The Cathedral of Learning is nearly unique among large skyscrapers in that it sits in the middle of a large landscaped park, isolated from other tall buildings. That gives us the opportunity to practice the kind of photographic composition that was popular in the 1930s, when the building opened, by using trees to frame and draw attention to the central subject.
Designed in 1902 by the Beezer Brothers, this was Wilkinsburg’s contribution to the early skyscraper age. It was put up for Leopold Vilsack, a real-estate investor who was also one of the founders of the Iron City brewery. He named it for his son Carl; later it became known as the Shields Building.
When it was announced, the building was to have eight floors. One floor fell away between initial design and construction.
The building is now apartments. The base has been refurbished with a simpler and more abstract design that hardly registers as different from the original until we look at it closely.
The cap is festooned with elaborate Baroque terra-cotta ornaments.
Impressive fat columns tell us that this is a colossal building even if we’re too close to see how colossal it really is. The architect was Daniel “Make No Little Plans” Burnham.
The main tower of Allegheny General is one of the few classic skyscrapers outside downtown, and a landmark of Art Deco in Pittsburgh, as well as a landmark of the style Father Pitt calls Mausoleum-on-a-Stick, where the top of the tower is modeled after the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. It was designed by York & Sawyer, who made a specialty of hospitals, and built in 1930. Today we’re going to pay particular attention to the grand entrance on North Avenue, which is covered with extravagant terra-cotta decorations, so we have more than thirty pictures to show you.
