Posts Tagged ‘Downtown Pittsburgh’
Ten mile scuttle, part five
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A lifetime habit of mine was to use a combination viewing of the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings to orient myself whenever I was climbing out of a Subway in Manhattan, to help me navigate and let me know where I was and what direction I needed to go. Here in Pittsburgh, a similar thing is accomplished using the U.S. Steel Tower.
Don’t let the non profit health outfit’s ‘UPMC’ logo fool you, that’s the U.S. Steel Tower pictured above. UPMC is United Pittsburgh Medical Center, a non profit dealie that seems to own a lot of land in Pittsburgh and its extended metroplex.
The steel guys are still in the building, as a note.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Feds have a bunch of agencies housed in the corridor pictured above, here in Pittsburgh. The ‘Feebs’ are here, as are Fed level courts and the ‘big post office’ and the passport people, and I’m sure DEA is lurking around somewhere nearby too. A few blocks away is Pittsburgh’s City Hall and a local level court complex. This street is called ‘Liberty Avenue.’ You see a lot of uniforms and badges walking around eating hot dogs in this section.
I was heading roughly southwards at this point, on a long walk.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
UPMC is one of the ‘800 pound gorillas’ in Pittsburgh, a non profit corporation which owns a lot of the region’s hospitals and clinics and nursing homes, and employs a LOT of people. There’s controversy at the moment between the politicians and this non profit, since the behemoth medical entity doesn’t pay any property taxes… and since politicians like to spend tax money on new things they’ve recently dreamed up… the two ‘estates’ are at odds with each other.
Nobody seems overly concerned about spending money on fixing potholes, here in Pittsburgh, I’d mention.
I’ve always wondered why our society doesn’t try to get things right, improving insufficient or badly designed existant systems, before installing new and expensive ones.
Personally, I’ve been working on a recipe for meatloaf that I’m pretty close to perfecting (recipe version 7), but have resisted the urge to start roasting chickens, before I get the meatloaf formula just right. That’s how I roll, call me crazy.
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.
Ten mile scuttle, part four
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As a humble narrator was in the process of debarking the 31st street bridge over the Allegheny River, one couldn’t help but admire the terraced setup of a section called Polish Hill. That’s the Immaculate Heart of Mary RC Church, which is in an area that I’d paid a brief visit to last year. Even after a year, I still find Pittsburgh’s verticality remarkable.
My next set of moves involved hanging a right at the foot of the bridge and to start walking downtown. Rush Hour, as it is humorously referred to here, was just starting up. Seriously, what the locals refer to as ‘heavy traffic’ just makes this ex New Yorker giggle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As stated in earlier posts from this walk, the plan was to walk back along the Allegheny River on this side of the water, and then cross the Monongahela River to access the T Light Rail, and get back to HQ. I punked out on that as it was starting to snow/rain again. At this stage, it was just starting up, and little piles of water were slowly appearing on my eyeglasses. Nothing major yet, I still had a good hour to go before it really started up, but wet and cold aren’t amongst my favorite combos.
More on all that later in the week, for now I was walking past the Amtrak Station and trying to imagine what it must have looked like back in the ‘good old days.’ I’ve taken Amtrak to and from Pittsburgh, and I believe that my description of the modern station as looking and feeling like a Soviet Orthodontist’s office is still apt.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This isn’t exactly the nicest street for a pedestrian in Pittsburgh, I’d offer. The left side of the shot offers the ruined former entrance of the train station which is fenced off and gross. The right side of the shot is the City’s morgue and medical examiner’s offices. The liminal space of the highway ramps above are where most of the occupants are. Awful and barren street scape, this, with sidewalks that just end leaving pedestrians stranded and walking on a busy road. Uggh.
They do a lot of things right here in Pittsburgh, this ain’t one of them.
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.
Existential scuttling
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Those old Christmas season cartoons – the stop motion animation ones from Rankin Bass – they had one heck of a sound track, if you ask me. The Heat/Cold Miser song, in particular, as well as the one from Santa’s origin story which bucked up the Winter Warlock’s mood by suggesting that if you ‘put one foot in front of the other, soon you’ll be walking out the door,’ are tunes that always seem to always actively dwell in my mind.
