Dormers with carved and painted decorations on a Second-Empire-style house at Jane and 28th Streets, South Side.
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Pittsburgh Firefighter’s Federal Credit Union
A small but very tasteful building on the most prominent corner in the West End. The lower floor has had a modernist makeover, but the upper floors retain the original carefully balanced symmetry.
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Tower of Bellefield Presbyterian Church
The church was pulled down to make way for an office block, but the tower was left to preside over its old corner.
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Reflections in 650 Washington Road
Clouds reflected in the windows of a modernist office building (built in 1965) in uptown Mount Lebanon.
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The Adrian
Another elegant Renaissance palace, slightly smaller but very similar in style to the Aberdeen. Once again, the view is marred by intrusive utility cables.
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First Trinity Church, Shadyside
A fine Gothic building with a prominent tower in the west front, this church sits right on the border between Shadyside and Oakland—it would be in Oakland if it were on the other side of the street. The view is marred by utility cables, which is true of most things in most American cities. Europeans put those things under the ground; Americans seldom even notice what an aesthetic blight they are, not to mention how often storms bring them down.
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Mount Lebanon Subway Entrance
The entrance to the Mount Lebanon station on the Red Line. The station is at the end of a winding subway tunnel cut through the rock (although Pittsburghers never call it a “subway,” reserving that epithet for the downtown section of the system). To get to the station from the Washington Road business district, you have to enter here, go down a flight of stairs (or an elevator), cross an alley, and go down another flight of stairs (or another elevator). Below we see the alley crossing and the station beyond it.
This entrance was built in the fashionable postmodernist style of the 1980s, when the streetcars were moved from Washington Road into the subway. Old Pa Pitt is impressed by the architect’s forethought in providing for the entrance to be tightened with a giant screwdriver if it should ever start to come loose from the ground.
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Bayard Manor
A Tudor Gothic apartment block in North Oakland whose details are worth pausing to appreciate.
