Father Pitt

Tag: Railroad Stations

  • Penn Station in 2001

    Penn Station

    It was officially the Union Station, but there was no real union: the other important railroads (the B&O, the P&LE, the Wabash) had their own stations. Most Pittsburghers knew this as the Penn Station for the Pennsylvania Railroad, which owned it and ran most of the trains. Although this view was taken in 2001, little has changed: already the building was high-class apartments, and already the trains came into a dumpy little modern station grafted on the back. Here, on a day of patchy clouds, the afternoon sun shines a spotlight on the station’s most famous feature: the rotunda, one of Daniel Burnham’s most famous architectural achievements, so distinctive that it has its own separate listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

  • Reliefs on the P&LE Terminal

    We seldom look up as we pass the station on the Smithfield Street Bridge, but at the top of the building, directly over the main entrance, is this lively locomotive relief.

  • Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Station

    The old Pittsburgh and Lake Erie station, now the centerpiece of the Station Square entertainment district, with the Monongahela Incline in the background.

    Although the angle is distorted here by a telephoto lens, the building is not rectangular. A satellite view reveals the odd shape.

    A view of the interior, now a restaurant called the Grand Concourse, is here.