Father Pitt

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Allegheny County Courthouse

A winter morning’s sunlight, reflected from the windows of the Frick Building, paints the tower of the Allegheny County Courthouse with stripes of gold. Henry Hobson Richardson, one of America’s greatest architects, considered this his masterpiece, though he did not live to see it completed. Philip Johnson, whose PPG Place has become the iconic symbol of the Pittsburgh skyline, called the Courthouse the best building in America.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then this is an unusually well-flattered building: the city hall of Minneapolis is an acknowledged copy of it. It is not unusual for an architect to copy a famous classical or medieval building, but quite rare to copy one that was only a quarter-century old at the time. Such was Richardson’s reputation that Long and Kees, architects of the Minneapolis City Hall, were willing to pay this ultimate tribute to their master in what is widely considered their own masterpiecce.

The Courthouse is half a block south on Grant Street from the Grant Street exit of the Steel Plaza subway station.

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February 8, 2009
The Kaufmann’s Clock

The store is called Macy’s now, but you’ll hardly find a real Yinzer who can bring himself to call it that. It will always be Kaufmann’s, the biggest department store in Pittsburgh, taking up a whole city block and slopping over into the next. With a dozen floors of retail space, it’s still bigger than some whole suburban shopping malls.

This clock, at the corner of Fifth and Smithfield, is Pittsburgh’s legendary meeting place. It can still get crowded underneath with people who’ve promised to wait for someone “under the Kaufmann’s clock.” And it’s always working, which is a boon for people who, like old Pa Pitt, often forget to stuff their watches into their pockets in the morning.

Macy’s is a short stroll from the Grant Street exit of the Steel Plaza subway station.

February 7, 2009
150 Years of Light Rail

Father Pitt has learned that the city of Phoenix in Arizona, a largely mythological state, has just begun to enjoy the many benefits of a modern light-rail transit system—or, to use a better and more descriptive term, streetcars. Seeing that cheering news, old Pa Pitt tried to remember how long Pittsburgh has had light-rail transit. After jogging his memory, he came up with an answer: exactly 150 years. The first streetcar tracks were laid in 1859.

One hundred fifty years of streetcars! This seems like a momentous occasion, an anniversary to celebrate with fireworks and cake. Those first cars were drawn by horses, of course. After them came cable cars, much like the ones in San Francisco. They lasted only a short time before they were replaced by electric traction, which is what we still use today.

Many things have changed since then. Much of the street trackage has been replaced by buses, although streetcars still run on the street in Allentown and Beechview. In the 1980s, the streetcars downtown finally moved into the subway that Pittsburghers had been clamoring for since the turn of the twentieth century or before. But “light rail” service in one form or another has been continuous since before the Civil War, which is an enviable record few American cities can match. Here is a wonderful collection of pictures of Pittsburgh streetcars, mostly from the PCC era.

So to the citizens of Phoenix, Father Pitt sends his warmest greetings: Welcome to the mechanical age! Based on his experience over the last century and a half, Pa Pitt thinks you’re going to like it here.

February 6, 2009
In the Subway

The streetcar lines from the South Hills all converge downtown and go into a clean and pleasant subway. Steel Plaza station, shown here, is where the short line to Penn Station (served only in rush hour) branches off the main line. Here a not-in-service car from Penn Station sits at the platform waiting for its next assignment.

February 6, 2009
The Highland Building

Update: The Highland Building has been expensively restored and looks beautiful.

Daniel Burnham designed many of the most distinguished buildings downtown. East Liberty, which once called itself the “second downtown,” is the only other neighborhood in the city with a Burnham building. It’s far from his biggest work in Pittsburgh, but the Highland Building is an elegant design that has been left shamefully derelict. Now that East Liberty is rapidly reviving, there are plans for a luxury hotel here, which would be a fine second use for a building that desperately needs to be loved.

Like everything else in the central business district of East Liberty, the Highland Building is a short walk from the East Liberty Station on the East Busway.

