in pigment
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Normally, when I show you a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge, it’s the full sized one and it’s overflying the East River. Instead, having driven some 400 miles from NYC to the Pittsburgh area, and then to one of its smaller neighbors – Saxonburg – I encountered this version of the “Great Bridge” at the John A Roebling House and park. There’s an 1832 vintage wooden cabin preserved there which the great engineer used as a workshop, and Roebling was one of the founders of the town.
No matter how far away you go, there’s a chunk of NYC waiting there for you. Inescapable. Saxonburg was a lovely, lovely town, overall. It looked just like a Norman Rockwell painting, or the setting of a Frank Capra movie. We found a coffee shop on their Main Street, and after getting fueled up with caffeine, headed back in the direction of Pittsburgh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily for me, the return trip to the City of Pittsburgh was My Pal Max’s turn to drive, and I got to shoot out of the car windows as he did so. We stopped off on the way to check out a few other spots on the route. Pittsburgh hosts 73 distinct neighborhoods, and many them are wildly different from the one “next door.” There’s a few picture perfect suburbs, several lightly populated exurbs, dense urbanity – you name it, and they’ve got an example to show you.
Everything here is connected via a network of expressways, highways, and secondary arterial roads. There’s a light rail system in the center of the city, and a network of bus routes which all converge on the downtown area. The buses are venous, as in they all go the heart of the City from the outlying areas. Unfortunately, if you want to transfer from one line to the next, you’d need to go all the way into town to do so, or so I’m told. Observationally, there’s a lot of neighborhood level bike riding, but getting from place to place is largely accomplished by driving a motor vehicle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Crossing the Allegheny River, where the skyline of Pittsburgh suddenly rears up. That curvy roofed structure is the Pittsburgh Convention Center, and the black rail bridge in front of it was actively conveying a freight train over the water.
These shots were gathered right around “rush hour” in Pittsburgh. Traffic was moving slowly, at maybe 25 mph, during the rush.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The highway we were on was going to carry us through the downtown area to another bridge crossing, one over the Monongahela River.
Along the way, I kept on clicking the shutter.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve always been fascinated by the parabolas and massing shapes of highway ramps, even as a kid. There’s something sublime about them, and it’s always impressive to me that something this utilitarian can be visually interesting. Might as well make it look good too, right?
They used to care a lot more about this sort of esthetic impact in the early 20th century than they do now, the Civil Engineering types.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the Monongahela River, I spotted this tug towing several barges of minerals – presumptively coke or coal. These river tugs are configured quite a bit differently than the harbor or ocean going units I typically see. They also tow the cargo differently in this region, with multiple barges stacked up in front of the vessel.
More tomorrow.
“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.
lattice windows
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Driving in Western Pennsylvania feels like a blood sport in comparison to the stop and go traffic of NYC. They don’t fool around out here, as far as aggressively pushing their vehicles forward, and high speed roads abound. My pal Max and I were on a “seeing tour” of the greater metropolitan area surrounding Pittsburgh during the last week of August, visiting the various population centers.
“Spokes and wheels” is how a long time resident described the setup of one community to another out here to me. The wheels being the population centers, with the spokes highways and expressways.
Even in the center of the city of Pittsburgh itself, traffic was moving along at a decent clip – to my eyes – but I currently live in a place where it’s not uncommon to spend 90 minutes crossing a 25-30 mile distance. Locals talk about horrific delays at rush hour, and the frustration of getting caught up in choke points leading to a certain tunnel or bridge, but compared to what I’m used to… I suppose it’s a matter of perspective and that it doesn’t matter where you are or how fast it’s moving – it’s still traffic congestion.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We were heading north on this particular day. Eponymous in name, the county of Butler is where you find its governmental center – and our destination – the City of Butler. Butler is 35 miles north of Pittsburgh proper, but it feels like it’s part of a different world. Distance is very, very different in this part of the country. 35 miles from my house is where Staten Island is – a two hour drive with a bunch of tolls.
My pal Max and I were heading north for the day in his late model Mercedes, and he took the morning drive on. At least until we stopped off for the sort of heavy breakfast that I favor on “away games.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the 1885 vintage Butler County Courthouse pictured above, which is the tallest building in the municipality. It’s also the local seat of Government, and there were all sorts of Lawyerly, Uniformed, and Politician type people milling about its immediate vicinity.
Max and I decided to split up, and I marched the camera over to an overpass’s pedestrian sidewalk to try and get a few good views of the place.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An amazing residential structure caught my eye, once which immediately said “rooming house or former hotel” to me. The building seemed to be of wooden construction. I flashed the lens around here and there, but in no ordered manner. I’m planning on getting to know these exurb areas well, after relocating to the region at the end of the year. Butler, as it turns out, was Diamond Jim Brady’s factory town.
