Father Pitt

Tag: Skyscrapers

  • The Mon Wharf in the 1890s

    Mon Wharf in the 1890s
    From History and Commerce of Pittsburgh and Environs, 1894.

    The busy and chaotic Mon Wharf, where goods were loaded and unloaded and passengers came to board downstream-bound steamboats. This picture was published in 1894, and we can see the dawn of the skyscraper age just beginning to break: the Conestoga Building, finished in 1892, was the first building in Pittsburgh built on a steel frame, and one of the first in the world.

    Conestoga Building

    The view is quite different today (or in 2021, when these pictures were taken), though many of the same buildings are there. The Robert Moses plan ringed downtown Pittsburgh with expressways, as Moses had done with Manhattan, cutting off the people from the rivers. It was an understandable adaptation: if there must be expressways, the riverfronts made space for them without knocking down a lot of buildings. But it took us decades to begin to reclaim the shores with a system of parks and bicycle trails.

    Firstside in May of 2021
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  • How Many of These Pittsburgh Skyscrapers Can You Name?

    How many of these Pittsburgh skyscrapers can you name? Advertisement for Alcoa aluminum

    From The Pittsburgh Bicentennial in 1958, an advertisement for Alcoa aluminum as the new wonder material in construction. All these buildings are still standing, though the Heinz Food Research Center badly needs a rescue.

  • Knoxville

    Knoxville, Pittsburgh

    The slopes of Knoxville, an independent borough until it was taken into Pittsburgh in 1927. Below, two very different towers: the tower of St. Canice on the left and the U. S. Steel Tower on the right.

    Two towers
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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  • United Steelworkers Building

    United Steelworkers building

    It occurred to old Pa Pitt this afternoon that he had never seen a complete picture of the front of this building. It took several photographs and some technical fussing to get the composite picture above, but here you are.

    Entrance
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    We also have pictures of the building from Mount Washington and from Gateway Center Park, as well as pictures of the base of the building.

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  • Allegheny General Hospital

    Allegheny General Hospital seen from Eloise Street
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Building the Tower at PNC Plaza

    Early construction on the Tower at PNC Plaza

    The Tower at PNC Plaza will be ten years old this year. It occurred to Father Pitt that he had enough pictures in his collection to make up a visual story of the construction of the building, so here they are. Above, the progress as of February 18, 2014.

    Before topping out

    June 27, 2014, before the construction of the cap began.

    In August, 2014

    August 29, 2014.

    In early March, 2015

    March 2, 2015.

    Mid-March

    March 10, 2015, with bonus bus coming toward you.

    On St. Patrick’s Day, 2015

    March 17, 2015.

    June 13

    June 13, 2015.

    September 10, 2015

    September 10, 2015, just a few weeks before opening.

    November 12, 2020

    The completed tower on November 12, 2020.

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  • Three and Two Gateway Center

    Three and Two Gateway Center

    Three and Two Gateway Center seen from Gateway Center Park.

    Three Gateway Center

    Three Gateway Center.

    Three and Two Gateway Center

    A wintry view with silhouettes of bare trees.

    Three Gateway Center
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    Three Gateway Center seen from Forbes Avenue near the Diamond.

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  • May Building

    May Building

    Old Pa Pitt’s New Year’s resolution is to bring you more of the same, and to try to get better at it.

    The May Building was designed by Charles Bickel, probably the most prolific architect Pittsburgh ever had, and a versatile one as well.

    Wreath on the cornice

    The famous Sicilian Greek mathematician and philosopher and inventor and scientist Archimedes was nicknamed “Beta” in his lifetime, because he was second-best at everything. That was Charles Bickel. If you wanted a Beaux Arts skyscraper like this one, he would give you a splendid one; it might not be the most artistic in the whole city, but it would be admired, and it would hold up for well over a century. If you wanted Richardsonian Romanesque, he could give it to you in spades; it might not be as sophisticated as Richardson, but it would be very good and would make you proud. If you wanted the largest commercial building in the world, why, sure, he was up to that, and he would make it look so good that a century later people would go out of their way to find a use for it just because they liked it so much.

    Cartouche on the May Building
    May Building and addition

    The modernist addition on the right-hand side of the building was designed by Tasso Katselas.

  • Three PNC Plaza

    Three PNC Plaza
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    The Market Street end of Three PNC Plaza, which opened in 2009. It is tied with Three Gateway Center as our twentieth-tallest building, and it was the tallest thing built in Pittsburgh in the long skyscraper drought between the 1980s boom and the current crop of skyscrapers. The architects were Gensler and Lou Astorino.

  • Top of the Pittsburgher

    Top of the Pittsburgher
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    The Pittsburgher was built in 1929–1930 as a hotel; the architects were the H. L. Stevens Company of New York. For many years, converted to offices, it was known as the Lawyers Building. In 2015 it was bought by a company called King Penguin Opportunity Fund, which restored the original name and put it in lights at the top. This view was taken from Gateway Center with a very long lens.