Father Pitt

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Two PNC Plaza

Not one of our most famous or most distinguished buildings, but big: this is the thirteenth-tallest building in Pittsburgh—the twelfth-tallest downtown (leaving out the Cathedral of Learning in Oakland). It opened in 1976 as Equibank Plaza, and ended up in the hands of PNC after many mergers and acquisitions. Since PNC calls this “Two PNC Plaza,” its own current headquarters “One PNC Plaza,” the mixed-use skyscraper at the foot of Fifth Avenue “Three PNC Plaza,” and its new signature skyscraper “The Tower at PNC Plaza,” old Pa Pitt is forced to conclude that PNC thinks of the whole Golden Triangle as “PNC Plaza.”

April 29, 2015
Tower Two-Sixty

For the first time since the 1980s, downtown Pittsburgh has two skyscrapers going up at once (the other being the Tower at PNC Plaza). The project was begun as “the Gardens at Market Square,” but became “Tower Two-Sixty” at about the time construction began. The skeleton has risen, and now the skin begins to take shape.

April 28, 2015
Fiddlehead

It requires very little imagination to see why young fern leaves are called “fiddleheads.” This one was unrolling in late April along the Trillium Trail in Fox Chapel.

April 27, 2015
William Penn Hotel

Here we see the William Penn Place side of the William Penn Hotel. The Grant Street front presents a solid wall to the street, but this side is divided by two light wells, which are necessary in a building that takes up a whole city block. The arched bridges connecting the upper floors are graceful touches that add to the apparent unity of the design, which is the work of Benno Janssen, one of Pittsburgh’s favorite architects for many years..

April 26, 2015
Belmar Theater, Homewood

This movie house was newly built in 1915, when this picture was published. It was open until the late 1960s; it was torn down in the 1970s.

April 25, 2015
Dallmeyer Building, Liberty Avenue

The Dallmeyer Building spent decades behind a nondescript modernist façade until a few years ago, when the modern accretions were ripped off to reveal this perfect gem behind them.

April 24, 2015
Wooded Hillside, Mount Lebanon

A last glimpse of bare trees; in a week or so they will all have leafed out.

April 24, 2015
Oliver Building

Henry W. Oliver wanted to leave a mark on Pittsburgh, and he certainly did. Virgin Alley was renamed Oliver Avenue, and he planned this building to be the tallest in Pittsburgh. It was the tallest when it opened in 1910, although Oliver himself didn’t live to see it finished. As architect, he hired Daniel Burnham, the great Chicago beaux-arts master for whom Pittsburgh was practically a second home—there are more Burnham buildings here than anywhere else but Chicago.

April 24, 2015
Union Methodist Church, Manchester

Now the New Zion Baptist Church. Here is another of those city churches where the most use is made of a tiny lot by putting the sanctuary on the upper level. This church was built in 1867, just two years before the South Side Presbyterian Church; and without finding any historical pictures, old Pa Pitt would hazard a guess that the South Side Presbyterian Church looked rather like this before the grand front with tower was erected in 1893.

This picture was made from multiple photographs taken in fading evening light, so it is not perfect; but Father Pitt wanted to show you another example of these upstairs city churches.

April 23, 2015
South Side Presbyterian Church

To Father Pitt’s eyes, the remarkable thing about the interior of this church is how Presbyterian it looks. Later Presbyterian churches in Pittsburgh are Gothic cathedrals, or miniature versions for smaller congregations, since the Presbyterians were overwhelmingly the moneyed class in the late 1800s; but this church was built in 1869, and retains the flat-ceilinged simplicity of traditional Presbyterianism. As in several of our churches in crowded city neighborhoods, the sanctuary is on the second floor, reached by either of a pair of flights of stairs in the front (one with an elevator chair for those who need it); the ground floor is the social hall and other rooms. The front was part of an expansion in 1893, built to a grander and wealthier taste.

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April 22, 2015