The Pittsburgh & Lake Erie could not quite get a foothold downtown, but it had the next best thing: a station right on the Smithfield Street Bridge, so that it was only a short walk from downtown to the P&LE trains—or a short trolley ride, since the streetcars ran on the bridge.
The entrance to the station was right at bridge level, with a grand staircase down into the grand concourse.
The White Whale bookstore in Bloomfield. This is Father Pitt’s attempt at applying the principles of De Stijl to photography.
This phone-camera picture is soupy with noise reduction if you enlarge it, but it gives us a good idea of how the Flash Gordon glass-block window in the stairwell looks at night.
The Three Sisters bridges have a new lighting scheme. Above, the Roberto Clemente or Sixth Street Bridge; below, the Andy Warhol or Seventh Street Bridge.
“Blue hour” pictures are very fashionable these days. Well, old Pa Pitt can do those too, if you really want them.
We also have pictures of the Western Theological Seminary by day.
Calvary Methodist Church in Allegheny West is floodlit at night, and old Pa Pitt stopped the other night to get a few pictures. The design of this church is credited to Vrydaugh & Shepherd with T. B. Wolfe. Vrydaugh & Wolfe would soon become a partnership designing a number of fine churches and millionaires’ mansions. Old Pa Pitt does not know what happened to Shepherd.
These pictures were all taken hand-held with very slow shutter speeds. Photographers will tell you that you cannot take a sharp hand-held picture at 1/10 of a second. What they mean is that you cannot reliably take a sharp picture. With digital photography, where individual pictures cost nothing, what you can do is take a dozen or two pictures and hope that one of them will be sharp.
This year’s Winter Flower Show and Light Garden ends tomorrow to make way for the annual Orchid and Bonsai Show. The conservatory is open late for the light show, which has become one of Pittsburgh’s chief holiday attractions.
With computers, it is possible to make the lights on a Christmas tree an ever-changing animated kaleidoscope of movement and color. According to the laws of American taste, if it is possible, it is mandatory.
The Kinder Building is a little Beaux-Arts masterpiece at the corner of Western Avenue and Galveston Avenue. At night its carefully balanced classical entrance takes on a pleasing air of mystery.
