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Tower of the Courthouse
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Koppers and Gulf Buildings, with the Federal Reserve Bank
An old postcard from Father Pitt’s accumulation of Pittsburgh miscellanea; we do not know the date, but it must be before 1952, since the back of the card specifies “PLACE ONE CENT STAMP HERE.”
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Top of the Frick Building, Tower of the Courthouse
A little slice of skyline seen from the South Side Slopes.
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BNY Mellon Center
Our second-tallest building opened in 1983 as One Mellon Center. It was actually meant to be the Dravo Building, but Dravo disappeared before the building was finished. There were plans to surround it with matching smaller buildings, but the 1980s boom went bust, and those buildings never happened.
The architects were Welton Becket and Associates—clearly the Associates in this case, since Mr. Becket himself died in 1969. (He is, however, credited with this and nearly three dozen other posthumous buildings in his Wikipedia article.)
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Grant Street in 2000
Photographed on Elite Chrome 100 film with a Kodak Retinette.
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Grant Building from First Avenue
When Henry Hornbostel’s Grant Building first went up in 1929, it was festooned with Art Deco pinnacles that were removed decades ago. If you enlarge this picture of the south side of the building, you can just make out the shadows left by those vanished ornaments.
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One Oxford Centre from First Avenue
Designed by the huge international firm Hellmuth, Obata, & Kassabaum, this nest of octagons was one of many landmark skyscrapers that popped up like mushrooms in the boom of the 1980s.
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Fortune and Her Wheel
This window by the celebrated stained-glass master John La Farge looks out over the lobby of the Frick Building. The metaphor of Fortune’s wheel is an odd one for a self-made gazillionaire to choose: Henry Frick was not known for his modesty, and yet the message seems to be that he was just lucky rather than clever.
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Lobby of the Frick Building
Everything in the Frick Building is gleaming white marble, with just enough accents to keep the interior from becoming entirely invisible. Above, the staircase at the Grant Street entrance. Below, the revolving doors and clock at the Grant Street entrance.
The lobby is shaped like a T, with a hall from the Grant Street entrance ending at the long hall from Forbes Avenue to Fifth Avenue, seen here from the Forbes Avenue entrance.
Even Henry Frick himself is gleaming white marble, rendered by the well-known sculptor Malvina Hoffman in 1923.
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One Oxford Centre (and a Lamppost)
