Hidden on the left side of the cathedral is a narrow arm of the churchyard with a few old monuments, with the massive bulk of the Oliver Building towering over them. Most people who visit Trinity Churchyard never find their way to this side of it, but it’s worth a few moments of contemplation.
The Victory Building, at Liberty Avenue and 9th Street, is a small skyscraper designed by Andrew Carnegie’s favorite architects, Alden and Harlow. It’s only eleven storeys tall, but it follows the classic base-shaft-cap pattern of the Beaux-Arts skyscraper style in America.
This beautiful (and odd-shaped) building at what used to be the intersection of Liberty and Oliver is now “coworking” offices, which is the trendy term for “offices with free beer.”
The last block of Oliver Avenue was absorbed into PNC Plaza, but this building remains to outline the old odd-angled intersection.
Addendum: The building was put up in 1909 for the Meyer Jonasson Company, a high-class clothing firm. The architects were MacClure & Spahr.
Fall colors persist far into November in the city, though the trees in the suburbs are mostly naked twigs by now.
The Lumière, the latest luxury condo tower downtown, is currently going up where Saks Fifth Avenue used to be, at Smithfield Street and Oliver Avenue.
Porcelainberry (Ampelopsis glandulosa var. brevipedunculata) is another one of those beautiful ornamentals with a plot to take over the world. It was brought into this country for the delightfully subtle colors of its berries. Birds love them, and the vine is distributed everywhere. Here it was fruiting at the lower edge of the South Side Slopes. Above: before a hard freeze; below, after.
This was actually built as the Kaufmann and Baer department store in 1914—the Kaufmann of the name being another branch of the family that owned the even bigger Kaufmann’s department store two blocks away. In 1925 it was taken over by Gimbels, and it remained Gimbels until the chain evaporated in 1986, so every old-timer in Pittsburgh remembers it as the Gimbels Building. The lower floors are occupied by retail stores now; the upper floors are offices.
The architects of the building were the New York firm of Starrett & van Vleck, who were responsible for many of the flagship department stores in big Eastern cities.
Leaves and berries. Above, Red Maple (Acer rubrum).
Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia).
The beautiful and destructively invasive Asian Bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus).
Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina).