So does The Who’s ‘Don’t get fooled again’ but that ditty exists in a different mental folder.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned in prior posts, the particular scuttle during which these shots were gathered wasn’t aimed at any one spot. I was straight up wandering, with intent revolving around getting from one T streetcar station on the north side of the Allegheny River to another one on the south side of the Monongahela River, via the peninsular ‘Downtown’ section of the Pittsburgh. Exploring, essentially.
I will admit to becoming somewhat intrigued by the flatiron shaped brick building pictured above, with its ornate lintels and terracotta decoration. I’m going to have to look into that one at some point.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pittsburgh’s Smithfield Street Bridge, over the Monongahela River, is fascinating to this NYC transplant. Well… beyond being how I got from one side of the river to the other, where the T station is.
The piers and masonry of the bridge were designed by none other than John Roebling (Brooklyn Bridge), and the steel upper section of the bridge was created by Gustav Lindenthal (Queensboro Bridge).
…put one foot in front of the other…
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.
On we sweep
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, older office and commercial buildings in Pittsburgh which were built before Willis Carrier invented what modernity calls ‘air conditioning’ (at a lithograph company at Newtown Creek back in Brooklyn, I would mention) sport an abundance of windows. Pittsburgh has a famously humid climate, sited as it is at the delta formed by the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers (whose combined waters then become the Ohio River), and back in the old days your only comfort during the ‘hot’ could be found in cross ventilation.
This section of Downtown seems to be where the courts and governmental offices are found.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The funny thing about this particular tourist bus ride is that over the last 8 or 9 months, I’ve walked many of the individual legs of this route while exploring. Instinct is as important to me as the camera, and I’ll often say to myself “that’s important” when encountering a thing or a place and crack out a shot without really knowing what I’m looking at. Later on, I’ll find out that a building was owned by a supervillain like Henry Clay Frick, as in the shot above.
The tour bus continued on…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The double decker bus got onto one of the highways found on the south side of Pittsburgh’s ‘golden triangle,’ and we were soon passing by the Birmingham Bridge which spans the Monongahela River. Another pathway I’ve scuttled down is found directly below this spot, the Eliza Furnace Trail, which has become one of my favorites for a longish walk.
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.
What the Ravens may see
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Riding on a tourist double decker bus was actually kind of fun. One has been appreciating the esthetics of Pittsburgh while driving about, but for obvious reasons – largely not recording them. The bus allowed me to roll about freely, and enjoy the visual advantages of being about 15-20 feet above the street. I was shooting fast, as the bus was moving with traffic at anywhere between 25 and 45mph. It’s nice when someone else is driving, and I get to just ‘do my thing.’
We were heading from the Strip District towards Downtown Pittsburgh. Downtown has a decent collection of tower office and commercial buildings, which are of several different vintages. Older buildings in Pittsburgh have lots and lots of windows, having been built prior to the introduction of air conditioning in a famously humid climate. Post AC buildings in Pittsburgh are sealed up in glassine envelopes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For this part of the ride, I decided that I wanted to abstract things a bit and started looking up a whole lot. The streets in the downtown area are fairly well populated, and we passed a couple of small concerts in public parks as well as mobs of people heading north who were all dressed the same. I suspect that this ritual garb clad crowd were heading to some local sports ball stadium, for one of the weekly tourneys offered by the athleticists.
Me? I was dressed in the normal manner, and also wearing my $12 Costco fishing hat to shield away the radiates of the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself from the noggin. I had a bottle of water with me, but it was a summer’s day and a humble narrator was baking in the heat.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s Philip Johnson’s PPG center, HQ of Pittsburgh Plate Glass – pictured above – the mirror box one with the castellated looking peaks on it. There’s been a lot of hullabaloo about this section of Pittsburgh in the interval since I’ve relocated here, an area referred to as the Business District by some, the Cultural District by others. The local powers that be are concerned about the effect that a fairly noisome homeless shelter has had on their bottom lines, and thereby have been pushing the government types to excise the haggard population that’s served by the shelter, which they perceive as having impacted their businesses. Fascinating, the way that the bosses think.
These powers that be, of course, are corporate landlords who believe that the reason their office buildings are emptying out is because of the homeless situation, rather than that there are better/cheaper options for your business to locate itself in the surrounding counties, which aren’t in a crowded downtown metro area, or that they’re maybe charging too much per square foot for the space. Also, corporate taxes are quite a bit lower in the surrounding counties than they are in Pittsburgh, but it’s definitely the homeless who are the problem.
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.
The Newtown Pentacle 