The famous Fourth Avenue bank towers rise behind the fantastical glass castles of PPG Place.
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A Map of Oakland
Father Pitt mentions Oakland more often than any other neighborhood, probably because Oakland, as the intellectual and cultural center of Pittsburgh, is more fun to look at than any other neighborhood. Here is a helpful map (click to download in PDF format) that shows most of the Oakland sights mentioned by Father Pitt so far. Print it on an ordinary letter-size sheet of paper, carry it with you, and take some better pictures than the ones old Pa Pitt has to offer.
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Spiraling Crime
Everyone loves to talk about how much worse things are now than they were then. The golden-age fallacy causes us to imagine that our current state of sin and corruption is a decline from the high standards of the generations before us.
Thanks to the Library of Congress’ collection of printed ephemera, here is a notice (click to enlarge) that would have greeted hotel guests in Pittsburgh in the Victorian age, that time of strict morality and righteous virtue:
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Shakespeare at Work
William Shakespeare hard at work on something brilliant. One of the larger-than-life Noble Quartet in front of the Carnegie in Oakland, Shakespeare represents Literature (along with Michelangelo for Art, Bach for Music, and Newton for Science). The picture was taken with a cheap toy digital camera, then turned to grayscale because the cheap digital colors were just awful.
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The Puddler
Made entirely of glass, this art-deco mural, or sculpture, shows a “puddler,” a man who stirs the molten iron ore until it’s tasty enough to make good steel. The location should be obvious from the photograph, but note that the Puddler himself is around the corner over the Wood Street entrance.
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The Horne’s Christmas Tree
Every year, the old Joseph Horne department store turned one corner of the biulding into a Christmas tree. The department store is gone, but the new owners have kept up the Christmas-tree tradition.
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CNG Tower
The top of the CNG Tower on Liberty Avenue, which opened in 1987. One of the “postmodern” masterpieces of the 1980s boom, this is now called the Dominion Tower. Architecturally, it is a notable revival of the base-shaft-cap formula of the earliest skyscrapers.
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View from the Rotunda
An impressionistic view from the rotunda of Daniel Burnham’s Pennsylvania Railroad Station, now offices and condo apartments under the name “The Pennsylvanian.” Amtrak trains still arrive at a smaller modern station grafted on to the main building.
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Memories of Midsummer
Winter is a beautiful time of year, but sometimes in the cold and snow it’s good to remember summer. Here’s a small taste of midsummer in the woods and meadows around Pittsburgh.
The rough-fruited cinquefoil, Potentilla recta.
A woodland waterfall.
A red clover, Trifolium pratense.
A white clover, Trifolium repens, in an unusually strong bicolor.
A birdfoot trefoil, Lotus corniculatus.
When you come across any wildflower in Pittsburgh and nearby, Wildflowers of Western Pennsylvania is an essential resource. Dr. Bob Zuberbuhler has built a unique and comprehensive Web reference, both informative and beautiful.
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Rowhouses in the West End
A pair of tiny houses in the West End, founded as the teetotaling community of Temperanceville and later famous for its bars and taverns.
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