To old Pa Pitt’s eyes, International Style architecture always looks best in black and white. Indeed, he has sometimes wondered how much the architects were subconsciously influenced by the desire to make a building that looked good in a photograph.
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Litchfield Towers from Forbes Avenue
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Litchfield Towers on a Rainy Day
Ajax, Bab-O, and Comet looking a bit wet.
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Oakland from Across the River
Views of central Oakland from the South Sides Slopes across the Monongahela. Above, the Cathedral of Learning and Litchfield Towers A, B, and C, or—as they have been known since they sprouted on the Oakland skyline—Ajax, Bab-O, and Comet.
A closer view of the Litchfield Towers.
The Cathedral of Learning and its neighborhood.
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Litchfield Towers, Oakland
These skyscraper dormitories were built in 1963 to designs by Dahlen Richey of Deeter & Richey. They were poetically named A, B, and C, but students immediately renamed them Ajax, Bab-O, and Comet.
The restored entrance looks like a scene from the modernist paradise that existed mostly in architects’ imaginations. But the original architect certainly did not specify the weirdly incongruous faux-antique lanterns.
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Litchfield Towers, Oakland
Two of the three cylindrical skyscraper dormitories poetically named A, B, and C by the University of Pittsburgh, but popularly known as Ajax, Bab-O, and Comet.
