In the 1960s, Mellon Bank built a number of modernist bank branches that reinterpreted traditional bank architecture in modern forms. Here the classical colonnade is simplified to a schematic.
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Mellon Bank, Lawrenceville
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PNC Firstside Center
Lou Astorino’s firm designed this building with an unusual sensitivity to context. Father Pitt will point out two obvious details. First and more obvious is the curve along the river face of the building: it echoes the curves of the adjacent Parkway ramps. Next, note how the materials and the shapes harmonize with the Try Street Terminal in the rear—so much so that, at first glance, you might suppose that the Try Street Terminal was part of the same complex.
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Three and Two Gateway Center
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Westinghouse Building
Designed by Harrison & Abramowitz, who also gave us the markedly similar U. S. Steel Building, this is now known as 11 Stanwix Street. Above, from Gateway Center Park; below, from Mount Washington.
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20 Stanwix Street
Not one of our most spectacular buildings, but this 22-storey minor skyscraper, opened in 1982, was designed by a firm with a history of breaking records. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designed the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower), which was the tallest building in the world for quite a while; they also designed One World Trade Center, currently the tallest building in America, and the Burj Khalifa, currently the tallest building on earth. It is a huge firm with offices all over the globe, and Father Pitt does not imagine that this project got the same project leader as the Sears Tower.
Addendum: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill was also the firm responsible for Two PNC Plaza, formerly the Equibank Building. The lead architect on that project was Natalie de Blois, and when the building went up in 1974 it was the largest in the world designed by a woman. Another record!
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Chevron Science Center, Oakland
For people who like this kind of building, it is just the kind of building such people like, as Artemus Ward might say. It was finished in 1974; the design was by Kuhn, Newcomer & Valentour, a firm whose successors, “DRAW Collective,” still specialize in educational buildings. This building replaced the embarrassingly classical State Hall, the first building Pitt put up when it moved to Oakland, thus sparing us the sight of all those columns and pediments.
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Outline of the Trimont
The Trimont apartments on Mount Washington, outlined against winter clouds.
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Carnegie Science Center
The Carnegie Science Center was designed by Tasso Katselas, and in Father Pitt’s opinion the design worked very well for its intended purposes. It had to be flexible enough to house many different kinds of exhibitions. It had to look sciencey. Most important, it had to enthrall children. It does all those things. Old Pa Pitt would never pick this as the most beautiful building on the North Side, but it has been a favorite destination for a generation of Pittsburgh children, many of whom have actually walked out better educated than they were when they walked in.
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Three and Two Gateway Center
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United Steelworkers Building (IBM Building)
The diamond grid is not an ornamental facing: it holds up the building, along with a central core. “Diagrid construction” is a little more common today, but still fairly unusual; perhaps the most famous or notorious example of it is the Gherkin in London. This was a very early example. It was finished in 1964, and although it was originally built for IBM, it fits its current owner very well: its steel grid is a good demonstration of what steelworkers are capable of. The architects were the New Orleans firm of Curtis and Davis.
