An unusually mild and wet winter so far: though January has come, there are still flowers blooming here and there, as these pot marigolds (Calendula officinalis) in Bellevue. That will probably change as cold weather moves in over the next few days.
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Nutcrackers at Phipps
The Winter Flower Show at Phipps Conservatory has a Nutcracker theme this year. But, as usual, it’s just an excuse to show off mounds of Poinsettias and countless other flowers. After you’ve taken in the Poinsettias, you might want to look out for the various other species of Euphorbia that the gardeners have sprinkled through the displays as a sort of botanical in-joke.
This delightful miniature Victorian conservatory can be found in the Orchid Room.
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Sometimes the scenes in the garden railroad (in the South Conservatory) repay a closer look.
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This is the first time old Pa Pitt has seen a clock with a frame made of succulents.
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In the Broderie.
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Duquesne University
“Built on a bluff and operated on the same principle”—that was the slogan Peter Leo proposed for Duquesne University. Here we see the campus from the twenty-third floor of the Grant Building downtown.
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“Industry” Mural in the Allegheny County Courthouse
“Industry” by Vincent Nesbert, whose murals for the Allegheny County Courthouse were finished in 1940. In the foreground, the stairway that leads to the basement, which for most of the building’s history has been the street entrance because of the re-grading of Grant Street.
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The Arlington
In general, Pittsburgh apartment buildings can be small and elegant or large and atrocious, but Shadyside is one of the few neighborhoods in Pittsburgh where apartment buildings can be both large and elegant. The Arlington, at the corner of Centre Avenue and Aiken Avenue, is one of the most elegant of the lot. Here we see the Aiken Avenue side. The various room layouts are rather charmingly named for composers, Bartok being the cheapest and Sibelius the most expensive. If you wish to occupy a spare hour or two, try to come up with a critical theory that accounts for that pricing.
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East Busway
The Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway, which in the Pittsburgh Metro scheme almost but not quite adopted by the Port Authority would be the Purple Line, is an almost unique phenomenon in “bus rapid transit”: real rapid transit, but with buses. Unlike the half-baked busways in other cities, Pittsburgh’s busways are true metro lines, with no at-grade crossings or mixing with street traffic. Cheery signs like the one above were put up all over the neighborhoods the busway serves when it first opened in 1983; many of them are still there, though they do not seem to be maintained or replaced. Below, we see the real secret of this busway’s success: it follows the railroad through a deep hollow in the middle of the city, giving it a subway-like grade separation without the expense of digging tunnels.
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East Liberty Presbyterian Church
The massive tower of East Liberty Presbyterian Church rises above almost everything else in East Liberty, even competing with the Highland Building. The design is by Ralph Adams Cram, arguably America’s greatest Gothic architect.
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Purple Beautyberry (Callicarpa dichotoma)
In the fall, the bright purple berries of this East Asian bush make a stunning contrast to the chartreuse-yellow leaves. This plant was growing in the Discovery Garden at Phipps Conservatory.
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Oakland
The crowded clutter of university and medical buildings that makes up central Oakland. If downtown is the heart of Pittsburgh, this is the brain, with three universities, two important museums, and a labyrinthine medical-research complex that covers several city blocks interconnected with pedestrian bridges. This view is looking toward the north, with Halket Street running diagonally in the foreground.
