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.
Restored a few years ago, this is a fine example of a Victorian cast-iron façade.
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.
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.
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.
A view of One Gateway Center straight down the plaza, flanked by Two Gateway Center and Three Gateway Center.
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.
The Town Square at the SouthSide Works, decorated for Christmas. The SouthSide Works Cinema is a good imitation of an Art Deco neighborhood movie house, though the Deco entrance leads to a modern multiplex.
The Arrott Building, still under renovation, looms over the shops of Wood Street on a grey but busy December morning.
