For the first time since the boom of the 1980s, two skyscrapers are going up at once downtown. The Tower at PNC Plaza has topped out, and Tower Two-Sixty at The Gardens is rising on Forbes Avenue just up the street from the Diamond. We can see one of the cranes and a bit of the skeleton of the latter between two of the Fourth Avenue bank towers.
Elliott is a forgotten city neighborhood in western Pittsburgh, the most forgotten section of the city. But in the West End Overlook, it does have the best viewing post for straight-on pictures of the Point.
The Gulf Tower, with the Koppers Tower (left) and partly completed Tower at PNC Plaza (right). As time goes on, every skyscraper that used to be a “building” changes its name to “tower.”
Spelled “Centre” because the conventional wisdom in the real-estate business holds that you can raise the rents if you use a British spelling. Here we see it from the Diamond. This nest of octagons is, depending on how you measure it, our fifth-tallest building, one foot shorter than Fifth Avenue Place. The top, however, is higher than the top of Fifth Avenue Place or even PPG Place (our third-tallest), because downtown slopes upward toward Grant Street, so One Oxford Centre is built on higher ground.
The first few floors of this building are a shopping arcade connected by a meandering skywalk to the Kaufmann’s (now Macy’s) department store a few blocks away
One Oxford Centre is a short walk from either the Steel Plaza or the First Avenue subway station.
The Tower at PNC Plaza, the biggest skyscraper project in Pittsburgh since the 1980s, has just begun to rise at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Wood Street. Traditionally skyscrapers have grown in a doughnut-shaped area of the Golden Triangle, with the hole in the Fifth Avenue shopping district; but now that much of the shopping has moved elsewhere, the hole may begin to fill in.
The top of the Benedum-Trees Building, one of the famous bank towers that made Fourth Avenue one of the wonders of the world at the very beginning of the age of skyscrapers. The Fourth Avenue historic district is a few blocks’ walk from the Steel Plaza subway station.
The Clark Building and the Keenan Building, two Liberty Avenue landmarks, reflected in an ugly building across the street.
One Oxford Centre is a typical 1980s tower that looks like a cluster of interlocked octagons. Those horizontal stripes are certainly distinctive, if perhaps a bit monotonous. The lower floors are a shopping arcade for the rich, famous, and prodigal. A skywalk connects the arcade to Macy’s (formerly Kaufmann’s) two blocks away.
One Oxford Centre is a short walk from the Steel Plaza subway station.
The Gulf Building, an Art Deco tower with a top modeled after the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, is rendered here in old-postcard colors through the marvel of modern digital technology.
