Father Pitt

Tag: Cathedral of Learning

  • Billy Buck Hill

    South 18th Street, which used to be the Brownsville Plank Road before it was taken into the city of Pittsburgh, snakes up through the South Side Slopes, following an ancient track that probably predates European settlement. It makes a long loop around a lumpy eminence known locally as Billy Buck Hill, where typical tall and narrow Slopes houses crowd on absurdly precipitous lots. These houses in the foreground are lined up along St. Paul Street. In the background, across the Mon, we see Oakland, which is as usual full of cranes.

    The usual story of the etymology of Billy Buck Hill has to do with goats having been kept there, and that seems plausible. But old Pa Pitt is not willing to swear to it, because it has the look of one of those ex-post-facto etymologies suggested speculatively as the probable reason for the name, and then picked up as the only possible explanation and presented as fact.

  • Lytton Avenue, Schenley Farms

    Lytton Avenue

    One of the streets named for great writers in the Schenley Farms section of Oakland; this writer happens to be the most famous of the lot because of his association with a well-known contest. Above, bronze letters in the sidewalk still mark where Lord Lytton meets Mr. Parkman. Below, the street, lined with beautiful turn-of-the-twentieth-century houses and mature sycamores, points straight toward the Cathedral of Learning.

    Lytton Avenue
    A broader view

  • Oakland from Across the River

    Litchfield Towers and Cathedral of Learning

    Views of central Oakland from the South Sides Slopes across the Monongahela. Above, the Cathedral of Learning and Litchfield Towers A, B, and C, or—as they have been known since they sprouted on the Oakland skyline—Ajax, Bab-O, and Comet.

    Litchfield Towers

    A closer view of the Litchfield Towers.

    Cathedral of Learning

    The Cathedral of Learning and its neighborhood.

    Central Oakland

  • Cathedral of Learning at Night

    Cathedral of Learning illuminated
    A little more of the building

  • Central Oakland

    Central Oakland

    The cluttered landscape of the central Oakland medical-intellectual district.

    Crane

    Something is always under construction.

    Back streets

    Rowhouses huddle in the shadow of the university.

    Wide view

  • Cathedral of Learning

    Camera: Olympus E-20n

    We have seen this view more than once before, but it is one of the best views of the building, and it is worth seeing in different lights. Here the patterns of light and shade from the drifting clouds made an especially pleasing picture.

  • Cathedral of Learning from Across Schenley Plaza

    Cathedral of Learning

    One of the most remarkable things about the Cathedral of Learning is that it is an isolated skyscraper. There are very few places in the world where a skyscraper can be examined by itself, and few skyscrapers so much worth examining as this, which Father Pitt has often declared the only convincing application of Gothic style to the skyscraper form.

  • Looking Up at the Cathedral of Learning

    Cathedral of Learning

    With part of the Stephen Foster Memorial in front.

  • Cathedral of Learning Through the Trees

    Cathedral of Learning through the trees

    The Cathedral of Learning seen through the trees in front of the Schenley Plaza side of the Carnegie Institute building.

  • Panther Fountain at the Cathedral of Learning

    This fountain sits below the southwest entrance to the tower, across from the William Pitt Student Union.