The preservation of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie station complex as “Station Square” showed Pittsburgh that historic preservation could be good business. As “the Freight House Shops,” the freight house was a successful shopping arcade for many years. But all the shopping arcades, and many of the indoor shopping malls, have collapsed in the past decade or two as shopping habits changed. Now shoppers demand stores and restaurants with individual external entrances. But the shopping arcade saved the building; and now, though other uses have been found for most of the space (a large part of it has been turned into a rock-climbing gym, because where would you find rocks in the wild in Pittsburgh?), the building itself is in no danger of demolition.
Very few people pay any attention to the Manor Building. It would be a large building except for the fact that it lives against a backdrop of much larger buildings, so its blackish bulk—which was originally blue—makes little impression in the postcard view of Pittsburgh from Mount Washington. But it has an interesting history.
The building was announced in 1955; the design was by Wyatt C. Hedrick of Fort Worth.1 The owner was the Pennsylvania Railroad, which was investing heavily in real estate. Executives noticed that Pennsy stations often sat on valuable land in expensive business districts. Why should all that value go to waste when you can build upward and profit from rentals? “Utilization of the air rights over railroad property where the property is strategically located in Downtown areas is becoming more prevalent,” the Press reporter noted when this building was announced.
That was what was going on here. For a long time the Pennsylvania had had a small commuter station here—the Fourth Avenue station. It was at the mouth of the tunnel that is now used by the subway. The station itself was a small building and a couple of platforms, but the land had become very valuable. So the plan was to build three floors of parking garage, and then ten floors of offices above the garage. There would still be a station in the basement. It should have been a profitable scheme.
From the beginning, however, there seemed to be a curse on the building. “It suffered one delay after another while being built,” said a Post-Gazette story in 1961.2 “Then, after finally being completed in 1958, it was tied up for a year by litigation involving the contractor.”
By the time it was ready for renters, the building was notorious. People called it the Blue Elephant—and nobody wanted to move in.
Not until 1961 did the building overcome its jinx and begin to fill up. After that it prospered. By the next year, it was completely filled.
So there you have the story of the Blue Elephant, and now that you have heard it, perhaps you will notice the building the next time you pass it on the Crosstown Boulevard or go under it on the subway. Then you will forget it again, because it does not make much of an impression on the skyline.
Designed by Walter H. Cookson, this station—one of the grandest of our suburban stations—was built in 1916. The last train left in 1975. After sitting abandoned for decades, the station has finally been restored to very nearly its original appearance.
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 flag on top of the cupola shows us that what today’s designers call “Photoshopping” has a long history reaching far back into the analogue era.
The Wabash Terminal was a magnificent folly, like the railroad it represented. The building was designed to say that Jay Gould’s new railroad, a competitor to the well-established Pennsylvania Railroad, was here to stay. It opened in 1904, and the railroad went bankrupt four years later.
The Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway had to perform enormous feats of engineering just to get into Pittsburgh. The Wabash Tunnel, now a little-used automobile highway, led to a new bridge across the Monongahela. All the land downtown was already taken up, so the Wabash had to make an elevated freight yard, which cost fabulous amounts of money.
The building itself was designed by Theodore C. Link (whose famous St. Louis Union Station still stands), and it was as extravagant as the rest of the enterprise. These pictures were published in The Builder for November of 1904, a Pittsburgh-based architectural magazine. They show us that the terminal building was up to the same extravagant standard as the rest of the operation. Carved decorations were provided to a lavish extent by Achille Giammartini, Pittsburgh’s best decorative sculptor.
After its railroad went bankrupt, the Wabash terminal still served passengers on some lines until 1931. It was converted to offices after that. Disastrous fires gutted it shortly after the Second World War, and it sat as a looming wreck until 1953, when it was demolished to make way for new buildings at Gateway Center.
This doorway shows us some of Mr. Giammartini’s work.
Designed by Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, probably the one firm with the best claim to the title of successors of H. H. Richardson, this station sat derelict for years. After a fundraising campaign, it is being restored as the Coach Fred Milanovich Center for Community Connection. We last saw it in July, and since then a good bit has been accomplished. Workers were busy today when old Pa Pitt came by.
The Imperial station on the Montour Railroad has become, with much remodeling, the Findlay Township Activity Center, which residents can rent for (you probably guessed already) activities. A neat little red caboose sits beside the old railroad bed, which is now the Montour Trail.
Built in the late 1890s, this Pittsburgh & Lake Erie commuter station was designed by Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, one of at least three firms that claimed to be the successors of the great H. H. Richardson, and perhaps the one with the most direct claim, since Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge were the ones who completed Richardson’s outstanding jobs when he died. It is a temple of locomotion in the high Richardsonian style that may remind you of another Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge building in Pittsburgh, Shadyside Presbyterian Church.
After many years of raising money and praying, the community is working on restoring this landmark to pass down to future generations.
Cameras: Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. Most of these pictures are stacks of three different exposures, so that detail is preserved in both the highlights and the shadows.
