The Wood Street end of the Granite Building in a composite photograph that gets a little fuzzy toward the top, but otherwise gives us a good notion of the design of the Romanesque extravaganza. It was built in 1889 as the German National Bank; the architects were Bickel & Brennan—the Bickel being Charles Bickel, who would go one to become Pittsburgh’s most prolific architect of commercial buildings.
A row of houses in different styles, all of them typical of the South Side.
We’ve seen these two tiny frame houses before. They date from the Civil War era, and unlike almost all the others of their type and age on the South Side they retain their wood siding. The one on the left is an odd shape: there is a kink in the South Side street grid at 24th street, so the alley does not meet the street at a right angle.
Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.
This eclectic Victorian has a large dormer on the fourth floor, and another thing that is sort of a dormer, but not exactly, projecting from the roof and lining up with a slightly extended section, giving the house the effect of a three-storey tower.
Scratch the asphalt of any Pittsburgh street—like this one in Beechview, which had just been milled in preparation for repaving—and you will find bricks if the street is relatively flat, or Belgian block if it is on a steep slope or in a heavy-traffic area.
This tidy little building in the back streets of the near South Side was built as the office for the Pittsburgh Foundry plant. The style brings a bit of Arts-and-Crafts to the usual industrial Romanesque. Note the patterned bricks.
HDR images from a Kodak EasyShare Z1285 set to bracket three exposures at intervals of 1 EV.
Originally a shelter for access to an underground spring, this spiral structure—which may have been built under the WPA—has a stairway that winds down to a pool of stagnant water and debris. But it looks wonderfully mysterious.
Most Pittsburghers know that there were once many more inclines than the two we have now; perhaps as many as seventeen running at once. Some of the vanished ones have left visible remains, like the power house for the Mount Oliver Incline. Here is another piece of an incline that most of us have probably never heard of: the Norwood Incline, which as far as old Pa Pitt knows was the only suburban incline. This little structure was a shelter for passengers waiting at the base of the incline.
The Norwood Incline was built to connect the newly developed hilltop suburb of Norwood to the streetcar line at the base of the hill in McKees Rocks. (The connect-the-dots lines on the map represent the streetcars going both ways on Island Avenue.) It was initially free to ride; later a fare of a penny was introduced, giving it the popular name “Penny Incline.”
Near the upper end of the incline was Norwood Hall, where the book of Pittsburgh’s Inclines tells us that “many sports events were held.” We presume that hall is the large frame structure marked “PAVILION” on this map.
“The two little yellow cars ran on only three rails,” we read in an unsourced quotation in Pittsburgh’s Inclines, “causing strangers to fear a mid-hillside collision; but by a deftly devised curve, the cars would suddenly switch out and pass.”
The incline closed in 1923 and was replaced by steps; the steps have since disappeared as well. But this little shelter remains, with its monograms to remind us of its history.
Three different colors of morning glories were blooming in this patch in Beechview, and in one spot all three colors happened to line up and beg to have their picture taken.
Among wild morning glories, deep violet and pink are the usual colors. The pale blue is much rarer. Here is one of those blue flowers on its own. Enlarge it to see the tiny fly with bright red eyes, which shows us that nature is never at a loss for decorative ideas.
More of the flowers that bloom in every season can be found at Flora Pittsburghensis.
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