Hello From Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh.
Someone let me loose on a lovely sunny warm spring day in Pittsburgh with my camera. I really just wandered one area, Mt. Washington, from where you can see to the end of the world. i will actually use a number of these for a design project I’m working on. I couldn’t get a good photo of the point so above is one from last year on just about exactly this date. Below is a “tiled mosaic” of some of the photos I took today.
Old and New
Allegheny county Jail
What’s this medieval-looking fortress in the midst of modern buildings?
It’s the Allegheny County Jail in downtown Pittsburgh. What else does one do when sitting in traffic on a perfectly clear sunny day?
It’s an interesting contrast, especially seen from behind when it actually is a wall that makes it look like a fortress.
Diplodocus Carnegii
diplodocus carnegii
Oh, no, there’s a dinosaur outside the museum!
Really, there is. It’s the dinosaur named for Andrew Carnegie after a nearly-complete skeleton was discovered and transported back to Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh in an expedition he had financed; this statue was placed in front of the museum to commemorate the 100th anniversary of its discovery. Read more about the dinosaur and the expedition, and how this statue came to be.
Pittsburgh at New Year’s
Pittsburgh at New Year’s, 2008
It’s snowing and I’m not going to First Night, but I thought I’d post two of the photos I took of Pittsburgh, viewed from Mt. Washington, taken on New Year’s Eve a few years ago.
Pittsburgh at Night
I don’t know why it’s always captivated me, but Pittsburgh at night, the modest buildings lit just right, bridges decorated with lights, all reflected on one river or another, has always been one of my favorite scenes. I took this series of photos and created a panorama on Monday night about 9:15, so many of the office buildings weren’t as well lit as they would have been earlier in the evening, but I never pass up a chance to stop on Mt. Washington to photograph the city.
This view is of “First Side”, along the Monongahela River right before it reaches the point; off to the right a little past center is the Smithfield Street Bridge, then in the darkness over the river is one bridge after another—Panhandle, Liberty, 10th Street, Birmingham, Hot Metal, then the bend where J&L Steel used to fire the night sky with an orange glow.
But even before that bend in the river, this little cluster of buildings coming to a point where a great river is born is all of downtown Pittsburgh.
Modern
modern.
It’s an interesting contrast in the fifties-era look of the street corner contrasted with the young guy talking on a cell phone, all on a winter morning so frosty that a winter morning haze developed.
I love that tangle of wires, too. It’s on Pittsburgh’s North Side.
Mission Street, Pittsburgh
Mission Street, Pittsburgh
The rain stopped and the sun came out. Narrow and curving, clinging to the side of a steep hill, and dominated by a church with a dome, that’s Pittsburgh.
Getting Around in Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh Steps and Bridges
Wooden steps down into a ravine and a suspension bridge above it, that’s how you deal with the landscape around here. The bridge shown is the Charles Anderson Memorial Bridge over Junction Hollow, adjacent to Panther Hollow, and is one of the bridges connecting Oakland to Schenley Park, near where all the colleges are. It’s almost 800 feet long and is about 120 ft. high above the trail below. Dedicated in 1940 it’s a relative newcomer to the landscape though it replaced a 1907 bridge, using the original limestone abutments, and has a relatively rare type of bridge construction. Charles Anderson served on Pittsburgh’s city council, was a local and state labor leader and served labor in the federal government during WWI. The road this bridge connects is the Boulevard of the Allies, so named in honor and memory of WWI.
I always like the shade of turquoise used on bridges when the landscape is the warm brown of late autumn and early winter, you always know it’s a bridge up ahead, whether it’s a one-lane over a stream on a country road or a six-lane over a river on a highway. The rails, usually painted this gold, are often in this art-deco pattern from this era when most of our current bridges were built.
The wooden steps are quite new, though, built to allow access to both a few homes partway down the hillside to the ravine, and to Junction Hollow Trail which you can see way down at the bottom through the railing on the steps. There is also an access road to get the the trail and the houses, but it’s miles away around neighborhoods and through Oakland to get there. On these hills, you’ll find plenty of streets marked on maps that will turn out to be a long, steep set of steps when you get there.
Look Up! The Peaks of the City, 2009
US Steel Tower and Presbyterian Church on Strawberry Way
Pittsburgh has a mix of tall and short, gothic and modern, stone and steel in its skyline, and on a perfectly clear autumn day even minor details are enhanced by shadows. I typically enjoy photos of the contrast of gothic archictectural influence from the mid industrial age when buildings could have no undecorated spot with the streamlined ultra modern influence from the height of the steel era.
Stylistic Contrast
Look up and see the gargoyles staring down at you!
Gingerbread and Gargoyles
Sometimes a convergence of details comes together and simply provides a nice varied view.
Ornate
Old Church Roofs and Towers
Medieval Battlements
Two views of the same church, actually seen from the back on Oliver Avenue.
And, finally, just an interesting facade.
