A rainbow in the northeast, seen down West Liberty Avenue from the parking lot of Dormont Village. It is perhaps not the most poetical place to see a rainbow, but it was a very good rainbow, with the beginnings of another above it.
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A Very Tall Building for 1888
The Hamilton Building stood at 91 and 93 Fifth Avenue, which, if the addresses are the same, would put it right about where the May Building is now. The owner, a dealer in pianos and cottage organs, was obviously very proud of its astounding height. But the skyscraper age was about to begin, and in a few years this would be just another inconsiderable storefront downtown, soon to be replaced by a skyscraper itself.
Source: Allegheny County: Its Early History and Subsequent Development, 1888.
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Ewart Building
The prolific Charles Bickel designed this well-balanced Romanesque building, two doors up from another one of his Romanesque creations on Liberty Avenue, the Maginn Building. Below we see both of them in context, with, of course, a bus coming toward us, because old Pa Pitt likes to do that.
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242 Fifth Avenue
The Fifth Avenue front of the Donahoe’s building, which has a much broader front on Forbes Avenue. The architect was W. E. Snaman. This ostentatious building is in need of some restoration. Something could be done with the ground floor to make it more in sympathy with the upper storeys without spending the immense fortune it would probably take to recreate the original classical front. Even a simple modernist glass front would be more harmonious.
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Cast-Iron Front on Fifth Avenue
Restored a few years ago, this is a fine example of a Victorian cast-iron façade.
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K&L Gates Center
Formerly One Oliver Plaza, this modernist block from 1968 was one of the last works of William Lescaze, pioneer of modernism, who died the next year. Old Pa Pitt confesses to not missing him a whole lot.
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Butterflies in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Thousands of drawers like these are in the Carnegie, one of the world’s top natural-history museums. Every once in a while the curators take out a few drawers from the bug collection and display them on the wall near the Grand Staircase.
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Grotesque Face on Fifth Avenue
This small piece of the old façade sticks up over the undistinguished tiles that cover the rest of this Fifth Avenue building. It must have been quite a façade when we could see the rest of it.
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One Gateway Center
A view of One Gateway Center straight down the plaza, flanked by Two Gateway Center and Three Gateway Center.
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Complementary Masses
If you stand in just the right place, the sculpture outside the Carnegie Museum of Art seems to be almost an exact inversion of the Cathedral of Learning.
