Smallman Street in the Strip is lined on one side with an odd combination of wholesale food outlets and trendy nightclubs. The other side is one long, low building that houses many wholesale produce dealers.
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Panhandle Bridge
A 47L train heads across the Panhandle Bridge as it sets out on its long journey to the edge of the earth, which in this case is Library, at the southern border of Allegheny County. In rush hour, all routes except 52 (the Allentown Trolley) run two-car trains like this one, made up in this case of two CAF cars. The rear car acts as a trailer; it has no driver, and its doors open only at high-level platforms with fare booths, not at street-level stops.
The Panhandle Bridge was originally a railroad bridge; in the 1980s the streetcars from the South Hills were diverted over it (they used to come in by the Smithfield Street Bridge) when the new subway opened. (Part of the subway reused the old railroad tunnel that had taken trains from the Panhandle Bridge to Penn Station.) Since the cars come out of the Mount Washington tunnel right at the end of the Smithfield Street Bridge, diverting them to the next bridge over required an extraordinarily sharp curve at Station Square. But sharp curves are just one of the challenges a trolley has to pass before it’s good enough for Pittsburgh.
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One Oxford Centre
One Oxford Centre is a typical 1980s tower that looks like a cluster of interlocked octagons. Those horizontal stripes are certainly distinctive, if perhaps a bit monotonous. The lower floors are a shopping arcade for the rich, famous, and prodigal. A skywalk connects the arcade to Macy’s (formerly Kaufmann’s) two blocks away.
One Oxford Centre is a short walk from the Steel Plaza subway station.
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Inside the Arches
The porch of the City-County Building is a massive, welcoming space. Something has to be done inside those gargantuan arches, and this is it: an abstract pattern of interlocking arcs that makes the ceiling look something like the vault of heaven, with the sun at its zenith, surrounded by cheerful cumulus clouds.
The City-County Building is two blocks south on Grant Street from the Steel Plaza subway station.
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Onion Snow
In western Pennsylvania, we call it an onion snow: the last snow of the season, late enough that you can see the tops of the onions through the snow. It’s the cue for every good Pittsburgher to say, “We’ve never had weather like this before.”
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Deco Romanesque
The County Office Building is a curious combination of Romanesque and late Art Deco, with more than a hint of the style Father Pitt likes to call American Fascist. Below, an eagle ornament on the corner holds the Allegheny County arms in its talons. On the arms: a ship, a plough, and three sheaves of grain (though they look like mushrooms in concrete).
The County Office Building is a short walk away from the First Avenue subway station.
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Chinatown
Chinatown in Pittsburgh was a tiny but lively enclave of two blocks behind Grant Street between Second and Third Avenues. Today it’s mostly lawyers’ offices. The Hong Kong Express 2 is newer, inhabiting an old Chinatown building; but the Chinatown Inn, which goes right through from Second Avenue to Third Avenue, is the sole remnant from the old days. Above, the Second Avenue side of Chinatown faces the ramp to the Boulevard of the Allies viaduct; below, the Third Avenue side faces a construction site.
Chinatown is a short walk away from the First Avenue subway station.
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First Avenue Subway Station
It may be a bit perverse to call it a subway station when it’s clearly an elevated station, but this is the section of combined streetcar lines that Pittsburghers generally call the subway. Most of it is indeed underground; First Avenue is the only elevated station downtown. Above, an inbound train arrives on its way into the subway tunnel; below, an outbound train picks up passengers.
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The Grant Building
Henry Hornbostel’s last great work was his biggest, a late-art-deco skyscraper towering next to his own City-County Building. The original lobby has been replaced by a 1980s parody of an art-deco interior, but the building is otherwise much as Hornbostel imagined it in the late 1930s. On top is a big red light that blinks “P-I-T-T-S-B-U-R-G-H” in Morse code all night—a landmark that guided commercial aircraft from a hundred miles away in the early days of aviation.
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Allegheny Building
Having walled off the Carnegie Building on the east side, Henry Frick commissioned Daniel Burnham once more to build a wall on the south side. Once again, Burnham responded with an elegant design: not quite the masterpiece that the Frick Building was, but beautiful and perfectly proportioned, as you’d expect from Burnham. Here we see it from the porch of the City-County Building, with the statue of Richard Caliguiri in the foreground.