Tag: First Avenue

  • Subway Crossing First Avenue

    Subway crossing first avenue

    A Silver Line car crosses First Avenue on its way toward Steel Plaza. In the background, One Oxford Centre, the Grant Building, and the Jones & Laughlin Headquarters Building.

  • First Avenue Station

    First Avenue station

    The distinctive undulating platform roofs of the First Avenue subway station, seen from across First Avenue.

  • Try Street Terminal

    Try Street Terminal

    The First Avenue face of the Try Street Terminal (now called Terminal 21 and filled with loft apartments and offices).

  • 101 Smithfield Street

    101 Smithfield Street

    In the little corner of downtown Pittsburgh near First Avenue there are still some half-blocks that never entered the skyscraper age. Here we can see some of the humbler pre-skyscraper commercial architecture of Pittsburgh. The first floor of the front of this building has been heavily altered, probably by someone who wanted to make it look more Victorian and ended up making it look more 1978. But the rest of the building is a typical small Italianate structure of the 1870s.

  • Try Street Terminal (First Avenue Side)

    Try Street Terminal

    This is the First Avenue side of a building that occupies a whole block—or arguably more, since the little alley Gasoline Street runs right through the middle of it. Built as a utilitarian warehouse, it was repurposed as a dormitory for the Art Institute; and when that school was in its final death spiral, the building was refurbished again as—of course—luxury lofts, under the name Terminal 21.

  • Hartley Rose Building

    Built for the Hartley-Rose Belting Company (so old Pa Pitt has no idea why the name on the awning lacks a hyphen, but he has no control over that), this is in effect a miniature Beaux-Arts skyscraper, with the regulation base–shaft–cap design. The architect was Edward Stotz, many of whose most famous commissions were schools—notably Schenley High School and Fifth Avenue High School.

  • 418 First Avenue

    Update: The massive survey of historic buildings adopted by the city in 1994 tentatively identifies this building as a work of Titus de Bobula. That would certainly explain its eccentric style: Pittsburgh never had another architect like him. It would also date the building between 1903 and 1910. If we read the map correctly, it first appears on the map layer dated 1903–1906 at the Pittsburgh Historic Maps site, so this might have been one of de Bobula’s early commissions here. Our original remarks appear below.


    It has not been possible to find any information about the age or architect of this curious building in the limited time old Pa Pitt was willing to devote to the task. The researchers who compiled information for the Firstside Historic District also threw up their hands. It is a mostly utilitarian small warehouse, but with angular decorations that suggest a prickly version of Art Deco. Right now you can buy it if you like, and then you might find more clues to its origin among the debris of the decades.

  • PNC Firstside Center

    PNC Firstside Center

    PNC Firstside Center occupies a whole block of First Avenue east of Grant Street. Above, an architecturally correct composite; below, the main First Avenue entrance. The architects were L. D. Astorino Companies, who also designed the Trimont skyscraper apartments on Mount Washington.

  • Reflections in the Hartley Rose Building

    The Hartley-Rose Building on First Avenue reflects its neighbor across the street.

  • Waterfall on First Avenue

    This waterfall fountain runs down the gentle slope along First Avenue in front of the PNC Firstside Center.