Posts Tagged ‘Downtown Pittsburgh’
Focal lengths
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve said it a thousand times – you can’t see anything from a vehicle, especially when you’re the driver. It has to be walking, for me, if you want to notice something interesting about a city. The shots in today’s post were gathered from an automobile’s POV, I’d mention, and your humble narrator is frustrated at his need for transportation and wishes that this whole broken ankle business would just end already. I’m done.
Yesterday, one had a few errands to run, which took me about an hour and a half to accomplish. The rest of the day was mine, and the weather had unexpectedly abandoned its ultra cold and snowy character to reveal blue sky and sunlight. I had the camera bag sitting in the passenger seat and the camera securely perched next to the thing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Would have been a great day for a winter walk, if it wasn’t for all of the hard packed ice clinging to the pavement everywhere. Medical opinion is that I’m coming out of this experience with a bit of PTSD related to the injury, so that ice situation filled me with anxiety and dread. My scuttling is careful and hesitant at the moment, with an uneven gait. Balance issues also seem to be a new entry onto my dance card. Wonderful, say I. Nothing like ‘dangling participles’ which you have to deal with long after a traumatic event occurred to remind you about it – constantly, and especially so around descending flights of steps.
Since I had the car with me, for which I had to worry about parking and such, my position kept on changing and I ranged across the city on a day when nothing particularly interesting was happening. Not five minutes after I left this spot – of course – a CSX freight train ran through, which I missed getting a shot of. If I was on foot… if only… bah!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was a pretty frustrating afternoon, actually. One was trying to ‘force it,’ which never works out well. Pittsburgh wasn’t cooperating with my aspirations. The light wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. Salt powder is on the wind, lifting up off of all the roadways whenever a car or truck drove by, lending everything a bit of an orange cast as light filters through it.
Saying all that, I’m practically doing this blog live right now, and the pixels are ‘still wet’ on these shots. One two hour walk would provide for serendipity, but that’s way outside of my capability at the moment.
Back 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.
Vir Bonus
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shot above was captured on an entirely different day than the two following it, but it makes for a nice ‘establishing shot’ of where this particular walk started out for me. On the evening that this photo was actually captured, I was attending a work event at the Carnegie Science Center that was produced by the Adobe software outfit.
There was a mixer with food and drink, and a presentation about the company’s latest offerings. The mixer part of the night was fun, and I got to meet a few local artists and photographers. We were allowed out onto an elevated terrace at the Carnegie Science Center, one which overlooks the center of things here in Pittsburgh.
Later in the week, when the other shots were gathered – it was a short walk sort of day. After a ride into town on the T light rail, your humble narrator could be observed scuttling down the very road pictured above.
There wasn’t really a game plan for this walk, other than to just keep moving and kick my feet around.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whenever I’m in this area, a visit to the Mr. Rogers memorial occurs.
It’s always a good thing to be reminded that trying to be a good person doesn’t mean that you always are one, but that the most important thing is to try. Everyone is special, in their own way, Mr. Rogers opined. Also, he liked people just the way they are. Try some of that today, I’d suggest. Be kind.
Gosh, the world was a better place with Mr. Rogers in it. It’s no mistake that I wanted to live in his neighborhood (which was actually Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill section where I could not afford to live, I’d mention, but there you are) in this part of my life.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This walk was but a part of my plans for the rest of the day. After the effort, Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself would be meeting up with friends back home and attending what turned out to be an incredibly lame ‘Ghost Tour’ of the Dormont suburb that HQ is located in. What the narrative turned out to be was essentially the top five Google hits for ‘unsolved capital crimes in Dormont.’ Disappointing.
Reflecting on Mr. Rogers’ message of positivity, however, the host did her best and brought a group of thirty or so strangers together on a Friday night for fun. Bless.
Back tomorrow with more.
“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.
Benedum-Trees Building roof tour
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described in posts all week long – Our Lady of the Pentacle and I purchased tickets for and attended one of Mark Houser’s ‘Antique Skyscraper’ tours. Houser is a journalist, author, and public speaker whose interests revolve around skyscrapers and the people who built them. A Pittsburgh native, Houser offers scheduled architectural tours, and in person presentations in his areas of expertise. Speaking as someone who’s hosted a walking tour or two over the years, I was impressed by his easy demeanor and command of the material.
