Balsam (Impatiens balsamina) is one of those old-fashioned garden flowers you don’t see too much anymore. Here are some fine examples from a garden in Beechview.
Camera: Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3.
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B. M. Kramer & Co Building, South Side
Old Pa Pitt has always regarded this as a masterpiece of industrial architecture. It occupies a whole block of Sidney Street between 20th and 21st.
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The Third-Largest Clock in the World
It used to be the largest, but it was surpassed by the clock on the Istanbul Cevahir shopping mall in 2005, which in turn was surpassed by the almost comically enormous Mecca Clock in 2011. But the Duquesne Brewery clock is still the largest clock face in the Western Hemisphere, and it is the South Side’s most visible landmark, easily readable from across the river. Since the brewery stopped brewing, it has carried various advertisements; but for the moment it carries no message, except for the time, which is still correct.
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A Passage Between Houses, South Side
Often in Pittsburgh rowhouse neighborhoods there are narrow, tunnel-like passages between the houses that run from the street into the back yards. This one struck old Pa Pitt as especially picturesque and a bit mysterious.
Camera: Canon PowerShot A590 IS.
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Entrance to Phipps Conservatory
The entrance to Phipps, rendered in old-postcard colors by the Two-Strip Technicolor script for the GIMP.
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Two PNC Plaza and Three PNC Plaza
Two PNC Plaza (with the PNC logo at the top) and Three PNC Plaza (center, with the notch cut out of it), as seen from Liberty Avenue.
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Kossman Building (Town Place)
The old Kossman Building was given a dark makeover for its new identity as “Town Place,” so that it looks a little less like a dated relic of the International Style and a little more like a cool new International Style revival. In fact, old Pa Pitt thinks that, in black, it looks like a Mies van der Rohe building wearing a hat.
Camera: Canon PowerShot A540.
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Victorian Storefront on Market Street
This beautifully restored building on Market Street is one of an identical pair. Note the properly inset entrance. It was once de rigeur for stores to have their entrances inset from the sidewalk like that, so that the door would not smack a passing pedestrian in the face. How did we forget what a good idea that was?
The picture is a composite of three photographs, which was the only way to get the whole façade across a very narrow street.
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The Residences at Market at Fifth
This little building on Graeme Street, a tiny alley between the Diamond (or Market Square) and Fifth Avenue, has probably never looked better since it was new, and possibly not even then. Its little corner of downtown is full of good restaurants and expensive shops now, so it looks like an attractive place to live.
This picture is a composite of two photographs, which is the only way to get the whole building from across an exceedingly narrow street.
Camera: Canon PowerShot A540
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Liberty Avenue at Stanwix Street
If we put some imagination into this picture, we can see Liberty Avenue as it was in the middle 1800s, when it was the center of the wholesale food trade (which later moved out to the Strip). But the old storefronts from that era are dwarfed by the 12-storey Diamond Building at the end of the block, and that in turn is dwarfed by the later skyscrapers behind it.
Camera: Canon PowerShot A540.
