Down, up, over
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described in prior posts, your humble narrator was recently cavitating through a section of Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood known as ‘Millionaires Row’ along Fifth Avenue. The latter byway then offered me egress through the Oakland section, whereupon I arrived at the veritable edge of this parcel of reality.
Fifth Avenue offers vehicle traffic an entrance to a high speed arterial road, called I-376, known colloquially as the ‘Parkway ‘east’ or ‘west.’ A particular annoyance for me is that there is no accommodation in place for pedestrians or bike riders to cross at the entrance ramp to this parkway, so you have to just wait for a break in the never ending stream of automobile traffic bleeding off the local grid and then onto 376. Dangerous.
Bah!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In this section of the country, the Governments need to install signage adjuring ‘no pedestrians’ or ‘motor vehicles only’ at on ramps for high speed roads. It may seem like overkill, that, but there’s a pretty sizable Amish and Mennonite population hereabouts. You don’t see them too often in the city, but they’re out there riding about in their horse drawn buggies. It’s also not uncommon for me to see some ‘english’ dude walking along the highway’s service lane or on the other side of the guard rails either, I’d mention.
For the Amish, everyone who’s not ‘Dutch’ is ‘English.’
It’s similar to the way that NYC’s Hasidim see the world: you’re either ‘Jewish’ or you’re ‘Goyem.’ Even other Jews, from different sects, are considered to be ‘goys’ to the fundamentalist eyes of the Hasidim.
Fundamentalists, huh? A bad joke from the neighborhood I grew up in, which was on the border of one of the Orthodox’s ‘zones’ in Midwood, was ‘Now Hasidim, now ya don’t.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Inviting pathway, no?
After following this pavement, and then being forced to cross against traffic at a bridge’s off ramps – because a cross walk was occupied entirely by idle construction equipment – one negotiated the shattered pavement of the Uptown area, and began to make my way towards the pedestrian entrance of the Birmingham Bridge.
There’s a lot of obstacles, and zero signage. Luckily, I’ve walked this section before and knew where to go. I was being eyeballed by a ‘creature of the street’ so it was decided to walk a little bit faster in order to avoid trouble.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s actually startling how few intentional pedestrians there are here, outside of areas like Oakland. It’s all about the motor vehicle in Pittsburgh.
I’m famously not an ideologue on this subject, but it’s quite startling.
It’s probably because parking is fairly easy in this city. Odds are you’ll find a free or meter spot pretty close to where you’re going, except Downtown or Oakland where you have to pay for the privilege in a garage. Even then, this is not NYC, so commercial parking seldom costs more than $10 – and usually it’s less than that.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Me? I like leaving the car at home in the driveway when I can, and getting around on foot. Since I don’t have to worry about getting back to the parked car, thereby, I’m free to wander and indulge in serendipity.
Additionally, if I want to stop off at a bar at the end of the walk and have a beer or two (which is often) I can without having to worry about intoxicated driving.
As you can see, I made it to the Birmingham Bridge. I took the opportunity for a quick ‘sit down’ on that concrete barrier that the lamp posts are attached to, and changed lenses. The zoom lens went into the bag, and a wide angle 16mm prime lens was affixed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Crepuscular Rays. That’s what those shafts of sunlight penetrating the clouds are called. You’re looking at the Monongahela River, which is likely pretty familiar to long time readers at this point.
I was heading over towards the South Side Works area, which would then place me within the East Carson street corridor. Both areas have a surfeit of bars and restaurants, and thereby there’s a fairly thriving nightlife economy. East Carson operates and looks a lot like first or second avenue did back in NYC’s East Village.
As mentioned, I was meeting up with Our Lady of the Pentacle for a dinner out, which is a fairly rare thing for us these days. We normally cook at home, in a nicely sized suburban style kitchen.
Back tomorrow.
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Oakland 2 Uptown
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One last mansion, from Pittsburgh’s ‘Millionaire’s Row’ on Fifth Avenue in Shadyside. This one is called called the Hillman house.
The next section of this particular scuttle would see me moving through a very, very different section of Pittsburgh, called Oakland.
A quite urban section of the City, it’s replete with ritual centers for the various religious denominations, universities, and you’ll observe vast campuses of hospitals and college buildings.
Traffic is always heavy here and it’s the only place in Pittsburgh, other than nearby a stadium on a game day, that I’ll regularly observe thousands of pedestrians milling about.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Eventually, I’m going to properly explore Oakland – on foot – in a block by block fashion, but on this particular outing my goal was to get through it as quickly as possible. Your humble narrator had an evening assignation with Our Lady of the Pentacle, during which we were going to meet up for a dinner ‘out’ at a restaurant, and I was anxious about getting myself over to that comparatively far flung area where we’d be meeting up.
When you’re on foot, most places are far flung.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Fifth Avenue corridor in Oakland is a congested mess. Street construction is never ending, and they’re building a couple of new hospitals, and there’s ten million college kids milling around, and grinding red light related traffic is omnipresent. I don’t fear driving through here, because I’m a former New Yorker, and this still ain’t what I’d call ‘traffic.’