It’s harder than it looks, guiding tours.
The last destination was the Benedum-Trees building, found in Downtown Pittsburgh. This corridor used to be (as Houser described it) the Wall Street of Pittsburgh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Built in 1905, on Pittsburgh’s Fourth Avenue – by a female(!) real estate developer named Caroline Jones Machesney – this 19 story tall building was sold to two oil drilling magnates – Joe Trees, and Michael Late Benedum, in 1913. It seems that Machesny opposed Women’s suffrage, and contributed heavily towards opponents of that effort to allow full citizenship for women in the United States, which is probably why you’ve never heard of her – as Mr. Houser opined.
Mr. Houser wrote a profile of the place, and Machesny, for pittsburghmagazine.com which he contributes to regularly. It also hosts a photo of the building’s modern day owners, and a rooftop deck which Houser brought our group to, as the final stop on his antique skyscrapers tour.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Commanding views of ‘PPG Plaza,’ which is architect Philip Johnson’s somewhat sterile and anti-human Neo-Gothic design, are available from up top at the Benedum-Trees building. A vast and castellated mirror series of mirror boxes, PPG place is somewhat off putting to me. It relegates street level life to a series of cardboard cut outs, and denies any sort of organic interaction in favor of clean lines and a worshipful treatment of the building’s materials rather than the recognizing the people within the thing nor the teeming masses without.
That’s my opinion on the esthetic, by the way, and like butt-holes – everyone’s got one.
I moved along the fenced in deck, waving the camera about and recording the scenes. Run and gun, as I always say in such circumstances.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This one looks towards the Allegheny River, with the 31 story and 1988 vintage Highmark building – aka Fifth Avenue Place – in focus. As a point of trivia, WWE Wrestler Kurt Angle’s construction worker father David was killed in an accident at this site in 1984.
The area surrounding these points of view are what I refer to as the ‘ceremonial center’ of the city, with the nearby ‘market square’ and ‘PPG plaza’ hosting events and serving as a gathering place for people during municipal occurrences. An ice rink is set up in PPG Plaza during the winter, and the most recent ‘Picklesburgh’ promotion was set up here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The tour was winding down, and we were directed towards the elevators to disburse. We thanked Mr. Houser for sharing his expertise and decided to grab dinner, locally, afterwards. We visited an outpost of Primanti Brothers, and each quaffed one of their ridiculously excessive sandwiches, along with a glass of cold beer. If you’re visiting Pittsburgh, you’ve got to eat at Primanti’s, in the same way that you have to go to Katz’s if you’re in NYC. It’s a thing.
We left the car at HQ, so it was a cab ride back to HQ in nearby Dormont for us.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I shot all of these ‘high above’ photos using the new 24-240mm lens which I’ve recently acquired, and this set of views were its official ‘try out’ mission. I’m keeping the thing.
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.
Frick Building roof tour
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described yesterday, Our Lady of the Pentacle and your humble narrator had purchased tickets for, and attended, one of Mark Houser’s ‘Antique Skyscraper’ tours. After visiting the Koppers Building, the next stop on the tour was the Frick Building.
Frickin Frick, that mother fricker, he was a fricker of the friskiest order.
Not a fan of Frick, me. Sorry, this rant gets long…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This guy… the term ‘Robber Baron’ was pretty much coined to describe Frick, and his business tactics. I’ve written a lot about the so called ‘Captains of Industry’ phase of history, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in the past and have betrayed my personal ennui towards these monstrous creatures.
Due to all of my history work on Newtown Creek, back in NYC, Emperor Palpatine of the Galactic Empire John D. Rockefeller and his Standard Oil Trust have occupied a lot of my attentions over the years. Modern thought has been kind to old John D.’s reputation, but those who were alive at the same time as him considered Rockefeller to be the Devil incarnate. Their impression of him survives in Mr. Potter from the ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ film, and in comic book villains like Lex Luthor. There was no George Bailey nor a Superman to oppose him, and his fortune allowed him to pick and choose Senators and Presidents.
