Father Pitt

A few years ago, when the Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail (the masterpiece of H. H. Richardson) was being restored and the jail turned into offices for county bureaucrats, one of the high stone walls was taken apart, giving us a glimpse of the stonework. It turns out to be brick with a facing of large granite blocks, as we see here.

Incidentally, Pittsburghers who visit Minneapolis will find a startlingly familiar building: the Minneapolis City Hall is an unabashed copy of the Allegheny County Courthouse.

The plaza at the center of PPG Place is now filled with a skating rink in the winter. But a few years ago, before the skating rink, on Light-Up Night it used to be filled with luminarias—paper bags weighted with sand and lit by candles. (Luminarias, normally associated with Latin American culture, are an old tradition in Pittsburgh for some reason.)

Streets in downtown Pittsburgh are extraordinarily narrow by American standards. Here Oliver Avenue cuts through a narrow gorge formed by some celebrated buildings (the Union Trust Building, the William Penn Hotel, the Oliver Building) and some slightly less celebrated buildings.