-
Hoffstot Building and Neighbor, Liberty Avenue
The Hoffstot Building (left) and its neighbor at 813 Liberty Avenue both have the large windows that indicate workshops of some sort on the upper floors. No. 813 has grown some curious postmodern excrescences at the top and an industrial-looking awning at ground level. It also preserves the left edge of a demolished building, now replaced by a one-story shop, that must have been interestingly ornamental.
-
Renshaw Building and Kirkpatrick Building, Liberty Avenue
The Renshaw Building (left) was built in 1908; it is architecturally interesting for the way it duplicates the base-shaft-cap form of a standard beaux-arts skyscraper in miniature.
The Kirkpatrick Building was built a quarter-century earlier in 1884. A cast-iron front on the first four floors gives way to standard Victorian Romanesque brickwork in the upper half.
-
Maginn Building, Liberty Avenue
The Maginn Building was one of several Romanesque designs by the prolific Charles Bickel. The large windows of the upper floors indicate that it was built as some kind of workshop or small factory, of which there were many in this section of town.
-
Wm. G. Johnston & Co. Building
William G. Johnston & Co. was a very successful printing and bookbinding firm that put up this building on Ninth Street at Penn Avenue in 1886. Mr. Johnston would probably be pleased to see that his building looks very much as it did when he knew it, except that—like every other building downtown—it is doubtless cleaner. If you look very closely, you may see a small stitching error, which comes from the fact that this picture is put together from multiple photographs. The lesson, obviously, is not to look so closely.
Addendum: Through various permutations, the William G. Johnston Company was the successor of Zadok Cramer, one of the very early printers and booksellers in Pittsburgh, who began his business here in 1800.
-
April Showers
Gentle showers in a woodland stream; then a thunderstorm in the city; and finally the waterfalls and bird calls of a perfect early-spring day after the rain.
-
Pair of Garter Snakes
The Eastern Garter Snake is really quite a beautiful animal. It looks as if a graphic designer came up with it, following instructions from upstairs that we needed something zippy and modern-looking. Garter snakes are harmless to humans, but they are very good at reducing the numbers of small pests. These two snakes were wrapped together on a stream bank in the Kane Woods Nature Area in Scott Township.
Camera: Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3.