Say what you might about old John D., but you have to respect his rise, and how he single-handedly built the American petroleum industry into the modern day behemoth that it is. He was ruthless, severe… and the king of lassez-faire capitalism. If anyone could return from the dead in the name of pure malice and a desire to control all mankind – it would be John D. Rockefeller.
Henry Clay Frick, on the other hand, was a money man who got his start in financing the manufacture of Coke for the steel industry. His coke business led to him partnering up with Andrew Carnegie, and then into the steel business, which made him fabulously wealthy in an era before income taxes.
The gentleman’s fishing club he was a leading member of had dammed a waterway to create a stocked fishing lake, for Frick and his Millionaire buddies. Their earthen dam and a lack of care towards its upkeep pretty much caused the Johnstown Flood of 1889, which killed more than 2,000 people.
Frick’s absolute antipathy towards negotiating with Steel Worker Unions, and Organized Labor in general, reached its height at the Homestead Pump House on July 6th in 1892, when he sent in 300 armed Pinkerton Detectives to break a strike. When that effort devolved into a battle – which the Pinkertons lost – Frick used his political influence to have Pennsylvania’s Governor send in 4,000 soldiers to defend his prerogatives. An anarchist assassin from NYC later attempted to murder Frick in response, shooting him in the ear (I know, that’s a weird coincidence), and neck, and also stabbed him in the leg. Frick survived, somehow.
After the Homestead strike, Andrew Carnegie’s guilty conscience caused him to sell off his steel interests, and the partnership with Frick, to JP Morgan – whose consolidation of the steel industry eventually formed U.S. Steel. Morgan’s later consolidation of railroads was checked by Rockefeller, but that’s another story.
Frick, as opposed to Carnegie, built a vast and private art collection. He also used his political influence to have business rivals appointed to Ambassadorships in foreign countries, mainly to get them out of his way. The events at Homestead shattered Carnegie and Frick’s partnership at Carnegie Steel, with the two men becoming bitter enemies and rivals for the rest of their lives.
Frick died in a mansion in NYC in 1919, left behind his priceless art collection to museums, and his will disbursed some of his massive property holdings for usage as parkland in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. The Frick Building still stands in Pittsburgh, and its lobby is where this portrait bust was photographed by your humble narrator.
This wasn’t at all a part of Mr. Houser’s narrative, by the way… I just happen to know a lot about Frick, and as stated: not a fan.
Now that all of that is out of my Frickin way…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The tour saw us travel up the twenty stories held hostage within the Frick Building’s walls to a rooftop deck. The Frick building was designed by D.H. Burnham, whose team of architects remain famous for their design of Chicago’s ‘White City,’ during the World’s Colombian Exposition in 1893. Burnham was also responsible for several important building projects during that era, and left behind an outsized footprint.
Me? I got busy with the camera, as this sort of bird’s eye view of Downtown is something which I’ve felt a desire to capture, since moving to Pittsburgh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As often stated, I’m fascinated by the parabolas and arcing shapes of highway interchanges. That’s the interchange of ‘Boulevard of the Allies’ and ‘Crosstown Blvd.’ pictured above. The ramps leading to the right of the shot lead to the Liberty Bridge, a crossing over the Monongahela River, and the ones leading left in the shot eventually interchange with I-579.
Robert Moses was involved in the design of this set of structures, believe it or not, in an advisory role to the City of Pittsburgh. Power was thereby brokered right here.
The brick colored buildings behind the highway structure above are the City’s jail, and beneath the ramps is a rather large homeless shelter which recently had a calamitous fire.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, the T light rail was spotted moving towards that section of its route where it operates as a subway while I was still on this Frickin roof. The construction work which is renewing the light rail’s trackbed, nearby HQ back in Dormont, is underway and one such as myself cannot wait to have mass transit restored to my life.
