These distinctive lion heads hold up the arch of the tympanum over the Wood Street entrance to the People’s Savings Bank tower.
-
Eleanor Street, South Side Slopes
One of Pittsburgh’s distinctive features is the huge number of public stairways. Many streets that appear on maps are actually stairways, like Eleanor Street here. In the early days of GPS navigation, trip instructions would often send drivers up or down these streets; but most GPS systems have now learned to recognize the streets that can accommodate pedestrians only.
And bicycle cops. To be a Pittsburgh bicycle cop, you have to be able to ride down one of these stairways. If you are still alive at the bottom of it, you’re qualified.
Open Street Map does a good job of showing the public stairways on the South Side Slopes. All the denser red dotted lines are stairways. The narrower, sparser dotted lines are walkways.
-
Mexican Sunflower
Tithonia rotundifolia, the Mexican Sunflower, is a fine garden flower if you have some room for it: it can grow six feet high and spread just about as wide. Tall flowers in hot colors are fashionable again, but old Pa Pitt never cared for fashions in flowers. He just likes big bright annuals.
-
Sixth Street Bridge in Early-Morning Sun
The Roberto Clemente or Sixth Street Bridge is bathed in early-morning sunshine, as seen from the dimness of still-unilluminated Sixth Street downtown.
-
Heinz Hall
One of the first great silent movie palaces (the old Loew’s Penn) to be turned into a concert hall, Heinz Hall set a trend, both here and elsewhere. With the old Stanley and Fulton (now the Benedum and Byham), it is one of the three large anchors of the theater district downtown.
-
Sidewalk Petunia
Urban weeds are different from suburban or rural ones. Petunias often escape and pop up in cracks of sidewalks. Usually these volunteer seedlings have smaller flowers than their hybrid ancestors, and often in more washed-out colors. This flower was blooming from a concrete stairway on the South Side Slopes.
-
Masonic Temple
Now the University of Pittsburgh’s Alumni Hall, this grand temple was designed by Benno Janssen, who gave us many other Pittsburgh monuments, including the Pittsburgh Athletic Association next door.
-
Katsafanas Coffee Sign
The Katsafanas Coffee Co. has been gone for many years, but this sign still looks fresh on its old building on North Avenue.
-
Sidewalks of Beech Avenue
Allegheny West is one of Pittsburgh’s most pleasant neighborhoods, and Beech Avenue may be the most delightful residential street in the whole city. The street is only two blocks long, but you would be hard pressed to find a better collection of domestic architecture on any street in the city. Add shady trees, a magnificent Gothic church at one end, and literary associations (Gertrude Stein was born here, and Mary Roberts Rinehart lived here when she wrote her most famous novel), and you can see why old Pa Pitt loves this street.
-
Tympanum on the People’s Savings Bank
John Massey Rhind, the famous sculptor who did the four representatives of the Noble Quartet outside the Carnegie and the Robert Burns statue outside Phipps Conservatory, contributed decorative reliefs to the 1901 People’s Savings Bank tower on Fourth Avenue. This one is over the Wood Street entrance.
