The Circular Staircase was one of the greatest bestsellers of all time, and Mary Roberts Rinehart lived here when she wrote it—just half a block up Beech Avenue from the house where Gertrude Stein, a writer with a somewhat different style, was born. The success of The Circular Staircase made Mary Roberts Rinehart one of the most powerful literary figures in America, and her good business sense consolidated that power into a publishing empire for her family.
Architectural historians tend to call everything Romanesque revival “Richardsonian Romanesque,” and with especially good reason in Pittsburgh: Richardson’s Allegheny County Courthouse created a mania for everything Romanesque in Pittsburgh, and many private houses were built in that style for the wealthy merchant classes—especially in Allegheny West, which in the late nineteenth century may have been the richest neighborhood per capita in the country.
UPDATE: Note the very interesting comment from “Mark”: “Much of the local stone carving as well as work across the North Side, downtown, Carnegie Mellon University, etc was done by Achille Giammartini who built the house at 1410 Page St, near Page St & Manhattan St, in Manchester (beside Allegheny West). Although this was his personal residence he used the exterior as a ‘billboard’ for his considerable skills.” See our article on the Achille Gammartini House.
Those plucky colonials have raised their rebel flag over the blockhouse at Fort Pitt, Britain’s most important Western fort.
Our most common toad, the American Toad (Anaxyrus americanus), sitting on a rock ledge in Frick Park.
Pittsburgh used to be a city of massive black stone buildings, but, since the end of the age of steel, the buildings have been cleaned one by one, revealing the actual color of the stones as they came out of the quarry. Few of the black stone buildings are left. Here is one of them: Fourth Presbyterian in Friendship. Over the years, the stones are gradually losing their sooty coating, revealing what looks like red sandstone underneath. But they are still strikingly black, the way all proper Pittsburgh stones used to be.
So the astrologers and newspapers call it: a full moon at perigee, so that it looks especially large and bright. These images were taken with a pocket digital camera, which is incapable of dealing with unusual light conditions. But it was what old Pa Pitt had to work with.
“Firstside” is the row of human-sized buildings along the Monongahela (with their backs on First Avenue). It’s a little taste of pre-skyscraper Pittsburgh. The picture below puts Firstside in context.
More pictures of the Point Fountain, because it was a day of inspiring clouds.
The lobby of the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts, just before a show. Like Heinz Hall just down the street, the Benedum was built as a movie palace, but has been converted to a live theater—Pittsburgh’s largest and busiest. The Pittsburgh Opera, the Civic Light Opera, the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, and numerous traveling shows all share this magnificent venue.
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