran in Pittsburgh until 2003. (Some of those same cars, completely rebuilt, are now running in San Francisco.) These lower-level platforms can still be seen at Steel Plaza and Wood Street. The PCC cars were also the reason for the loop: the more modern Siemens and CAF trolleys are double-ended, but PCC cars went in only one direction.
We board our car for the very last time, knowing that we will never hear that loop squeal again.
For some time after the new station opened, the announcements on the cars were still clearly the old recorded announcements, but truncated: the professional announcer voice said “Approaching Gateway C—” as the car rolled into the station. Those announcements have now been re-recorded, but old Pa Pitt secretly enjoyed them. Many cities have ghost stations in their subways, but Pittsburgh was the only city with a ghost sibilant.
