Tag: Monochrome

  • Potomac Station, Dormont

    Potomac Station on the Red Line
    Kodak Retinette with Kentmere Pan 100 film.

    Potomac gives Red Line riders easy access to the Dormont business district, which is full of odd little shops and restaurants that make it well worth a visit. Some of the houses in streets nearby are architecturally significant, and a walk through the back streets of Dormont is always pleasant.

  • Neville House, Oakland, in Black and White

    Port cochere of the Neville House apartments

    We saw Neville House in color earlier. These three monochrome pictures were taken with a Kodak Retinette made in the middle 1950s. Above, the exit from the porte cochere under the building. Below, the main entrance, including the porte cochere and the patio in front of it.

    Entrance to Neville House
    Entrance to Neville House
    Kodak Retinette with Kentmere Pan 100 film.

    Thanks to Bodega Film Lab for developing the film and making it worth taking the Retinette out for a walk.

  • The City of a Dream

    Pittsburgh skyline seen from St. Mary’s Cemetery, Kennedy Township
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10, with an imitation Tri-X Pan filter applied.

    As some vast heart that high in health
       Beats in its mighty breast,
    So, to and fro, thy living wealth
       Throbs through the boundless West.
    Thy keels the broad Ohio plow,
       Or seek the Atlantic main;
    Thy fabrics find the Arctic snow,
       Or reach Zahara’s plain!

    Toil on, huge Cyclop as thou art,
       Though grimed with dust and smoke,
    And breathing with convulsive start—
       There’s music in each stroke!
    What if the stranger smirch and soil
       Upon thy forehead sees?
    Better the wealth of honest toil
       Than of ignoble ease!

    And yet thou’rt beautiful—a queen
       Throned on her royal seat!
    All glorious in emerald sheen,
       Where thy fair waters meet.
    And when the night comes softly down,
       And the moon lights the stream,
    In the mild ray appears the town,
       The city of a dream!

    ——“Pittsburgh” by E. M. Sidney in Graham’s American Monthly Magazine of Literature and Art, Vol. XXX (1847), p. 249.

  • Lobby of One PPG Place

  • Mellon Bank, Squirrel Hill

    Mellon Bank

    One of several round banks Mellon Bank built in the modernist era. It is still a bank, now belonging to Citizens Bank, Mellon’s successor in retail banking.

    Roofline
    Canon PowerShot A540.

    We also have a less abstract picture of the whole building.

  • Entrance to the Union Trust Building

  • Arcade Along Strawberry Way

  • William Penn Place

  • Gateway Abstractions

    Three Gateway Center from Gateway station

    The Gateway subway station religiously avoids right angles, making it an irresistible target for abstract photography.

    Stairway in Gateway subway station
    Gateway subway station
  • Lantern in Allegheny West

    Lantern in black and white

    This tasteful lantern is actually one of the two flanking the parking lot for the firm that now inhabits the William Penn Snyder house on Ridge Avenue; it took some careful manipulation of angles to make it look like something other than a parking-lot decoration.