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.
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.
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.
A pair of tiny houses in the West End, founded as the teetotaling community of Temperanceville and later famous for its bars and taverns.
An abstract sculpture in front of the Carnegie Museum of Art perfectly complements the mass of the Cathedral of Learning in the background. This photograph was taken a few years ago, when the Cathedral of Learning still proudly bore its coat of soot from the age of heavy industry.
A row of smokestacks from the vanished Homestead Works looms over a parking lot for the gigantic Waterfront shopping center that replaced the factories.
Until the 1890s, rowhouses were the characteristic housing of Pittsburgh, as they were in most large Northeastern cities. These elegant rowhouses on the South Side are among the last of the rowhouse era in Pittsburgh. Soon the well-to-do merchant classes who built these houses would begin to demand detached houses, even if they were detached by only two or three feet.
A masterpiece of industrial architecture, the Kramer Building is a block long and beautifully proportioned. Each of the arches on the first floor is divided into two sub-arches, creating a pleasing and interesting rhythm that makes the building feel much less like a huge slab of brick. The neighborhood across the street is residential, and the building manages not to overwhelm the rowhouses facing it.
There is no need for explanation: just beautiful November colors in every shade.
