Long views with a long lens remind us of what an absurd place this is to build a city. Above, the Trimont looms over houses and small apartment buildings that it makes look tiny; below, uncommon views of St. Mary of the Mount Church.
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Back Slopes of Mount Washington
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Central Oakland
The cluttered landscape of the central Oakland medical-intellectual district.
Something is always under construction.
Rowhouses huddle in the shadow of the university.
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Skyline from the South Side Slopes
The skyline of downtown Pittsburgh as seen from the back end of Warrington Avenue on the South Side Slopes.
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View from the Rotunda of Penn Station in 2000
A view from the rotunda of Penn Station, taken in 2000 with an Argus A, a 35-millimeter camera made by the Argus Camera Company in the 1930s. It was meant to capitalize on the popularity of the very expensive Leica without being anything like as expensive as the Leica. It is not a particularly good camera, but it is small, and it is durable, and if you treat it right you can get pictures like this out of it.
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The Skyline in 1994
When he took pictures of two halves of the skyline on Ektachrome film in 1994, old Pa Pitt had no notion of stitching them together. But it was an easy thing to do with our fancy 21st-century technology.
Several prominent buildings have gone up since this picture was taken almost three decades ago, but the only one that makes a great difference in the appearance of the skyline is the Tower at PNC Plaza, which fills in a gap in the skyline just where a gap needed filling.
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Slopes of Beechview from the Fallowfield Viaduct
The Fallowfield viaduct is one of many engineering works necessary to get the Red Line as far as central Beechview. Its walkway is also a vital pedestrian link—vital enough that a few years ago, when the walkway was closed for repairs, the Port Authority gave free rides between Westfield and Fallowfield.
In addition to taking us from here to there, the walkway gives us interesting treetop-level views of the hilly back streets of this part of Beechview.
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View Across the Diamond
A wintry view across the Diamond or Market Square, with the Pittsburgh National Bank Building (One PNC Plaza), the U. S. Steel Tower, the Tower at PNC Plaza, and Tower Two-Sixty looming behind the square.
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Rooftops of Oakland
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Impressionistic View from Penn Station
A twenty-year-old view taken with an eighty-year-old camera, looking out from under the Rotunda at Penn Station. Old Pa Pitt has been wandering in his archives, and we shall see a few more pictures from twenty years or so ago over the next few weeks.
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The View from Mount Washington, in Two Colors
The skyline on a perfect day, rendered in old-postcard colors.
