Posts Tagged ‘Duquesne University’
As one scuttles above, so too below
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Jesus Christ! Mary, Mother of God!
I was walking around the periphery of the campus enjoyed by Duquesne University, and this statuary is part of the Catholic University’s outdoor collection. It’s the centerpiece of a memorial for lost WW2 soldiers who were former Duquesne Students, that’s dubbed as ‘The Victory Garden.’
Here’s a shot of the signage, and here’s a page from American Legion about it. Couldn’t find the name of the sculptor, and I did look.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I negotiated my way from the statuary, and started heading back to the non-campus streets. They were fairly steep.
This section of my day was ‘phase one’ of a longer scuttle – which would play out all day and frankly – exhaust me. By the time I got back home, it was a quick dinner and then early to bed. I’ve mentioned that it’s gotten a bit warm around these parts, even so back in early May when these shots were gathered. It pretty much went directly from Spring to Summer in Pittsburgh, seemingly overnight.
Yes, the Newtown Pentacle time warp is indeed still in effect. Shots are from May 11, words are being typed on June 8. If my scheduling is correct, this post publishes on July 10, a Friday. From my current point of view, you’re ‘wizard’ as you know how the future comes out.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One found himself at the edge of another high speed road that was busted through an urban landscape, in the name of progress and traffic flow. This is an older example of this sort of urban renewal, called the Crosstown Boulevard (and it’s one which Robert Moses had a hand in creating!).
Crosstown Boulevard is a road in a trench, which is connected to multiple enormous concrete and steel ramps. It leads into the center of the City, through an area where urban renewal went horribly wrong to the north, then goes through a different area destroyed by urban renewal in the center of the city (pictured today), then branches off in multiple directions towards more examples of the sort of blight which urban renewal projects often bring found to the east, south, and north.
Pennsylvania is actually still up to this sort of nonsense, and is building a brand new tolled highway not too far away from here, which is blighting its way through neighborhoods and businesses all in the name of the common good, and it is dubbed the ‘Mon Fayette Expressway.’
Wow. Learn from history. Please.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s a section of the Crosstown Boulevard complex pictured above.
It forms the western border of the Bluff/Uptown/Duquesne Campus.
According to Google’s AI, dubbed Gemini, there are approximately 45,000 to 52,000 vehicles trips through this corridor every day. Admittedly, I’m often driving one of those vehicles, as this is how I get ‘there’ from ‘here’ a bunch. Don’t want to stand on a soapbox about this subject without admitting that I’m a sinner too.
Thing is, this used to be a productive part of Pittsburgh with office buildings and homes. Instead of organic privately based capital growth, you’ve instead got a thoroughfare designed to have people drive their money quickly away from Downtown Pittsburgh towards a distant suburb, and they’re going to spend it there instead of where they earned it.
That economic dog don’t hunt.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It legitimately sucks to be a pedestrian hereabouts, walking blocks and blocks just to get around all the highway ramps.
Funny thing is that Pittsburgh City Hall is only a few blocks away from this spot. All the politicians will tell you how ‘walkable’ Pittsburgh is. The surrounding architecture in this part of Pittsburgh is what I describe as ‘inhuman.’
Monolithic, building campuses are set back great distances from both the curb and sidewalk, with humanity incidental to and not welcomed into the designs. I’ve offered observations about the inhumanity of Philip Johnson’s PPG plaza before.
‘Opinions are just like ‘iceholes,’ everyone’s got one.’ My dad used to say that in a more colorful fashion, usually when I scolded him for driving too slow back in Brooklyn.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the bottom of the Bluff, pretty much directly beneath that crazy set of metal ‘City Steps’ I was standing on in yesterday’s post, some 10-12 stories above, is the Armstrong Tunnel.
This bit of infrastructure had been under construction for the first couple of the years I’ve spent here in Pittsburgh, but Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself actually had scuttled through it before, during an ‘Open Streets’ day in May of 2024.
This tunnel was going to be how this particular chicken got to the other side, I had decided, as it’s got a dedicated and protected bike and pedestrian lane with concrete separation from vehicle traffic. Win!