If you’re not being forced into pushing your car’s transmission lever into the ‘park’ modality while sitting still in a trench on the BQE, or find yourself admiring Maspeth from up on the LIE, it ain’t traffic.
The Yinzers, on the other hand, would seemingly rather have bamboo shoots inserted under their fingernails rather than sit in this sort of slow down. Road rage is always on display here in Pittsburgh. That makes this sort of traffic dangerous to move around on foot.
As a note: the middle pedal in front of the driver’s seat activates the brake. Cars don’t just move forward – they can slow down, and stop too. Also, you can turn the steering wheel fully during a turn, it’s not just small adjustments and then driving up and over on the sidewalk’s curb.
These are people who have lived and learned to drive without the gentle guidance of the NYPD showing them the way, to be fair.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Polio was cured somewhere along this stretch. Jonas Salk, vaccines, scientific miracle – all that. Remember this as being part of ‘reality,’ as it’s also called ‘history.’
One managed to negotiate his way through the crowds of students, and started thinking about the next leg of this scuttle. I had already decided to attenuate certain plans…
It should be mentioned that this walk occurred on the one year anniversary of the broken ankle incident. My original plan had involved some ‘showing off,’ thusly, but I thought better of it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was planning on spitting in the eye of my stair based PTSD by walking down the most insane set of City Steps which I’ve encountered so far in Pittsburgh – the ones leading down from ‘The Bluff’ nearby Duquesne University. In a rare moment of comportment, one reconsidered that plan and decided that it would be ‘daring the universe’ to do so.
One will be scuttling those steps again, just… not yet.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Plan B involved crossing the Monongahela River via the Birmingham Bridge, just under a mile away, and downhill at that. More on that one tomorrow.
Remember: if it looks bad, don’t look, and always save the last bullet for yourself.
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Where the ‘other 1%’ lived
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As has been mentioned previously, one of my little ‘Pitt Projects’ is devoted to getting to intimately know the place, and this has seen me walking along the ‘long’ streets and avenues found on the central peninsula/spine of Pittsburgh – streets which all ultimately terminate nearby the downtown area at the ‘point’ of the golden triangle.
For this scuttle, I had used a rideshare to drop my sorry ass off over in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and along Fifth Avenue.
Cool architecture, there. Residential, though, which I don’t normally photograph – as it freaks people out when some strange old guy in an orange baseball cap and wearing a Cuban shirt walks up with a camera and starts to take pictures of their houses.
I really prefer the industrial stuff, anyway. Also, liminal spaces like bridges, and railway stations and tracks… tugboats, too… that’s me. I have to keep moving, or I’ll stop moving, so I’m always looking for something to look at while I’m scuttling about. This time around, it’s a section of the Fifth of Pittsburgh’s many Avenues.
During the gilded age, this section was where the millionaires of Pittsburgh lived. In the 19th century, being a Millionaire was quite similar to being a Billionaire in the 21st century.
Whereas I do appreciate a good palace (but prefer castles), it should be mentioned that it’s impossible for me not to be filled with vestigial ‘class rage’ when observing the mansions where these robber barons lived. Maybe it was ‘great’ then, America, but the ‘divvy up’ of the ‘ole cashiola’ sure wasn’t fair.
There’s a reason that workers fought and died for collective bargaining and unionization rights in the Chicago Stock Yards, on the docks of NYC, and in the steel mills of Pittsburgh. A lot of modern corporate America actually still operates under union rules – paid days off, various insurance policies, the 40 hour week, all that HR stuff you need to oblige about health and safety… we collectively owe that generation a debt.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I know that I’ve likely reignited a conversation about ‘Robber Barons’ vs. ‘Captains of Industry’ in the comments section again… sorry, not meaning to be provocative there, but I’ve read a lot more 19th century newspapers, magazines, and technical/scientific journals (in pursuit of Newtown Creek History, n’atch) than most people have and I’ll report to you that America’s post civil war to WW1 period was a freaking political powder keg of inequality and political corruption that was just waiting to blow. FDR and the New Deal staved off a revolution.
Anarchists were blowing stuff up, assassins going after the Capitalists in their offices and on the streets, boom and bust economic chaos, bank failures… there were socialists of different philosophical schools fighting with each other in the streets, the temperance leagues, the rise of organized crime, the decaying power of Tammany in NYC… it was… not a great time. There was a real scent of revolution and class war in the air back then.
The ‘millionaires row’ section here in Pittsburgh, though, that’s what this post is about. All else above is context for a forgotten time.
A lot of these buildings have been carved up into apartments, hotels, or condos and many provide student housing for the kids at Carnegie Mellon and Pitt. Saying that, and despite my working class contempt for this sort of situation, there are some fine looking buildings on display in this stretch. Here’s a link in Google Maps that’s centered in on one of these structures, which is pictured below, that has been converted over to a luxury short stay hotel. Why not use street view and have a quick ‘look around’ the area for yourself?
I often/almost always use street view to ‘scout’ a bit before I commit to a walking path. Gives me an idea of what to look for, and which lenses and or gear to bring with me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was a warm and summery day in Pittsburgh, and it was late in the afternoon during this scuttle.
