Father Pitt

Tag: Skyscrapers

  • Base of the Tower at PNC Plaza

    The base of earth’s greenest skyscraper, as it called itself when it was going up, is all shiny curves and lights and reflections.

  • Tower Two-Sixty

    Tower Two-Sixty on Forbes Avenue, seen from the northwest.

  • Four Gateway Center

    Four Gateway Center from Stanwix Street, with bonus utility work in front.

  • Geometric Patterns Through the Branches

    Once in a while old Pa Pitt attempts a bit of abstract expressionism. Here are patterns formed by Two PNC Plaza, EQT Plaza, and reflections of the K&L Gates Center.

  • Stairwell of the People’s Savings Bank Building

    This unusual external stairwell behind the People’s Savings Bank Building is one of the architectural curiosities of Fourth Avenue. Old Pa Pitt caught it when it was briefly illuminated by reflected sunlight.

  • Alcoa Building

    This is one of several works by Harrison and Abramovitz on Pittsburgh’s skyline—the most prominent, of course, being the U. S. Steel Tower, which dwarfs everything else. This one was built in 1953, making it probably the first of their works here. It was also the first aluminum-faced skyscraper (appropriate for the biggest aluminum producer in the world). To Father Pitt, it always looks like a stack of 1950s television sets.

  • Fifth Avenue Place from Fifth Avenue

    It is one of old Pa Pitt’s endearing quirks that he likes to take pictures with a bus coming toward the viewer.

  • Clark Building

    The Clark Building, designed by the Hoffman-Henon Co of Philadelphia, was built in 1927 at the same time as the Stanley Theater by the same architects. This late-Beaux-Arts skyscraper has for a long time been the center of the jewelry district downtown, with at least a dozen jewelers in the building (“over thirteen,” a sign on the building says, meaning, what, fourteen?) and more within a block or so.

  • River Vue Apartments

    The former State Office Building was designed by the firm of Altenhof and Bown (also responsible for the 1964 Federal Building on Grant Street; otherwise they seem to have specialized in schools). There was some grumbling when the state sold the building to private developers to be turned into luxury apartments, since space had to be found for the state employees, and some analyses suggested that the state would spend far more on leasing space than it would have spent on renovating the building. But it is certainly a first-rate location for apartments.

  • Keenan Building

    The Keenan Building in bright early-morning sunshine, seen from Sixth Avenue.