The richly decorated Parkvale Building on Forbes Avenue is currently under renovation, so we can hope that these splendid reliefs will continue to delight future generations of Pittsburghers.
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Decorations on the Parkvale Building, Oakland
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Looking Down Forbes Avenue
The lively and varied streetscape of Forbes Avenue in Oakland, looking toward the Cathedral of Learning.
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Frank & Seder Department Store, 1927
An image from an advertisement in the National Vaudeville Artists’ Annual for 1928. You and your dancing poodles are invited to shop here. This building is now under renovation, and with the removal of some later accretions the shadows of the Frank & Seder signs are visible (see the recent photos here).
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Frank & Seder
Kaufmann’s was the Big Store, but Frank & Seder, facing Kaufmann’s across a whole block of Smithfield Street, was hardly small. The building is now under restoration.
The restoration has peeled away later accretions, and we can see the shadows of an old sign at the corner of Forbes Avenue.
Two layers of ghost signs still memorialize the old department store to pedestrians on Fifth Avenue.
Compare the photograph to this illustration of the store in 1927.
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Famous Biscuit Sign, Uptown
Ghost signs preserve history otherwise forgotten. Who remembers the Famous Biscuit company? In this case, the sign also preserves another bit of history that might escape the casual observer. It faces east on Forbes Avenue, thus serving as a memorial of a time when Forbes Avenue Uptown was a two-way street.
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Pittsburgh Playhouse
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Art Deco Doorway
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Art Deco Vegetation
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Forbes Avenue, Oakland
A 61C bus comes eastbound on Forbes Avenue toward the stop in front of the Carnegie Museum of Art. In the background we can see central Oakland, with two of the three Litchfield Towers, the distinctive cylindrical skyscraper dormitories.
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Tower Two-Sixty
Tower Two-Sixty in downtown Pittsburgh, seen from the Diamond or Market Square on a Thursday, when the farmer’s market is in session.
