Seen in 1999 from Equitable Plaza, which was in much better shape in those days.
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Three Gateway Center
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Gateway Towers
It seems to old Pa Pitt that the word to describe this kind of building is “adequate.” Some modernist buildings certainly deserve to be called elegant; we need look no further than One Gateway Center in the background for an example of an elegant, even inspiring, modernist design. Gateway Towers, on the other hand, is rectangular, and once one has said that one has nearly exhausted the subject. It opened in 1964, and it must be a delightful place to live, with Point Park for its back yard and views in all directions. But it is hard to imagine anyone being inspired or delighted by this apartment tower. It was designed by Emery Roth, most of whose works are in New York; this is the only one Father Pitt knows of in Pittsburgh.
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Three Gateway Center from the Diamond
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One Gateway Center
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Four Gateway Center
The gleam of early-morning sun warms the chilly modernist elegance of Four Gateway Center. This 1960 modernist tower is one of a number of contributions to our skyline by Harrison & Abramovitz, whose most notable (which is to say inescapable) work in Pittsburgh is the U. S. Steel Tower.
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Three Gateway Center
Three Gateway Center (1952, architects Eggers & Higgins), seen down the western end of Forbes Avenue from the Diamond. The distinctive stainless-steel facing of the first three Gateway Center towers was an afterthought, and a very lucky one. They were to be faced with brick, which would have made them humdrum undistinguished vertical warehouses like a thousand other modernist cruciform brick towers around the world. But bricks were in short supply after the Second World War, and for once budget constraints led to a much more pleasing result.
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Three Gateway Center
The modernist ideal: towers in a park. It works here better than it works almost anywhere else it has been tried. The architects, incidentally, were the firm of Eggers & Higgins, who were the successors to John Russell Pope.
Old Pa Pitt decided to make this picture look as much as possible like an architect’s rendering. He was trying out the LightZone photo software, which will take some getting used to. For correcting lens distortion, he used the GIMP.
Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS.
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End of the Line for Gateway Center
A kind reader who signs himself “Matt” had an excellent suggestion:
Any interest in photographing or featuring the old Gateway Center Station one last time before it closes forever this weekend?
It was never a beautiful or impressive space, but of our trio of odd underground stations, Gateway Center was the oddest. It will soon be replaced by a gleaming new station that will doubtless be more convenient and more beautiful. But old Pa Pitt confesses that he was always sneakily proud of the old Gateway Center station when he brought out-of-town visitors downtown. They might come from cities with more expensive or more comprehensive subway systems, but few subway stations are as just plain weird as Gateway Center was. Notice, for example, the low-level platform, now closed off by a rail, that was built to accommodate the old PCC cars when they still ran the Overbrook route—a feature shared by all three of the underground stations downtown.
The weirdest aspect of Gateway Center, of course, was the loop. Visitors riding the subway for the first time were always alarmed to see the station they wanted flashing by on their left, as though the car had somehow just missed it. Then came the long squealy loop that threw everybody to the right-hand side of the car, and finally the car re-emerged into the station, this time with the platform on the right side.
We’ll see more pictures of the old Gateway Center station shortly. Meanwhile, the subway ends at Wood Street until further notice, except for the next few weekends, when it ends at First Avenue.
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More of Gateway Center
Taken with a Zenit-B camera, which is a Soviet-era SLR, and a Vivitar 28-mm lens, which is of course not Soviet, this picture from Equitable Plaza shows Gateway Center as the perfect modernist ideal. No wonder it got so much attention.
Gateway Center is just across the street from the Gateway Center subway station.
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Reflections at Gateway Center
In the late afternoon, the declining sun plays with the shining surface of Three Gateway Center. Below, this modernist fountain is one of Gateway Center’s chief attractions.
