Father Pitt

Tag: Stations

  • Trolleys in Gateway Station

    A two-car Blue Line train comes in from Wood Street and heads out under the Allegheny to North Side; a Silver Line car departs for Wood Street. You can see the video at full resolution on its Wikimedia Commons hosting page.

    The video is obviously hand-held. There are some very sophisticated video-stabilizing algorithms in our video-editing software, but the parade of identical square windows in a moving trolley makes them panic and jiggle the picture all over the screen, so we give you the video without stabilization.

  • Gateway Station

    Entrance to Gateway Station
    Another view

    Architect Rob Pfaffman gave us just about the most whimsical subway entrance old Pa Pitt has ever seen, and he has been places and seen things. The whole station is unique, above and below the ground. There are no right angles, or at least very few. Yet from a practical point of view, nothing is confusing, and the station works very well for its intended purpose, which is to get us into a trolley quickly.

    Silver Line car at Gateway Station

  • Steel Plaza Subway Station

    Steel Plaza

    Steel Plaza was designed in the 1980s, and its architecture is an interesting combination of Brutalist and Postmodern styles—the two most prominent materials are raw concrete and polished granite. It was built as a junction station, where the main subway line met the spur to Penn Station, which is not in regular service these days. In the picture below, the main line is on the left, and the spur is on the right.

    Middle platform
    Looking across the main line
    A wider view
    Outbound platform from inbound platform

  • Dormont Junction

    Dormont Junction

    Dormont Junction ceased to be a junction in the 1960s, but the Pittsburgh trolley system is crusty with tradition, and the name has never been changed—in spite of occasional attempts by the Port Authority to call the station “Dormont.” The current station was designed in the 1980s, and like most of the stations put up then it is utilitarian to the point of ugliness. Above, two Red Line cars pass; below, a closer view, showing the 1980s-vintage T-in-a-circle sign at the entrance.

    Dormont Junction

    Dormont Junction is at the north end of the Mount Lebanon subway tunnel, which is never called a “subway” by real Pittsburghers, to whom “subway” means the section of four underground stations, one ground-level station, and two elevated stations from Station Square to Allegheny.

    Tunnel entrance

  • Station Square Station

    Station Square station

    The Station Square subway station was built in the 1980s, when the streetcars were diverted from the Smithfield Street Bridge to the Panhandle Bridge and into the subway downtown.

    Station Square station

    Even though it’s clearly above the ground, this is the end of the section of combined trolley lines that Pittsburghers call the “subway.” From here the outbound streetcars go underground into the Mount Washington tunnel, but that’s not a subway. That’s just trolleys running underground. You need to be a Pittsburgh native to follow the logic.

    Station Square station
    Trolley leaving Station Square
    Trolley leaving Station Square

  • First Avenue Station

    First Avenue station

    The distinctive undulating platform roofs of the First Avenue subway station, seen from across First Avenue.

  • Mount Lebanon Station

    A southbound Red Line car leaves the Mount Lebanon subway station, as seen from the Alfred Street crossing.

  • Mount Lebanon Subway Entrance

    The entrance to the Mount Lebanon station on the Red Line. The station is at the end of a winding subway tunnel cut through the rock (although Pittsburghers never call it a “subway,” reserving that epithet for the downtown section of the system). To get to the station from the Washington Road business district, you have to enter here, go down a flight of stairs (or an elevator), cross an alley, and go down another flight of stairs (or another elevator). Below we see the alley crossing and the station beyond it.

    This entrance was built in the fashionable postmodernist style of the 1980s, when the streetcars were moved from Washington Road into the subway. Old Pa Pitt is impressed by the architect’s forethought in providing for the entrance to be tightened with a giant screwdriver if it should ever start to come loose from the ground.

  • Gateway Subway Station

    Right angles are for cowards, says Rob Pfaffman, the architect of Gateway Station.

  • Gateway Station

    The Gateway station is full of fascinating geometries. These pictures were taken shortly after the station opened in 2012.