Father Pitt

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End of the Line for Gateway Center

A kind reader who signs himself “Matt” had an excellent suggestion:

Any interest in photographing or featuring the old Gateway Center Station one last time before it closes forever this weekend?

It was never a beautiful or impressive space, but of our trio of odd underground stations, Gateway Center was the oddest. It will soon be replaced by a gleaming new station that will doubtless be more convenient and more beautiful. But old Pa Pitt confesses that he was always sneakily proud of the old Gateway Center station when he brought out-of-town visitors downtown. They might come from cities with more expensive or more comprehensive subway systems, but few subway stations are as just plain weird as Gateway Center was. Notice, for example, the low-level platform, now closed off by a rail, that was built to accommodate the old PCC cars when they still ran the Overbrook route—a feature shared by all three of the underground stations downtown.

The weirdest aspect of Gateway Center, of course, was the loop. Visitors riding the subway for the first time were always alarmed to see the station they wanted flashing by on their left, as though the car had somehow just missed it. Then came the long squealy loop that threw everybody to the right-hand side of the car, and finally the car re-emerged into the station, this time with the platform on the right side.

We’ll see more pictures of the old Gateway Center station shortly. Meanwhile, the subway ends at Wood Street until further notice, except for the next few weekends, when it ends at First Avenue.

October 30, 2009
Griffin at the Pittsburgh Zoo

If you know where to look (up the hill by the educational buildings) you can find a pair of bronze griffins among the exotic fauna at the Pittsburgh Zoo.

October 26, 2009
Pumpkins

It’s that time of year: pumpkins fresh from the fields, brilliant autumn leaves, and ghost lynchings. We see all of them here at Shenot Farms outside Wexford.

October 22, 2009
Autumn in Carnegie

The Chartiers Creek in Carnegie, seen through a curtain of brilliant red maple leaves.

October 16, 2009
Schenley Fountain

The Mary Schenley Memorial Fountain in Oakland, with the Cathedral of Learning in the background. Both have recently been restored. Somewhere underneath that fountain lies a buried bridge, left there when a hollow was filled in to make Schenley Plaza.

October 10, 2009
Early and Often

The Eberhardt and Ober brewery in Dutchtown was a Pittsburgh institution. Its beer was affectionately known as E & O—for “Early & Often,” as the advertisements put it. Mr. Eberhardt and Mr. Ober now rest side by side in the Allegheny Cemetery in matching but not identical mausoleums.

October 9, 2009
Pantheon and Parthenon

If you simply can’t settle for less, why not rest eternally in a replica of one of the world’s most famous monuments? These impressive memorials are in the Allegheny Cemetery.

October 4, 2009
German Lutheran Cemetery in Beechview

In the nineteenth century, churches usually built their cemeteries outside the city. At the turn of the twentieth, when the rapidly expanding streetcar lines triggered a storm of new development all around Pittsburgh, many of those cemeteries ended up surrounded by crowded urban neighborhoods. This one in Beechview is not quite forgotten; someone comes to mow it two or three times a year, but much of it is so overgrown by now that it’s immune to the mower.

October 3, 2009
Urn in Mellon Park

A worn face on a worn urn in Mellon Park seems immemorially ancient. It isn’t, but it’s old enough to remember when the park was a millionaire’s private playground.

October 1, 2009
Grace Lutheran in Troy Hill

The narrow streets and sudden drops in Troy Hill make for some unusual adaptations. Stuffed into a tiny lot, Grace Lutheran Church is as tall as it is long, with its main sanctuary on the second floor. It’s impossible to get a picture of the building without wires in front, and removing the wires with an image editor would be dishonest, which is Father Pitt’s way of saying “too much work.”

September 29, 2009