Nice Facade
Perspective on a Mural, 2009
“Yesterday’s Tomorrow”, looking up
I just love to look at this mural in Pittsburgh’s Cultural District, and I think it’s because unlike most others it’s not really figurative and it has an intentionally limited color palette. It does represent a city scene, but it could just as easily be a collection of shapes. It’s entitled “Yesterday’s Tomorrow” and was designed and painted by Brian Holderman. The mural can be seen at 900 Liberty Avenue in Pittsburgh. For reference, here’s a distance shot, below.
“Yesterday’s Tomorrow”
A Retro Autumn Afternoon, 2010
Enjoy the day.
The Decade retro and vintage clothing and wares store on Pittsburgh’s South Side opens its door to the warm autumn afternoon and places two retro-colored retro metal porch chairs outside. Have a seat! Enjoy the busy street and what turned out to be the last warm, sunny day for a while.
Some Last Looks at Autumn: In the City, 2009
Just Yellow Leaves
We know autumn is stunning on the hills and along the trails; a walk in the autumn woods can wash my soul clean as new. But that exciting splash of color among square and stolid buildings, hiding in the shadows of narrow streets but touched but the afternoon sun—now that is a welcome sight, and just as likely to cleanse the soul of the press of people and work on city streets. These yellow trees, some hybrid magnolia, I believe, having seen them bloom in spring, are planted in a curving line in a sculpture court at the corner of Sixth and Penn Avenues in downtown Pittsburgh.
Under Yellow Trees
Here people actually get to enjoy sitting under lemon-colored trees, near a granite sculpture of an eye. Just before I took this photo, several people who had been sitting there got up and boarded a bus. Darn! They looked great under the trees.
Yellow Trees, Blue Buildings
I may like this one the best since the impact of the trees on the urban landscape is clear.
And here’s one more, not as dramatic in color, but both the trees and the sculpture help to break up the vertical lines and rectangles in Mellon Square Park, a little farther uptown.
Respite from Rectangles
Pittsburgh at Night, 2011
Pittsburgh at Night
I don’t know why it’s always captivated me, but Pittsburgh at night, the modest buildings lit just right, bridges decorated with lights, all reflected on one river or another, has always been one of my favorite scenes. I took this series of photos and created a panorama on Monday night about 9:15, so many of the office buildings weren’t as well lit as they would have been earlier in the evening, but I never pass up a chance to stop on Mt. Washington to photograph the city.
This view is of “First Side”, along the Monongahela River right before it reaches the point; off to the right a little past center is the Smithfield Street Bridge, then in the darkness over the river is one bridge after another—Panhandle, Liberty, 10th Street, Birmingham, Hot Metal, then the bend where J&L Steel used to fire the night sky with an orange glow.
But even before that bend in the river, this little cluster of buildings coming to a point where a great river is born is all of downtown Pittsburgh. See other photos I’ve taken of Pittsburgh
Row Houses
Row of row houses.
This block houses eight families, right in that row of…row houses. These Lawrenceville row houses have always fascinated me—one room wide and three stories tall, tiny back yard and only a stoop out front. Sometimes a dozen family members lived in one, children growing up and going all through school, grandparents and aunts and uncles moving in or out, on that little narrow street. They were inexpensive, convenient to work in the mills, to whatever church you’d want to attend and to schools, and public transportation was always available as well as shopping right in walking distance. It’s amazing to see what is considered a family home today.
A Truly Unique Parking…Chair, 2009
A parking…toilet.
Surely people will think twice before moving this to swipe the parking space. If you can’t tell with the size of the image you see, it’s a bedside toilet.
You might need to be from Pittsburgh to understand the concept of “parking chair”. With crowded hilly streets built with houses before each household had four vehicles, parking spaces are at a premium in most neighborhoods.
If you want your parking space to be available when you get home from work, or after you’ve shoveled snow out of your spot and carried it into your back yard, the only place available for it, you typically take a “lawn chair”, usually one of those aluminum-frame numbers with woven nylon webbing that always need to be replaced in the spring fix up for your yard and porch, and simply place it in your parking spot and drive off. No self-respecting Pittsburgher would ever move a parking chair, though there are those who have little self-respect…
Other types of chairs can be used, but by and large, it’s a chair because anything else might be misinterpreted and helpfully placed on the sidewalk like a box, or a weight bench, or a…toilet.
This was spotted on 39th Street in Lawrenceville, right at the corner with Butler Street. Nope, I wouldn’t touch it.
Closeup of the parking toilet.
Pittsburgh Autumn Bridge, 2010
Pittsburgh Autumn Bridge
Well, I was stuck in traffic on a lovely autumn day, so I took a photo through the windshield. But it’s typical Pittsburgh, a suspension bridge, a steep hill covered with trees and peppered with houses, a few churches in various denominations mixed in, incredible clouds and a lovely blue above, plus you know there’s a river in there somewhere. Pittsburgh is a lovely city but on a day like yesterday it’s breathtaking.
I wish my travels had allowed me to safely take a few other photos, but you can’t just stop in the middle of traffic, let the camera focus and click a few times without some difficulty in traffic flow. I passed no fewer than five major universities and an international teaching hospital, probably a dozen or more national historic sites and the headweaters of the Ohio River, to name a few things, plus dozens of distinct neighborhoods.
