Giuseppe Moretti, Pittsburgh’s best and most consistently employed sculptor, gave us the four stalking panthers that frame the Panther Hollow Bridge behind Phipps Conservatory in Oakland. You can see his signature below this panther’s right hind leg.
Oakland, Pittsburgh’s intellectual heart, is the third-largest central business district in Pennsylvania, after center-city Philadelphia and downtown Pittsburgh. Here we see the compact skyline of the medical and university district from the Panther Hollow Bridge.
In the 1930s, the great Frank Vittor, who had absorbed more than a little of the Art Deco spirit, designed the standard drinking fountain for Pittsburgh city parks. The main design, appropriately enough, was a classical dolphin (which looks nothing like a real dolphin). A surprising number of the original run of fifty fountains remain; this one is outside the Schenley Park visitor center, across the drive from Phipps Conservatory. They have recently been fitted with pushbutton valves (they used to run continuously), but otherwise they remain almost unaltered from Vittor’s original design.
The double-decker Fort Pitt Bridge over the Monongahela enters downtown Pittsburgh from the Fort Pitt Tunnels, giving first-time visitors a shockingly spectacular introduction to the skyline as they arrive from the airport. The bridge itself matches the Fort Duquesne Bridge over the Allegheny, framing the Point with bright yellow arches.
Seeing downtown Pittsburgh from Point State Park, you might be forgiven for supposing that Pittsburgh had not existed before World War II. Not a single prewar building is visible; the “Renaissance” seems thorough and complete. The entire Point, once a seedy warehouse district, was redeveloped after the war, with a big chunk left open for Point State Park, and the rest covered with modernist towers.
Seeing the Granite Building in black and white (taken with a Zenit camera with a 28-mm Vivitar lens) brings out the variety of textures and ornaments. In the background is the Keenan Building.
Taken with a Zenit-B camera, which is a Soviet-era SLR, and a Vivitar 28-mm lens, which is of course not Soviet, this picture from Equitable Plaza shows Gateway Center as the perfect modernist ideal. No wonder it got so much attention.
Gateway Center is just across the street from the Gateway Center subway station.
In the late afternoon, the declining sun plays with the shining surface of Three Gateway Center. Below, this modernist fountain is one of Gateway Center’s chief attractions.
The colossal central jet wasn’t jetting, but there was plenty of spray to make rainbows at the Point Fountain yesterday.
On a spring or summer evening, a favorite Pittsburgh pastime is to ride a streetcar or drive to Station Square, and then take a boat to the baseball game. The short trip actually takes us on all three rivers. Above, the Majestic, flagship of the Gateway Clipper fleet, chugs under the Fort Pitt Bridge on its way to PNC Park; below, the little Countess and the Princess make the same trip.