Speaking of gear; I was carrying a fairly minimal ‘kit’ with me. A zoom lens on the camera, and a few ‘fast’ primes in a sling – bag just in case I found myself wandering into a church or something. In the end, I only used the zoom and stayed out of doors, but it’s better to not need something that you’ve got with you than to need something which you left at home.
I kept on thinking about my pal Kevin Walsh from Forgotten-NY, who would have likely loved this particular walk. Right up his alley, as it were.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned, a lot of student housing was on display. It was an interesting potpourri of styles and eras, as you could see various architectural epochs playing out in wood and stone. Brutalist, gothic, mid century modern, you name it.
All of this is set against Pittsburgh’s crazy terrain. This area is somewhat level and flat, as a note. Shadyside and Oakland seems to have been built on a bit of a plateau, up in the hillocks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The McCook family estate, that’s what that is. A landmark, it was built as a private home for the family of one of Henry Clay Frick’s lawyers. It’s a landmark property, built between 1906 and 1907.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This structure is a real beauty, as far as vampire mansions go. The Negley–Gwinner–Harter House is located at 5061 Fifth Avenue, and apparently this area is still in the neighborhood of Shadyside. Another landmark, this building is owned privately.
On, your humble narrator scuttled.
Forward, ever forward – now – more than ever.
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Hey Now! Friday Edition.
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
HEY NOW! I had arrived at the Sly Fox Brewery outfit’s ‘Highline’ location, and started a tab. I’ve seen these tracks referred to as either the ‘Pittsburgh Subdivision’ or as the ‘Keystone Subdivision.’
Just as I was sitting down outside the brewery, with a lovely pint of stout, CSX #2656 thundered through while heading in a westerly direction.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hey now! Emanating from the west, #7411 hurtled past next. It was quite a busy afternoon, I should mention, for the employees of CSX. I was only there for about two hours, but the hits kept on coming.
I’m going out of my way not to look up the make and models of these trains, as a small section of my soul seems to die everytime I do.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hey now! Next up was CSX #7391. Really, it was a very busy afternoon for the CSX folks.
As I’ve been learning about rail here in Pittsburgh, one of the things I’ve gleaned is that ‘getting the shot’ is all about finding where the railroad choke points which they have to pass through are. It’s just like fishing.
Luckily, this particular choke point is found alongside a decent bar with outdoor seating.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
#7391 is either brand new or it’s just been repainted. That’s one of the highest quality ‘finishes’ I’ve ever seen on a freight train. Shiny and all specular, with actual reflectivity. Wow.
I went inside to the bar and paid my tab, then headed back outside to start my journey back to HQ in Dormont.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hey now! The signal arms began to chime again just as I walked back outside, and this time it was CSX #7563 that was flowing towards me.
This train’s finishes were in the sort of corroded and scratched up condition which most freight trains usually are observed in.
All beat up, and quite a counterpoint to #7391.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It had been a nice day, really.
Back next week with something different at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Sky Palaces & the ultramundane
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of Quentin Tarantino’s ‘bits,’ from the ‘Kill Bill’ movies, offers the supposition that Clark Kent isn’t a secret identity for Superman – rather it’s that Clark Kent is commentary on humanity, and revelatory as to how the Man of Steel regards mankind. Weak, cowardly, indirect, messy, all that. That’s balderdash, Superman has the most ‘humanity’ amongst all of the fictional men. He’s a miracle.
Philip Johnson, architect of PPG Place here in Pittsburgh, was a guy whom I’d imagine didn’t like the idea of humanity very much. Whenever I’ve found myself walking around or within his buildings, a sensation of ‘inhuman’ jumps out of me. You can exist in Johnson’s work, but not ‘live’ there. The architecture is the main character, and you’re just a ‘walk on’ extra. Johnson lived in a glass house, literally, and threw stones all the time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saying that, Johnson’s stuff is always pretty photogenic. I’ve got an idea for a cool shot in this area, one of my rare ‘moving image’ forays. Planning on trying to surmount the ordeal of capturing it as the winter gets closer, and the skies grow more dynamic.
I’ll need fast moving weather for what I’ve got in mind.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I had a few errands to run, and then the afternoon would be mine to waste. A couple last shots from downtown, and I was heading across the river to the usual spot at Sly Fox Brewery, for what ended up being a fairly productive late afternoon session of shooting trains.
One headed over to the Smithfield Street Bridge to cross the river.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Cola Street caught my eye again during the effort, with its Color House. That vehicle bridge in the shot is a part of the PJ McArdle Roadway, which I’ve walked down several times.
The Paris of Appalachia, yo.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On my walk to the brewery, I spotted a BNSF locomotive moving along CSX’s Subdivision tracks. Movers and shakers, BNSF is the country’s largest railroading outfit and operates over 8,000 locomotives.
They seemed nice.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A bit closer to Sly Fox Brewery and the concrete company next door to it was unloading what looked like sand from a barge. A crane handled the work and conveyor belts transported the market across the tracks and into the mixing vessels.
Your humble narrator repeated his usual ritual of using the brewery’s lavatory and then ordering a pint of beer, starting a tab. I planned on hanging out here for a while, and photographing trains.
More on that tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
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The Newtown Pentacle 