Once in a while old Pa Pitt attempts a bit of abstract expressionism. Here are patterns formed by Two PNC Plaza, EQT Plaza, and reflections of the K&L Gates Center.
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Geometric Patterns Through the Branches
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Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania Western Headquarters Building
We’ve seen this building before, from an angle, but here is old Pa Pitt’s best attempt (so far) at seeing it head-on from the front, the way the architects (Dowler & Dowler) might have drawn it back in 1957. The picture is a composite, and there are stitching errors if you examine it closely; but it still gives a better impression of the design of the building than any other picture of it that Father Pitt has seen.
One of the building’s most attractive features is the Pennsylvania relief with rotating globe, illustrating the slogan “Anywhere Any Time by Telephone.” The relief shows outsized Pittsburgh as “Gateway to the West,” and the clearly less important Philadelphia as home of the Liberty Bell and City Hall. The globe used to rotate to show the part of the earth currently illuminated by sunlight; but both the globe and the clock above it have stopped, and the plastic window over the globe is sadly fogged. Now that the building has become luxury apartments, perhaps an enlightened ownership will put a little money into restoring what used to be one of downtown’s unique attractions.
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Alcoa Building
This is one of several works by Harrison and Abramovitz on Pittsburgh’s skyline—the most prominent, of course, being the U. S. Steel Tower, which dwarfs everything else. This one was built in 1953, making it probably the first of their works here. It was also the first aluminum-faced skyscraper (appropriate for the biggest aluminum producer in the world). To Father Pitt, it always looks like a stack of 1950s television sets.
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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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Reflections in the Software Engineering Institute
Three landmark buildings reflected in a corner of the Software Engineering Institute on Fifth Avenue: St. Paul’s Cathedral, Webster Hall, and the Mellon Institute.
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Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania Western Headquarters Building
On the National Register of Historic Places as an outstanding example of modernism, this 1957 building by the Pittsburgh firm Dowler & Dowler (that’s Press C. Dowler and William C. Dowler) has been turned into luxury apartments, like everything else downtown. It also houses the City Charter High School.
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Two PNC Plaza and Three PNC Plaza
Two PNC Plaza (with the PNC logo at the top) and Three PNC Plaza (center, with the notch cut out of it), as seen from Liberty Avenue.
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Kossman Building (Town Place)
The old Kossman Building was given a dark makeover for its new identity as “Town Place,” so that it looks a little less like a dated relic of the International Style and a little more like a cool new International Style revival. In fact, old Pa Pitt thinks that, in black, it looks like a Mies van der Rohe building wearing a hat.
Camera: Canon PowerShot A540.
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One Oxford Centre
Spelled “Centre” because the conventional wisdom in the real-estate business holds that you can raise the rents if you use a British spelling. Here we see it from the Diamond. This nest of octagons is, depending on how you measure it, our fifth-tallest building, one foot shorter than Fifth Avenue Place. The top, however, is higher than the top of Fifth Avenue Place or even PPG Place (our third-tallest), because downtown slopes upward toward Grant Street, so One Oxford Centre is built on higher ground.
The first few floors of this building are a shopping arcade connected by a meandering skywalk to the Kaufmann’s (now Macy’s) department store a few blocks away
One Oxford Centre is a short walk from either the Steel Plaza or the First Avenue subway station.
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One Oxford Centre
One Oxford Centre is a typical 1980s tower that looks like a cluster of interlocked octagons. Those horizontal stripes are certainly distinctive, if perhaps a bit monotonous. The lower floors are a shopping arcade for the rich, famous, and prodigal. A skywalk connects the arcade to Macy’s (formerly Kaufmann’s) two blocks away.
One Oxford Centre is a short walk from the Steel Plaza subway station.
