A late-autumn scene in Mount Lebanon: a babbling brook and thousands of yellow leaves from sugar maples.
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The Transformation of Beechview
Suburban riders on the Red Line, if they have ever lifted their eyes from their iPhones for a moment, must have noticed the peculiar anomaly of Beechview: a tidy and pleasant residential neighborhood with an almost abandoned business district. A good part of the abandonment was the result of a scandal-ridden failed urban-renewal project, in which the city gave millions to a private developer who vanished with most of the money.
But now the mess is nearly sorted out, and storefronts in Beechview are filling up with interesting and useful businesses.
The big accomplishment was finding someone to open a new supermarket, which will anchor the whole business district. The owner of the new Market on Broadway already has some experience operating a successful urban market in Oakland, the Market on Forbes.
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A new neighborhood coffeehouse gives the locals a place to gather and gossip.
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This 1920s-vintage storefront has been beautifully restored for the new Crested Duck Charcuterie, which will be an interesting addition to a neighborhood more accustomed to spaghetti and meatballs in a church basement.
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A neighborhood artist has taken over this little building that was abandoned when the ESB Bank moved to larger quarters across the street.
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Eventually, this clothing store will have a name other than “Grand Opening.”
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All these new businesses face an uphill struggle; most new businesses fail, and Beechview residents themselves, who learned to go elsewhere for shopping, will have to be lured back to their own business district. But Beechview, aside from a strong sense of community, has one great strength most other neighborhoods lack: the Red Line, which brings rail transit right to the center of the business district. Perhaps some of those suburban riders will glance up from their iPhones, see the new Beechview, and start to think of it as a place for dining and shopping.We’ll see.
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Orchid House at Phipps Conservatory
Phipps keeps a huge stock of orchids in the growing houses behind the public conservatory, so the orchid house is always filled with blooming orchids, no matter what the season.
A Phalaenopsis hybrid.
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Guarianthe bowringiana, formerly Cattleya bowringiana. Father Pitt has always suspected that, if the people who have put themselves in charge of orchid taxonomy were turned loose on the canine world, the domestic dog would be classified as hundreds of separate species within dozens of distinct genera.
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Brassolaeliocattleya Mem Helen Brown × Verdant Venture ‘Richard’: three different genera (Brassavola, Laelia, and Cattleya) are represented in the ancestry of this specimen. (When they get to four genera, the breeders stop trying to combine the names of the genera and just make up a new name.)
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An Oncidium of some sort (old Pa Pitt couldn’t find the tag).
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Are you stumped by this one, orchid lovers? Don’t worry. Sometimes even the experts aren’t sure:
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Phipps Gets Ready for the Fall Flower Show
The Fall Flower Show opens October 13 at Phipps Conservatory. Traditionally it’s a big deal, and right now the glasshouses are full of carts and wheelbarrows rushing hither and yon. Here in the Serpentine Room, new mums have already gone in behind a wheelbarrow taking away some of the debris from the previous planting.
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Firstside from the Mon
Downtown Pittsburgh seen from the Monongahela side, with the mighty river rolling in the foreground.
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Hugh Henry Brackenridge on Duels
Portrait of Brackenridge by Gilbert Stuart. Hugh Henry Brackenridge was a remarkable man: author of one of America’s first novels, founder of what became the University of Pittsburgh, and urbane wit in what was still a rather rough little city across the Alleghenies from civilization. Here is a letter he sent to the Gazette in 1797 on the subject of duels, which were then a notorious plague in Pittsburgh. It was reprinted in a review pasted in the end-papers of an 1846 edition of his Modern Chivalry, so Father Pitt regrets that the source is secondary and not easily identifiable. “Mr. Scull” was the editor of the Pittsburgh Gazette.
Mr. Scull—The Age of Chivalry is not over; and challenges have been given even in the midst of a yellow fever which, one would think, was killing people fast enough already. The fear of God or the law, are usual and just grounds of refusing. But I will give you a sample of the way in which I get off with some of my challenges, in the following letter and answer on a late occasion; but omitting the name of the challenger, as I have no inclination to trouble him with a provocation.
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PITTSBURGH, October 15, 1797.
Sir—I will thank you to take a walk with a friend and meet me at the back of the graveyard about sunrise to-morrow morning. After what has happened, you know what I mean.
Your humble servant, &c.
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PITTSBURGH, October 15, 1797
Sir—I know what you mean very well; you want to have a shot at me, but I have no inclination to be hit, and I am afraid you will hit me. I pray thee therefore have me excused.
H. H. BRACKENRIDGE.
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Kennywood: The Silent Movie
Kennywood from Father Pitt on Vimeo.
Because there’s not much to this movie, Father Pitt gladly releases it to the public domain (where the music in it already resides). If you can think of a use for it, or for any part of it, go right ahead.
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“Lost Kennywood” at Night
“Pittsburg’s Lost Kennywood” is a nostalgic nod to amusement parks of the past. But Kennywood has never been lost: it’s always been here on an improbable site at the top of a bluff overlooking the Mon.
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Westinghouse Memorial (part 2)
Almost no one ventures behind the Westinghouse Memorial, but a special reward awaits those who do. Instead of a blank wall, we find reliefs as detailed as the ones in front. We can see the backs of the standing figures, and the leafy ornament that surrounds the figures and the panels turns out to arise very logically from tree trunks in the rear. Since the effect from the front would be the same if the rear were blank, there seems to be no real reason for having gone to this much trouble—except that knowing what’s behind changes our perception of the front. The front view has a kind of aesthetic truth that it would not have if the ornament did not have its logical foundation in the rear.
