Father Pitt

Tag: Skyscrapers

  • Three Gateway Center from the Diamond

    Three Gateway Center looms in the mist of a winter morning.

  • Forbes Avenue Side of the Frick Building

    Louis Sullivan was of the opinion that Daniel Burnham’s success in the classical style was a great blow to American architecture. But what could be more American than a Burnham skyscraper? Like America, it melds its Old World influences into an entirely new form, in its way as harmonious and dignified as a Roman basilica, but without qualification distinctly American.

  • Castle in the Air

    The back side of the People’s Savings Bank building is merely functional, except for this curious stairwell, whose bronze cap seems to have flown in from another and much more fantastical world.

  • Standard Life Building

    This Fourth Avenue tower is smaller than some of the others, but just as splendid as its most ostentatious neighbors. It was designed by Alden and Harlow in their usual exquisite taste.

  • Allegheny Building

    Forever overshadowed by its taller neighbor the Frick Building, the Allegheny Building, built in 1906, is also by Daniel Burnham, and also a Frick project. It is one of his spare, almost modernistic designs, and it is fascinating to see how well the classical vocabulary adapts to twentieth-century simplicity.

  • K&L Gates Center

    Formerly One Oliver Plaza, this modernist block from 1968 was one of the last works of William Lescaze, pioneer of modernism, who died the next year. Old Pa Pitt confesses to not missing him a whole lot.

  • One Gateway Center

    A view of One Gateway Center straight down the plaza, flanked by Two Gateway Center and Three Gateway Center.

  • Arrott Building from Wood Street

    The Arrott Building, still under renovation, looms over the shops of Wood Street on a grey but busy December morning.

  • One PPG Place from Wood Street

    Looming over the smaller buildings on Fifth Avenue, One PPG Place looks like a fantasy tower in a superhero movie, which is why it tends to play fantasy towers in superhero movies.

  • Entrance to the Frick Building

    The Frick Building was designed by Daniel Burnham to convey one message, and with its austere classical dignity it succeeds perfectly. The message was “Henry Frick is more important than Andrew Carnegie.” The Frick Building dwarfed the Carnegie Building next door, which had once been the tallest in the city; by the time Frick had surrounded Carnegie’s building with taller buildings, the Carnegie Building was no longer an attractive place to be, and it was demolished to make way for the Kaufmann’s annex.