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.

We also have pictures of some of Achille Giammartini’s carvings on the building, and of the German National Bank ghost signs still visible on the side that faces Liberty Avenue.