As I’ve said several times in this series of posts – there is so much to learn.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One was quite amused at the setup on the fire escape on the building which caught my eye. I used to have a gas grill on my porch in Astoria, until I was told by a friend who works for the FDNY that such a setup is considered “murder level” illegal by the fire inspectors. Fines, AND jail time, he said.
After spending about a half hour waving the camera around at various points of interest in Butler, I had to head back towards my pal Max, and his late model Mercedes. We had other places to visit, on our “seeing tour” of the Greater Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We were heading off towards a fairly rural area that has a huge historical footprint next. One reconfigured the camera to the now familiar settings I was using for the last few days, which allowed for the capture of landscape snapshots that we were driving past at 70 mph.
More tomorrow.
“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.
no mollycoddle
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After my last trip to the Pittsburgh area, one of the places that really stuck out for me was the City of Wheeling in West Virginia. It’s another one of the so called “rust belt” cities, and is in the middle of trying to reinvent its downtown. It’s a small city, with about 27,000 people living in the city center, but with nearly 150,000 residents residing in the Greater Wheeling Metropolitan Area. The Ohio River defines not just one of its borders, but West Virginia’s border with the State of Ohio. Wheeling is about 60 miles west/southwest from Pittsburgh.
Pictured throughout this post in the 1849 vintage Wheeling Suspension Bridge.
Here’s a mega massive panorama of the Ohio River span, with the more modern Fort Henry Bridge visible in the background.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I find Wheeling very, very interesting – speaking from a photographic point of view. While we driving around, one of the destinations which I wanted to check out was a small overlook park found high above the city. That’s the Ohio River again on the right hand side. I plan on returning here in the future, and especially so during the cold months when the trees are less vivacious.
We had other destinations to visit, after all.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My pal Max had an interest in Pennsylvania’s Washington County. We drove there, and we were soon standing in front of the magnificent 1900 vintage Washington County Courthouse. This governmental facility is where the seat of Washington County is found.
Washington, PA. also hosts Washington and Jefferson College, and it used to be a “railroad city.” Then it was an “oil city.”
This municipality was at the very center of the Whiskey Rebellion in 1791-94 that challenged the authority of the newly minted Federal Government to tax its citizens. It got all the way up to President George Washington marching towards the rebels with 13,000 militia troops following him.
Shit get real when George Washington is coming at you with an army, yo. That’s what they say in Washington.
No, not really.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was pretty impressed by the grandiosity and obvious abundance of funding which were incorporated into this court house building. Surprisingly, while casting my research nets out, one of the little fishies that came back revealed that the Pittsburgh Railway Company operated an inter urban trolley service between 1909 and 1953 between Washington and Pittsburgh.
Another pretty interesting place, and not terribly far from Pittsburgh either. Western Pennsylvania is fascinating.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned, the Washington County Seat is found here, and apparently there’s an architecturally noteworthy City Hall as well, quite nearby where I was standing. In one of the cardinal distances, pictured above, the spires of the Washington and Jefferson College campus rise above the town.
The other direction though…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Something wicked this way comes, thought a humble narrator, and that we should start driving my pal Max’s Mercedes in the opposite direction of an oncoming thunderhead and back towards Pittsburgh with haste.
More! Next Week! 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.
perceptible resemblance
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was my pal Max’s first time in Pittsburgh, so we took a grandiose walk around a downtown area known as the “Golden Triangle,” after crossing the Monongahela River on the South Tenth Street Bridge. We walked crosstown to the Allegheny River and then over a bridge or two to the North Side. That’s the Fort Duquesne Bridge pictured above.
We wandered about for several hours, and feeling a bit thirsty, decided to go looking for a place to sell us a glass or two of beer.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After crossing the Allegheny River via another span from the north side, we headed for a tavern rich area called “The Strip District,” and passed by this demolition project. I can officially say that this cold storage warehouse had caught my eye the last time I was in town, so seeing it midway through being torn down was a bit of a surprise. It looked like a Godzilla had taken a bite out of it.
There you go.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This was a Sunday, when these shots were captured, so no work on the project was taking place. There were lots of people milling about wearing Steeler’s colors. There was a preseason game scheduled for the evening, and there were lots of yellow towels being carried around by fans of the “sports ball” franchise.
As mentioned – Sunday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sunday is, I’m told, the day that the Goyem go to a church. Accordingly. the doors of St. Stanislaus Kostka R. C. Church were open and inviting signage sat in the aperture.
Well… like a vampire am I. An open door and an invitation? Yes, please.
This Polish church is locally famous, as the future Pope John Paul 2 once randomly showed up here to lead a service, while he was still holding the rank of Cardinal.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wow. Beautiful sacred space, this.
