Father Pitt

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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
Firstside in the Snow

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Firstside, the block-long row of human-sized buildings along the Mon Wharf, is a small taste of the Pittsburgh of the nineteenth century, before behemoths with steel skeletons rose to dizzying heights. But even here we see the seeds that would sprout into skyscrapers. The brown cube-shaped building with the fire escapes at the right end of the row is the Conestoga Building, the first building in Pittsburgh built on a steel cage, and one of the first few in the world. This kind of construction indefinitely extended the height a building could support, while simultaneously the elevator removed the human limit of about six flights of stairs.

January 21, 2009
PPG Place from Across the Mon

One PPG Place through the late-afternoon snow. Pittsburgh took Philip Johnson’s PPG Place to its heart at once. Finished in 1984, it almost instantly became the symbol of downtown Pittsburgh. Whenever you see those glass fantasy-Gothic spires, you know where you are.

January 20, 2009
Looking Up at PPG Place

The main tower of PPG Place, Philip Johnson’s masterpiece that has become the iconic symbol of downtown Pittsburgh.

January 19, 2009
Christmas Leftovers at PPG Place

The coldest weather of the year couldn’t keep a few intrepid skaters off the rink at PPG Place. The Christmas tree is still up, hiding the obelisk that Peter Leo likes to call the Tomb of the Unknown Bowler.

January 16, 2009
Fourth Avenue

The famous Fourth Avenue bank towers rise behind the fantastical glass castles of PPG Place.

January 15, 2009
A Map of Oakland

Father Pitt mentions Oakland more often than any other neighborhood, probably because Oakland, as the intellectual and cultural center of Pittsburgh, is more fun to look at than any other neighborhood. Here is a helpful map (click to download in PDF format) that shows most of the Oakland sights mentioned by Father Pitt so far. Print it on an ordinary letter-size sheet of paper, carry it with you, and take some better pictures than the ones old Pa Pitt has to offer.

January 14, 2009
Spiraling Crime

Everyone loves to talk about how much worse things are now than they were then. The golden-age fallacy causes us to imagine that our current state of sin and corruption is a decline from the high standards of the generations before us.

Thanks to the Library of Congress’ collection of printed ephemera, here is a notice (click to enlarge) that would have greeted hotel guests in Pittsburgh in the Victorian age, that time of strict morality and righteous virtue:

January 2, 2009
Shakespeare at Work

William Shakespeare hard at work on something brilliant. One of the larger-than-life Noble Quartet in front of the Carnegie in Oakland, Shakespeare represents Literature (along with Michelangelo for Art, Bach for Music, and Newton for Science). The picture was taken with a cheap toy digital camera, then turned to grayscale because the cheap digital colors were just awful.

December 19, 2008
The Puddler

Made entirely of glass, this art-deco mural, or sculpture, shows a “puddler,” a man who stirs the molten iron ore until it’s tasty enough to make good steel. The location should be obvious from the photograph, but note that the Puddler himself is around the corner over the Wood Street entrance.

December 13, 2008