Pittsburgh architect Victor A. Rigaumont designed dozens of movie houses, large and small, all over the Northeast. Most of them are gone, but a few remain, and this is one of them. It’s still open and still showing movies on a single screen.
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Three Rivers Arts Festival on the Rachel Carson Bridge
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. This year the Artists’ Market has spread from Fort Duquesne Boulevard all the way along the Rachel Carson or Ninth Street Bridge. The extra room makes the festival feel even more open and inviting.
One response
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St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Mount Lebanon
A richly stony church built for the ages in a tastefully modernized Gothic style.
Kodak EasyShare Z981. -
Art Deco in the Strip
Almost all the decorative effect of this building is achieved by arranging bricks in different ways. The original windows in the upper floors also have a part to play in the rhythm of the design: it would not be nearly as effective if they were replaced with single panes of plate glass.
Kodak EasyShare Z981. -
Mellon National Bank Building
This picture has been manipulated on two planes to give the building a more natural perspective than is really possible in Pittsburgh’s narrow streets, at the cost of distorting a few other things. The Mellons ordered a bank that would convey the impression of rock-solid stability. It was designed by Trowbridge & Livingston, who would later design the even more imposing Federal Building and the Gulf Building, both also Mellon projects. (We call the Federal Building a Mellon project because Andrew W. Mellon was the Secretary of the Treasury who specified it and wrote his name on it in bronze.) It was a Lord & Taylor department store for about four years in the early 2000s, for which the splendid interior was mostly destroyed. Later, PNC took it over as a call center, and restored some of the bits of interior that were left.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. -
College of Fine Arts, Carnegie Mellon University
The front of the College of Fine Arts in sunset light. Above, the word CREARE (“to create”) inscribed above the entrance by decorative sculptor Achille Giammartini.
Reason.
Design.
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Jazz-Age Fun in Police Court
Pittsburghers have always loved party boats on the river. And parties have always been liable to get out of hand. Ninety-nine years ago, one such incident attracted the attention of the Press police-court correspondent. In those days, it was considered a reasonable exercise of liberty of the press to report the doings in police court with a bit of sarcasm and a little cartoon, so here is your Police Court Sketch for today from Elmer Rigdon.
—From the Pittsburgh Press, October 3, 1925, page 4. Transcribed below.
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Muddling a Building in Chinatown
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. The front of this building from the 1920s has been subjected to a series of ill-conceived renovations, and it is about to get another one. This one will make a drastic change in its appearance by imposing a modern front that will make it look like an entirely different building—one in a 2020s style that will be embarrassingly passé in a few years. The good news is that the new front appears to be more or less disposable: it is simply covering the existing building (except for the parts on the ground floor that had already been rubbished by previous renovations), and a future owner will be able to peel it away and reveal the original building behind.
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Trolleys at Penn Station
Although the subway spur to Penn Station is not in regular use, it is kept in working order for emergencies and special events. The subway downtown has been interrupted at Wood Street for track reconstruction, so trolleys are diverted to Penn Station, with a shuttle bus to Gateway.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