Our tour leader indicated that it was time to move on again, and I made sure that I was at the end of the line for the elevators going back down to ground level, to extend my shooting time up here as long as possible.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The pyramid topped building, at bottom left in the shot above, is the Koppers building described in yesterday’s post, and the U.S. Steel building discussed in Monday’s post is the dark colored structure with the UPMC logo atop it. I’m not entirely sure about the identity of the tan colored one.
Back tomorrow with more, 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.
Koppers building roof tour
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our Lady of the Pentacle and your humble narrator purchased tickets for one of Mark Houser’s ‘Antique Skyscraper’ tours, recently. Houser is a journalist, author, and public speaker whose interests revolve around skyscrapers and the people who built them. A Pittsburgh native, he offers scheduled tours and in person presentations on the subject.
The meet-up location for Mr. Houser’s tour was at the Koppers Building on Pittsburgh’s seventh avenue.
Koppers is a chemical company which is ‘an integrated global producer of carbon compounds, chemicals, and treated wood products for the aluminum, railroad, specialty chemical, utility, rubber, steel, residential lumber, and agriculture industries’ according to their Wikipedia page.
You can boil that down to creosote and anti corrosion coatings, essentially, which they manufacture from the waste materials and byproducts of the coke and coal industry. Anybody who had to endure one of my tour speeches at Newtown Creek about manufactured gas has been exposed to the knowledge that the coal to gas manufacturing process produced about 300 economically viable byproducts, and that petroleum manufacturing spawns off about 3,000+ valuable byproducts. Such material is the feedstock for a business sector that Koppers is a part of.
Pictured above is the ornate lobby of the Koppers building, which opened in 1929. Mr. Houser, and his daughter who was helping manage the group, loaded us all into elevators and we headed to the pinnacle of the building – and its roof deck.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The massive U.S. Steel building dominates the shot above, with the gleaming BNY Mellon building rising up in the distance. The Koppers Tower is 34 stories, and some 475 feet in height, and Art Deco in stylings. The roof deck itself is an L shaped space, which offers an interesting point of view over the city of Pittsburgh.
A humble narrator got busy with the camera, as I don’t see this sort of point of view very often. My scuttling around normally occurs on the ground and around the edges of man’s habitat, like a cockroach.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot looks down on Pittsburgh’s Strip District, found along the Allegheny River. I’ve walked over the closest bridge with the marina at its anchorage several times, the 31st street bridge. The railroad bridge behind it was seen up close in a series of posts about the Millvale waterfront trail. I haven’t walked over the most distant bridge, and I’m not even sure that it has a walkway either.
As a note, I like posts like this one where I can pull together a bunch of decidedly ‘ground level’ explorations into an ‘overview.’ It makes it seem like I have some sort of plan. I don’t.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Also overlooking the Allegheny River, and the ‘Three Sisters’ bridges are in focus. Behind them, you can see the PNC Sportsball stadium on the left of the shot, where the Pittsburgh Pirates live. You can also develop an appreciation for the peculiar ‘corduroy terrain’ of Pittsburgh with its steep hills and valleys in the shot above, should you desire it.
As is always the case with shooting photos while being part of a tour group, it’s a ‘run and gun’ situation. I was firing off shots as quick as I could see them, but I had to hurry, as Mr. Houser had several more buildings to show us and our time on the roof was extremely limited.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Special notice was paid to the Union (or Penn) station building, which used to be the central node of the Pennsylvania Railroad, here in its hometown. At the time of its construction, this structure was considered a skyscraper, as Mr. Houser pointed out. Check out this post, which saw me focusing in on the amazing terracotta dome which the building sports at street level.
To the right is an urban high speed arterial road called Bigelow Blvd., in the center you’ll notice the RR tracks that lead into the Amtrak station and which carry Norfolk Southern’s freight traffic through the area. To the left is the Strip District.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We piled into the elevators and the group was gathered back up in the lobby of the Koppers building. I couldn’t help but try for some detail shots of the lobby on the way out, with all of its art deco stylings.
This time piece in particular caught my eye.
Back tomorrow with more, 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.
The Newtown Pentacle 