Here is the view that gives Fineview its name. The neighborhood was originally called Nunnery Hill, but neighborhood business interests petitioned the city to change the name in 1915. The Fineview Overlook on Catoma Street at Lanark Street is difficult to find even if you know where you’re going, but the view is worth it.
The skyline of Pittsburgh in 1963 was very different from the skyline today. The U. S. Steel Building had not yet risen to dwarf everything else, and the other skyscrapers that today seem to be the signature forms of the skyline would go up in the 1980s. At the extreme right, we can see the Civic Auditorium, only two years old; it would later be known as the Civic Arena, and then as the Mellon Arena.
This panorama was built from two pictures taken by Roger Wollstadt, to whom all our gratitude is due. Old Pa Pitt saw them in Wikimedia Commons and noticed that Mr. Wollstadt had taken them from the same spot, merely rotating the camera a bit to take in a different part of the cityscape. That meant they would probably combine with no visible errors, and indeed they did.
Note the Creative Commons license for the picture, which is not the public-domain dedication Father Pitt uses for his own pictures. You can do anything you like with this picture, but you must attribute Roger Wollstadt as the original author, and you must make any new versions available under the same license.
October is the month when major corporations pink up the night in honor of breast-cancer awareness.
Another long view for utility-cable collectors.
A view westward on Bedford Avenue that should please connoisseurs of utility cables.
As some vast heart that high in health
Beats in its mighty breast,
So, to and fro, thy living wealth
Throbs through the boundless West.
Thy keels the broad Ohio plow,
Or seek the Atlantic main;
Thy fabrics find the Arctic snow,
Or reach Zahara’s plain!
Toil on, huge Cyclop as thou art,
Though grimed with dust and smoke,
And breathing with convulsive start—
There’s music in each stroke!
What if the stranger smirch and soil
Upon thy forehead sees?
Better the wealth of honest toil
Than of ignoble ease!
And yet thou’rt beautiful—a queen
Throned on her royal seat!
All glorious in emerald sheen,
Where thy fair waters meet.
And when the night comes softly down,
And the moon lights the stream,
In the mild ray appears the town,
The city of a dream!
——“Pittsburgh” by E. M. Sidney in Graham’s American Monthly Magazine of Literature and Art, Vol. XXX (1847), p. 249.
