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Arrott Building

The Arrott Building, designed by Frederick Osterling, is the most ornate of the famous Fourth Avenue towers. (The interior is as impressive as the exterior.) This view of the back is possible because of the temporary vacancy of a lot on Forbes Avenue, where a new skyscraper is going up. Behind and to the left, we see the People’s Savings Bank tower by Alden & Harlow with its curious rusticated stone in the kind of random patterns cartoonists use to suggest a brick wall without actually having to draw all those bricks.

November 30, 2013
Gateway Center

Two of the three original Gateway Center towers, designed by Eggers & Higgins as a model for urban redevelopment after the Second World War. (In the picture above, the entrance to the Gateway subway station is in front.) They were meant to be clad with ordinary brick, and they would have been ugly excrescences; but for various reasons they ended up with these gleaming chrome walls instead, creating a constantly shifting play of light all day. “Towers in a park” was the International Style ideal of a city; it was usually a miserable failure when actually built, but many of the miserable failures were inspired by this conspicuous success, which was one of the most talked-about building projects of the postwar era.

November 29, 2013
Oliver Building

The back of Daniel Burnham’s Oliver Building gleams in the late-afternoon November sun. For some time after it was built, this was the tallest building in Pittsburgh, and—to put the American skyscraper craze in perspective—taller than any building in the entire worldwide British Empire.

November 29, 2013
Snowy Thanksgiving

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The snow that fell earlier this week is still here for Thanksgiving, melting and refreezing into interesting patterns of ice.

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November 28, 2013
Light-Up Night

It would be hard to explain Light-Up Night to an out-of-towner. The abstract idea of a night when Christmas lights are turned on for the season is not hard to convey, but no words could describe the seething mass of cheerful humanity that gathers downtown, stuffing trolleys like rolling sardine cans and tying up traffic for hours. It is a night when every good Pittsburgher feels obliged to pay his respects to the Golden Triangle. There are bands, orchestras, choirs, street performers, multiple fireworks displays, lights, ice skating, and even a few random acts of kindness. Every year it’s a bigger deal than last year.

The Horne’s Christmas tree, above, is a tradition that predates Light-Up Night by decades. The Horne’s department store is gone, but the owners of the building still graciously allow us to admire the famous tree that takes up a whole corner of what used to be our second-largest department store.

November 22, 2013
Goldenrod Gone to Seed

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In the late fall, a field of goldenrod gone to seed is both decorative and a bit mournful.

November 22, 2013
Crawford Square

After the long dark age of “urban renewal,” which always meant either warehousing the poor in ugly towers or replacing city neighborhoods with suburban ranch houses, Crawford Square, begun in 1993, was the first attempt to build a new urban neighborhood in Pittsburgh. It was not as adventurous as it might have been: it was purely residential, with no stores or churches or any of the other things that make a neighborhood in the city. But its success showed that people wanted attractive housing in an urban setting, and paved the way for other developments to come. This is Crawford Street, with St. Benedict the Moor (one of the few remnants of the old neighborhood) at the end of the block.

November 22, 2013
Trails in Schenley Park

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Most of the leaves have fallen, so we can see down into the hollow through the trees. But a few bright patches of color remain.

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November 21, 2013
Gulf and Koppers Towers

Another view of the Gulf and Koppers Towers, this time from the Lower Hill. Surprisingly, the Koppers Tower (left) is one of only two classic skyscrapers in Pittsburgh with setbacks, the other being the Grant Building, which was under construction at the same time.

November 21, 2013
South Side Works Theater

The South Side Works, an ambitious project to build an entirely new urban neighborhood, naturally needed a neighborhood cinema on the square. And the proper style for a neighborhood cinema is Art Deco, with lots of neon and other noble gases.

November 20, 2013