An architectural rendering of the first of the new wave of “green” skyscrapers in Pittsburgh. In spite of its modest dimensions, it was the largest building put up downtown in many years, and kicked off what will probably be remembered as the third downtown Renaissance.
A dragonfly rests briefly before heading out on another hunting expedition.
Mushrooms come in all colors, shapes, and sizes, and old Pa Pitt’s visitors seem to enjoy looking at them. For his part, Father Pitt enjoys finding them, so here are a few more pictures.
Like almost every other school on the South Side, this one has been turned into apartments.
This frog in the pond at the Homewood Cemetery is looking at us, and knows we are looking at it.
For no very good reason, Father Pitt decided to see what this picture of a log covered with little bracket fungi would look like if it had been printed with one of the limited-color processes sometimes used for books of popular science in the 1930s. There is actually a plugin for the GIMP that imitates two-color Technicolor, which suited his purposes well enough. What do you think? Would this not have made an admirable illustration in The Child’s Book of Wonders of the Fungus World?
The Westinghouse Memorial is one of our best works of public art, and the thoroughness of the execution is one of the best things about it. It is meant to be seen from the front, but if you wander behind it you will find, not a blank wall, but lovingly detailed bronze decorations that almost no one ever sees.
Instead of one obvious central business district, Mount Washington has several small business districts, of which the densest and perhaps most interesting is the one that takes up two blocks of Shiloh Street just off Grandview Avenue. Several of the buildings show a decided German influence, and this one (built in 1893) is a particularly good example of what we might call South Hills German style. (Before the First World War, the back slopes of Mount Washington were known as the “South Hills”; Beechview and the neighborhoods farther south were described as “beyond the South Hills.”)
Like most of the buildings on Shiloh Street, it is irregularly shaped, a long trapezoid with its street front on an oddly-angled short side of the building.
This is an enormous composite picture; be prepared for nearly 20 megabytes of data if you click on it.
There are mushrooms that decompose whole tree stumps, and there are humbler mushrooms whose job is to decompose twigs. Somebody has to do it.
Seen from the Smithfield Street side of the plaza. The “plaza” itself could have been a distinctive and beautiful urban space, but poor and seemingly random planning—of which the intrusive parking-garage entrance here is a good example—has marred it.
Earlier we published a view of Two PNC Plaza from the Liberty Avenue side.