February 2, 2009
East Liberty Presbyterian Church

Franklin Toker, the architectural historian, says this may be, per square foot, the most expensive church ever built in America. Ralph Adams Cram (who may have been America’s greatest Gothic architect) designed it, and it was built with enormous donations of Mellon money, which is why locals know it as the Mellon Fire Escape. It dominates East Liberty from every angle. Above, a view from the south over the rooftops of East Liberty; below, the great central tower.

February 1, 2009
Fireproof for Price of Fire Trap

Enlarged from a 1914 advertisement, an engraving of the J. O’Neil Sanitary Storage building, on Diamond Street, probably uptown. Fire Proof Storage for Price of Fire Trap! You carry your own key! The you-store-it industry is obviously nothing new.

February 1, 2009
Map of Pittsburgh Rapid Transit

Update: Here is old Pa Pitt’s most recent map of Pittsburgh rapid transit:

Click on the image for a PDF copy.

The article below is kept here for historical reasons, but the map below is out of date.

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Public transit, like everything else in Pittsburgh, is wonderfully confusing. We have buses, busways, streetcars or trolleys, inclines, and subways (the main one where the streetcars run downtown, as well as a subway for the streetcars in Mount Lebanon, a transit tunnel for buses and streetcars under Mount Washington, and a long tunnel on the West Busway).

For our purposes, “rapid transit” means what the Port Authority bureaucrats call “fixed-guideway systems,” meaning transit that runs on rails or on its own dedicated track. Streetcars or trolleys (the terms are interchangeable here) sometimes run on the street with the rest of the traffic, but they have their own rails. Busways are high-speed tracks for buses that work like subways, with infrequent stations rather than a stop on every corner. Inclines go from down to up or up to down.

If you prowl around the Port Authority’s Web site long enough, you can find maps of most of these things. But you can’t find a map that tells you how much fun you can have. Here’s where old Pa Pitt steps in with a map that shows you how to use rapid transit to get to some of Pittsburgh’s main attractions.

The obvious missing piece in our transit system is a rapid-transit line to Oakland, the intellectual heart of Pittsburgh. Bus service from downtown to Oakland is frequent, but many people refuse to ride buses who would ride rapid transit. There is, however, good reason to hope that the omission will be corrected soon. Meanwhile, here is a map of the otherwise excellent system we do have. Click on the image to download the map in PDF form.

Click on the image to download the map in PDF format.

January 28, 2009
P&LE Station

The Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad (which never made it to Lake Erie, by the way) was a little fellow compared to the gargantuan Pennsylvania Railroad. But it made good money, and when it built this station in 1899, it showed that it could play with the big boys. The station cost three quarters of a million dollars, which was a tremendous amount in those days. (It still sounds like a good deal of money to old Pa Pitt.) The interior is madly luxurious, and nowhere more so than in the stained glass. Besides the glorious semicircular window at the western end, the entire ceiling of the grand concourse is stained glass.

Passenger trains no longer stop here (they stop downtown behind the old Pennsylvania Station), but the building has been gloriously restored and turned into the “Grand Concourse,” which must surely be the most architecturally impressive restaurant in the city.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

January 24, 2009
Gateway to the Smithfield Street Bridge

[Updated, with many thanks to “Mercator” for a helpful comment.] The 1915 gateway of the 1883 Smithfield Street Bridge, as seen through the snow of a January afternoon. The Pauli or lenticular truss is unusual; in Pittsburgh, with its more than 500 bridges, this is the only one. The oldest steel bridge in the United States, this was designed by Gustav Lindenthal, who knew a thing or two about bridges. The original span was half the width; for the better part of the twentieth century, the bridge carried automobiles on the downstream side and streetcars on the upstream side. In the 1990s (after the streetcars had been rerouted into the subway by way of the Panhandle Bridge), the bridge was refurbished and painted in bright Victorian colors to replace the utilitarian gray that had coated it for decades. This is our most popular bridge for pedestrians; it connects downtown with the shops and restaurants at Station Square.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

January 22, 2009