I just wonder who got up there and painted the dinosaurs on the rigging.
It’s the 10th Street Bridge that connects downtown Pittsburgh with the South Side.
Straight Down
Straight Down
One of Pittsburgh’s typical steep brick streets. It’s the sort of thing most of us take for granted, but some out-of-towners are hesitant. Really, it’s survivable. We do it every day.
Morning Fog
Foggy Morning
Another foggy morning, this time on Mt. Washington in Pittsburgh, the sun shining right down Grandview Avenue.
Monongahela Fog
Monongahela Fog
A spectacularly foggy morning, the type that only autumn provides. This is a bend in the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh, the bit of a bridge you see is the Birmingham Bridge from the South Side Flats to the Boulevard of the Allies in the Lower Hill/Uptown/South Oakland. The steam rises from a concrete plant on Second Avenue, on the river’s edge, where the J&L Plant once stood; in the distance you see the first of the buildings in Oakland leading to Carlow University, Chatham University, the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. In this fog, this could have been taken decades ago, representing the smog from the mills. The mills are gone, the air and the rivers are relatively clean, but the colleges, the neighborhoods, the essence of Pittsburgh is still there in the rolling fog of an October morning.
Groovy, 2010
Groovy Building
A retro building is given a retro repaint from another era, but it works. I left a bit of the one next door, which is retro to yet another era, with perhaps a bit of shabby chic tossed into the look
This is Pittsburgh’s South Side where the main street is packed with building after building constructed around the turn of the last century or before. Most of the buildings still stand and some just get an update every few generations. It’s exciting to walk down the street and see one era or individual style after another; one of these days I’ll get around to a photo essay of the neighborhood.
I took this photo while sitting in traffic and didn’t get the chance for another shot to get the bottom of the building. I find the combination of colors, coral, purple and gold, really exciting, though I might have added a little turquoise or cobalt.
This, however, being Pittsburgh, it’s not complete without a little black and gold, in this case two posters for the Pittsburgh Penguins in the sidelight windows.
Roberto Clemente Bridge, 2011
The Roberto Clemente Bridge, Pittsburgh
I took a little drive through Pittsburgh this evening at dusk, and while I didn’t take this photo this evening, what I saw reminded me of it, the gold of one of Pittsburgh’s bridges, the deep blue of the evening sky reflected on the gentle ripples of the river, the lights dancing. I thought it would be nice to share.
This is the Roberto Clemente Bridge, the former Sixth Street Bridge crossing the Allegheny River from Downtown Pittsburgh to the North Side right next to PNC Park. It was lit on this night because there was a game at the field.
It’s the first of the “three sisters bridges”, the next being the Andy Warhol Bridge and then the Rachel Carson Bridge—sisters in spirit, perhaps. You can see the stone piers and a little of the bridge decks and suspension wires beyond this one. I’m kind of proud that these three bridges are named for these three people.
Patterns: 2010
Textures and Patterns
Buildings settle into where they are and straight courses of brick waver, roofs sag just a bit, chimneys shift comfortably, paint peels; the people who live there settle into patterns of use, windows open, blinds down; ever the opportunist, nature sends out roots, drops seeds, and grows wherever the conditions are right, adding her patterns of growth.
Patterns and angles, the bricks going one way, the ivy another, the shingles yet another, and shadows on all of it, a city house no doubt has stories to tell.
Pittsburgh Vista, 2010
Valley Vista
Down and down and down we go, where we stop–the river maybe? Sometimes it seems that way in some of Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods. This was taken from Shiloh Street on Mt. Washington, one of the highest points around, and I sometimes wonder how (and why) people managed to build on some of these hillsides, and the buildings are still standing.
I also think of people from years gone by who walked up and down these hills, and horses and mules who hauled people and goods up and down the streets.
Extreme Downhill, 2010
Mt. Washington Downhill
This street goes down and down and down and curves and bends and why would anyone build a street like this?! After the stop where you see the car’s taillights, the street curves and keeps going down and down and down.
It may have begun as a cow path from the pasture to the home up on the top of Mt. Washington—before the turn of the last century, many people kept livestock in their yards, and cows were regularly put out to pasture for the day in the closest field.
It may also have been a footpath since it goes straight down the hill, unlike a horse trail which would have curved around the hill or had switchbacks. Most horses would have some trouble negotiating a path this steep, and with a cart it would have been impossible.
Streets like this make Pittsburghers pretty fearless drivers.
One Thin Slice, 2010
One Thin Slice
What do you do when your city lot is at a 25 degree angle to the street? You build a building that looks completely normal from the front, but comes to a very slim edge at one corner. It’s very interesting from the outside, but I’d love to see what the rooms look like inside—what could you possibly put in the corner of a room like that?
This building is one of many along Shiloh Street in Mt. Washington, Pittsburgh, that are angled to the street in much the same way. Buildings of an interesting shape and narrow streets on extreme hills (tomorrow) make the neighborhoods a very interesting visit.
