Tag: Ritchey (Dahlen)

  • Litchfield Towers from Forbes Avenue

    Base of Litchfield Towers

    To old Pa Pitt’s eyes, International Style architecture always looks best in black and white. Indeed, he has sometimes wondered how much the architects were subconsciously influenced by the desire to make a building that looked good in a photograph.

    Litchfield Towers
  • Litchfield Towers on a Rainy Day

    Litchfield Towers

    Ajax, Bab-O, and Comet looking a bit wet.

    Entrance
    Wet
  • Litchfield Towers, Oakland

    Litchfield Towers

    These skyscraper dormitories were built in 1963 to designs by Dahlen Richey of Deeter & Richey. They were poetically named A, B, and C, but students immediately renamed them Ajax, Bab-O, and Comet.

    The restored entrance looks like a scene from the modernist paradise that existed mostly in architects’ imaginations. But the original architect certainly did not specify the weirdly incongruous faux-antique lanterns.

    Entrance with stairs
    Entrance
  • Litchfield Towers, Oakland

    Two of the three cylindrical skyscraper dormitories poetically named A, B, and C by the University of Pittsburgh, but popularly known as Ajax, Bab-O, and Comet.