Yes, since you ask, Father Pitt did plant tulips right in front of this patch of daylilies so he could take these pictures proving that these daylilies do really bloom as early as the end of tulip season. The pictures were taken on May 13, and old Pa Pitt does not know of any other daylilies blooming that early in the city. The variety has no name, since it came from a batch of mixed unnamed hybrid seedlings.
Firstside is the row of nineteenth-century commercial buildings facing what used to be the Monongahela Wharf. At one end is the Conestoga Building, one of the first steel-cage skyscrapers; at the other is the modernist Westinghouse Building.
This was built for the Second United Presbyterian Church, but the Baptists moved in in 1933 (according to the History of the Churches of the Pittsburgh Baptist Association). It is now the Union Project, an arts center and events hall.
This station (architect William George Burns) was made as splendid as possible to show that the P&LE was serious competition to the big railroads. Its front entrance opened directly on the Smithfield Street Bridge to be as convenient as possible to downtown without actually being downtown.
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.
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.
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.
