Two Art Deco planters flank the entrance to the Allegheny County Airport terminal. They bear plaques emblematic of aviation: planes, propellers, and eagles.
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Allegheny County Airport
The Art Deco terminal was built in 1931 to a design by Stanley Roush, with additions in 1936 by Henry Hornbostel. At that time this was the largest airport in the world.
Because a new airport opened in the western suburbs right after the Second World War, this is one of the few nearly unchanged prewar airport terminals in the world, and it has played in period-piece movies.
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Pittsburgh Playhouse
The Pittsburgh Playhouse building on Forbes Avenue is a harmonious addition to the streetscape. It manages the unusual feat of looking 21st-century and classical at the same time.
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Fort Pitt Blockhouse in 1887
In the nineteenth century, the Fort Pitt Blockhouse was used as a residence. It was surrounded by slum and warehouses. Guides to the city (like the guide this cut came from) always pointed it out, but a visit would not have been calculated to give a good impression of living conditions in the city.
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The Earliest Daylily
Every year these daylilies bloom at the end of May, often while the last tulips are still blooming, and weeks before most of the other daylilies in the city appear. They came from an unnamed hybrid seedling.
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Lion on the Allegheny County Courthouse
Romanesque lions guard the Allegheny County Courthouse. They would originally have been at street level before Grant Street was lowered by about a storey.
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Purple Archangel
Old Pa Pitt is trying to teach himself to call this beautiful little weed “Purple Archangel,” because it is much more poetic than the name he has always used for it, “Purple Dead-Nettle.”
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English Bluebells
Why did English bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) sprout uninvited in a small city yard in Pittsburgh? Because life is better than we deserve.
