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Norwood Incline Shelter, McKees Rocks
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.
1917 Hopkins plat map from Historic Pittsburgh. 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.”
1917 Hopkins plat map from Historic Pittsburgh. 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.
Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G. 2 responses
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Morning Glories
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.
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. -
U. S. Steel Tower
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. Looming behind Duquesne University on the Bluff.
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Ripley & Co. Glass Works, South Side
The best preserved of the old factories on the South Side, this was acquired, soon after the large corner building was built, by the United States Glass Co. It now belongs to the Salvation Army, which has kept the exterior beautifully.
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Carnegie Lecture Hall
The Carnegie Lecture Hall is designed to put a large number of people close enough to hear a single lecturer. It was filled to capacity today with people who came to hear poetry, which makes the literate think good thoughts about Pittsburgh. The International Poetry Forum is back after fifteen years of silence, and the first poet to speak was its founder, Samuel Hazo, who at 96 years old seems to be aging backwards.
The interior of the hall as it was filling up.
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St. Stephen’s Church, Sewickley
A very stony Anglican church that has kept its rich black coat of soot.
Gargoyles guard the building from the top of the tower.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. -
Some Houses on Florida Avenue, Mount Lebanon
Florida Avenue runs parallel to Washington Road, the main spine street of Mount Lebanon. The part behind the Uptown business district has a mixture of apartment building from small to large, double houses, and single-family homes, all assorted randomly. The next block to the south is mostly single-family homes in the wide range of styles typical of the Mount Lebanon Historic District. We have already seen some of the apartment buildings; here are some of the single and double houses.
This eclectic house in the fairy-tale style sits on a corner and presents quite different faces to the two streets. Above, a lavishly asymmetrical Tudor face on one side; below, the very symmetrical French-country-house face around the corner.
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. 
A twin house, with two houses side by side that are identical except for being mirror images.
Kodak EasyShare Z1285, A double house where the two units are deliberately made different, so that at first glance it appears to be a single larger house.
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Second Presbyterian Church, Coraopolis
Now the Church of God, this is a modest church in an abstract version of Perpendicular Gothic, with castle-like battlemented towers fore and aft. The stained glass has been removed, possibly because it was too decrepit to restore, or possibly to satisfy the iconoclastic tendencies of American Evangelicalism.
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. -
Gateway Center
The gleaming modernist towers of Gateway Center in afternoon sunshine.
Did you notice how Father Pitt did not slow down the shutter speed for the flowing water, the way every photography site on the Internet dogmatically insists you must do it? Did you notice the fascinating patterns of falling water that were captured by the deliberately fast shutter? Are you ready yet to abandon the dentist’s-office-wall-decor cliché of slow shutter speeds for waterfalls and fountains? You can join the rebel alliance!
The picture above is made from three separate photographs at different exposures, which gives us a better range of detail—but it also adds to the complexity of the play of falling water. To approximate the golden color of the late-afternoon sunshine, it was then put through a simulated Kodachrome 64 filter, with many thanks to the obsessive fiddler who did his best to match the color and light response of Kodachrome film so that the rest of us can have at least an echo of that Kodachrome look. Since Kodachrome has been extinct for fifteen years, this is as much as we can do.
Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.
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