Father Pitt

Tag: Signs

  • Lafayette Hilltop Sign

    This somewhat bedraggled sign is perhaps a little more emblematic of the neighborhood around it than it was intended to be. Lafayette Hilltop is not one of the ninety designated “neighborhoods” of Pittsburgh: it’s one of the many distinct subneighborhoods that have no official existence but a very real social existence. You’ll find it at the northern end of Federal Street where it crosses Lafayette Avenue—an area right on the line between “Perry South” (as the city planning maps call Perry Hilltop) and Fineview. It is a pleasant neighborhood with some fine houses and good residential streets, but also some decaying buildings and vacant landmarks. We hope the rising tide in the city will lift it into comfortably moderate prosperity.

  • Go Straight at the Intersection

    Or, you know, do your best. A typically Pittsburgh sign on Brookline Boulevard.

  • No Golf

    No Golf

    It is a narrow trail along a precipitous wooded hillside, but Fox Chapel is still the kind of neighborhood where you have to specify “NO GOLF.” This is the south entrance to the Trillium Trail, which can be found on Hemlock Hollow Road, which used to bear the slightly embarrassing name of Squaw Run Road.

  • Warner Theatre Sign

    The Warner was one of the great silent-movie palaces downtown, but it had the misfortune to be placed far from the theater district along Penn Avenue. In the 1980s most of it was demolished for a shopping arcade, leaving the classical façade on Fifth Avenue and the distinctive lighted sign, with the word “Theatre” replaced by “Centre,” because the shopping-arcade and movie-theater industries share an assumption that British spellings attract more customers. The shopping arcade, like most arcades downtown, gradually transitioned to mostly offices. But the sign still dominates the view down Fifth Avenue.