Father Pitt

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  • Under Construction

    Not since “Renaissance II” in the 1980s has so much construction been going on downtown. Now, as then, a subway line is a big part of it, but new landmark buildings have also gone up, and the Diamond, as we see here, is being completely redesigned. (Planning maps call it “Market Square,” but the best way to explain it to suburbanites and visitors is to say that it’s spelled “Market Square” and pronounced “Diamond.”) While the rest of the country was plunged deep into recession, Pittsburgh was having its biggest building boom in a quarter century.

    Update: The Diamond is now finished and reopened.

    March 5, 2010
  • Reflections

    The Clark Building and the Keenan Building, two Liberty Avenue landmarks, reflected in an ugly building across the street.

    March 4, 2010
  • Sidewalk of Liberty Avenue

    Twenty years ago, Liberty Avenue was still a street parents warned their children about, the seedy heart of the seediest part of downtown. Now it’s one of our signature boulevards, with a parade of old and new architecture that makes it one of America’s great cityscapes. Much of that revitalization can be credited to the conscious effort of a few urban dreamers who dared to imagine a great future for an area most Pittsburghers preferred to ignore.

    March 3, 2010
  • Rapid Transit to Oakland

    A good transit link between downtown and Oakland would change Pittsburgh from a city with very good, even enviable, rapid transit to a leader in North American transit. It would certainly stimulate development along the route, and that would make some very good money for clever investors who see the opportunity clearly.

    Here’s your chance to be one of those clever investors. Are a few hundred million dollars just burning a hole in your pocket? Why not give us the last essential link in our already enviable rapid-transit system?

    Click on the image for a PDF map.

    The Redevelopment Authority of Allegheny County has set up a Web site where interested parties can submit proposals. If you always fancied yourself a streetcar baron or a monorail mogul, here’s the opportunity you’ve been waiting for.

    You can read more about the project in the Post-Gazette.

    February 24, 2010
  • Digging Out

    A street in Beechview after the blizzard. Often the only way to dig out your car is to bury your neighbor’s car. Your neighbor then buries his neighbor’s car, and so on down the street.

    February 11, 2010
  • Parking Chair

    When the snow is deep and every parking space represents half a day’s work, the parking chairs come out in full force. Chairs are traditional guardians of residents’ parking rights in city neighborhoods where driveways are rare; though they are not strictly legal, they have the force of etiquette, which is stronger than law. The driver who would move someone else’s chair to park in the space it guards is capable of any enormity. Usually the chairs are half-broken kitchen chairs kept in the basement for just this purpose, but this particularly elegant chair reserved a spot in Beechview. Whether the bird feeder is functional or ornamental is a question old Pa Pitt was not able to answer.

    February 10, 2010
  • The Blizzard of 2010

    The heavy snow broke branches and brought down cables everywhere, but in the sunlight the snow was beautiful enough to make us forget the inconveniences.

    February 8, 2010
  • It Snowed a Bit

    The fourth-deepest snow—about two feet in many neighborhoods—in recorded Pittsburgh history fell on February 5 and 6. The weight of the stuff brought down huge trees and cut off electric power to hundreds of thousands, some of whom are still without power three days later. (Old Pa Pitt himself is forced to post this article as a guest on someone else’s connection.) These scenes are from a woody lot in Mount Lebanon.

    The snow bowed these arborvitae trees into graceful arches, although this particular sort of grace is usually unwelcome in traditional landscape planting.

    This big maple tree came down across a driveway; here we see it already showing the marks of the bowsaw that some day will finish disassembling it.

    February 8, 2010
  • “The Rosary” by Ethelbert Nevin

    After Stephen Foster, Ethelbert Nevin is Pittsburgh’s most famous composer. Like Chopin, Nevin seldom attempted anything longer than five minutes or so (Chopin did a couple of piano concertos, but who remembers them nowadays?). Also like Chopin, he died young (at the age of 39, just like Chopin). Unlike Chopin, he has been almost forgotten, but when he died in 1901 he was one of the great names in light classical music. “Narcissus” and “Gondolieri” remained in the parlor-piano repertory until people forgot how to play pianos and stopped building houses with parlors.

    One of Nevin’s most famous compositions was “The Rosary,” Here is a recording (MediaFire link) by the great viola player William Primrose, accompanied by the mediocre conductor Charles O’Connell and the Victor Symphony Orchestra. This recording was taken from a beat-up 78-RPM Victor Red Seal record, and the conversion to MP3 has muddied it a bit. If you want the original WAV file, it’s here (another MediaFire link), but be aware that it’s nearly 15 megabytes. The surface noise is not too distracting, and the performance brings out all the sentimentality that made “The Rosary” such a big hit.

    It appears that this recording has been allowed to lapse into the public domain. If there is a copyright owner who objects to Father Pitt’s making it available here, Father Pitt will be happy to remove it.

    January 29, 2010
  • Phipps by Night

    A massive glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly hangs in the dome of the entrance to Phipps Conservatory. The conservatory is open until 10:00 Friday nights.

    January 23, 2010
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