We asked: Cardinal Karol Józef Wojtyła was in town, as described by some of the lovely people caring for the church, to receive an award from one of the universities. He was staying at the home of a local business magnate who was of Polish ethnicity, and decided that he wanted to lead a mass service locally before attending the awards ceremony, so St. Stanislaus Kostka was suggested to him by his host as it’s the sister church of the one in Poland which Wojtyła’s ministry was based out of.
The modern church people described the encounter with the future Pope to us, which involved a stretch limo arriving in front of the church unannounced, and a red robed Cardinal suddenly getting out and walking in. There’s a small altar set up to the side of the main pulpit, pictured above, which commemorates the visit and event.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The folks at the Church were really nice and friendly, gave us a few tips on other wonders of the Catholic Church in the area that sounded incredible. I was told that there’s a Reliquary on nearby Troy Hill that contains one of the largest collections of such items in North America.
I told them I’d be back in January, and wanted to talk more. I also want to properly photograph this amazing structure at some point.
“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.
people leave
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After quaffing breakfast at some greasy spoon restaurant in the South Side Flats section, on a recent trip to Pittsburgh, my pal Max and I then walked across the South 10th street Bridge spanning the Monongahela River. I’m told that it’s the longest bridge over the Monongahela in Pittsburgh, and the only proper cable suspension bridge in Allegheny County – which Pittsburgh itself is the seat of.
When we were leaving the South Side Flats area, a rough looking fellow rose from his roadside campsite near the bridge and began stalking us as we moved along. He was obviously meditating on some sort of action which would deprive me of the camera, which I thought was just adorable.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
He followed us clear across the bridge, and then onto the land for a ways. Being a lifetime New Yorker, I’d rate this fellow’s menacing as being amateurish and clumsy. A NYC villain would have rushed at me, knocking me down, then grabbed what he came for and ran away. This guy was incredibly hesitant in his nefarious plans, and since I refused to meet his gaze, he had no “opening” to exploit. A shy mugger.
I’m not proud of the criminal element in NYC, as a note. Nor am I saying that there aren’t hard cases hereabouts in Pittsburgh whom you want to avoid. I’m just saying that I found this fellow adorable.
People are very polite in this part of the country, even the scumbags.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wow! For an infrastructure geek like myself, Pittsburgh is heavenly.
I’m told that the South 10th street bridge connects to a staircase which leads to the nearby Duquesne University, but we were heading in a different direction – across the downtown area and towards the Allegheny River/North Side.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m also told that there’s some sort of parking lot down by the Monongahela River in this area that you want to avoid due it flooding regularly. That’s likely where that car was coming from in the shot above.
This part of Pittsburgh’s downtown was where we walked by the local jailhouse, and there were a few other law enforcement and governmental looking offices nearby.
Pittsburgh was talking about a population of homeless people in late August, who have set up housekeeping this summer since I was last there in June. A largish group of them had encamped along the Three Rivers Trails in tents. This has made the television news, and drawn critique for their new Mayor from his City Council.
To my observation in late August, there were about 25-30 tents and several were full of “Crusty’s” – traveling folk that are unable to exist in “polite society” for one reason or another, and are seldom in any once place for very long. Modern versions of the old timey Railroad Hobos, with a distinct culture and cultic language which only initiates of their society can interpret, the Crusty’s. The rest of the population on the trails were people living rough and on the down and out. Pittsburgh is expanding its homeless shelter system, which they hope to absorb some of the tent people into and find them some help in staying housed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pittsburgh definitely does have a population of street people, something I’ve mentioned while describing the place during prior visits. Many wear the “Heroin Mask,” as I describe it – sunken eyes, shallow or toothless jaws, pale and underfed, with “visible skull.” In Pittsburgh, they’re mostly wearing clean clothes, though, these street people. That means they have somewhere to go, and where they can do laundry.
I suspect that the local gendarme encourage these street people to “do their thing” in the downtown area, rather than in the residential neighborhoods, using the sort of gentle persuasion that American Police Departments are famous for. NYPD unofficially does something similar regarding Times Square, Rockefeller Center, and the Herald Square areas during tourist seasons. It’s why you see so many campsites on the extreme east and west sides of midtown (post Covid) where the tourist types don’t go, and not that many in the center regions where these tourists spend and spend and spend.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
See – I just did it again, explained experiences and places in Pittsburgh by using metaphors and anecdotes about NYC. This is the psychological barrier which a humble narrator currently wrestles with. I’m not desirous of being a “Noo Yawker” in Pittsburgh, if you know what I mean. What I am desirous of is “getting with the program” and learning the local milieu, as it were.
More tomorrow.
“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.
The Newtown Pentacle 