Back next week 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.
Bluffin mit da Catlicks
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Jesus Christ!
Your humble narrator was scuttling along Pittsburgh’s Boulevard of the Allies, and walking the borders of Duquesne University, which is very, extremely, Catholic. It’s a nice and neatly kept property, Duquesne, and they host a crazy landscape and pedestrian feature up there, in addition to many sculptural representations of the tenets of their faith.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A steel foot bridge overflies the Boulevard of the Allies – a high speed road – and then offers a truly intimidating set of City Steps to descend down to the Monongahela Flood plain below. Known as the ‘Bluff Steps,’ this structure is between 10 and 12 stories in height (depending on how you define building stories) and their course travels downwards along 179 sets of rises and runs.
I did not walk them on this day, as I’ve done so in the past, and there was another ‘experience’ which I was desirous of having instead.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saying all that, no reason not to get a few shots while I was there.
This shot looks downwards, towards Second Avenue and the South 10th street bridge spanning the Monongahela River below.
The link above leads to a series of posts which were largely captured from the south side of the river, illustrating just how intimidating a landform this bluff is.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s where Boulevard of the Allies intersects with I-376 right in the distance, a combination of high speed roads which does a brilliant job of restricting the citizenry from accessing the river. To be fair, there used to be enormous steel mills all along the waterway in this section, and a mammoth railroad yard on the other side.
Jones & Laughlin steel, I’m told, or just J&L as it was known locally. The Yinzer pronunciation sounds sort of like ‘Jay ‘n EL.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Overjoyed, I was, when I saw a truck carrying trucks go by on the highway below. Ideally, smaller trucks would be secured in the beds of the ones on this carrier. Trucks carrying trucks which carry trucks. Yay!
I had decided not to walk down those steps, not out of PTSD inspired fear, but for curiosity’s sake instead.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One scuttled around the edges of Duquesne University. Heading westwards, more or less. The university is piled up against another urban highway corridor on that side too. More on that subsequently.
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.
That’s some set of stairs, I tell’s you
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The destination which I had in mind when leaving HQ is pictured above. It’s one set of the many, many municipal staircases which climb up and down the hills and valleys of Pittsburgh. This one, in particular, is branded with Duquesne University logos and there’s an overpass which allows pedestrians to cross a high speed road called the Boulevard of the Allies nearby the Monongahela River.
It’s something, I tell’s ya.
The Panorama image above, which breaks into the usual format here at Newtown Pentacle, gives an idea of the streetscape by which you approach the stairs. If you click, it’ll open up a version of the image at Flickr which you can zoom in on.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These stairs are actually not that difficult to negotiate, but vertigo is a definite factor so I held tightly onto the bannister with my non camera holding hand. Down below, there’s a couple of highways which fly about on elevated ramps. A local street, Forbes Avenue, feeds into what I’m fairly sure is the Penn Lincoln Highway section of I-376, and there’s also U.S. Highway 22 in the mix. Beneath all of those ramps are the Armstrong Tunnels, and a local street called Second Avenue as well as the on and off ramps of a bridge.
Additionally, a ‘rail to trail’ bike and pedestrian path is mixed into the arrangement – a section of the Great Allegheny Passage called the Eliza Furnace Trail, which I had walked a few months ago, and on this day I was heading – ultimately – to the same spot I was back then – the South Tenth Street Bridge.
This Panorama is from the top of the stairs, looking eastwards along the Monongahela River towards the south side of Pittsburgh and the Birmingham Bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Massing shapes, that’s what I call them. The building at the top right of the shot is the City’s jailhouse, and a brand new homeless shelter has recently opened right next door to it. I don’t think the symbolism is lost on anyone, including the poor devils who reside in one or the other.
That’s also just short of where the Boulevard of the Allies returns to ground and becomes a ‘normal’ street again, with traffic lights and crosswalks. In a post that’ll likely be coming your way sometime in the next couple of weeks, I’ll show you what that looks like, and describe what it’s like to use the pedestrian and bike lane leading to the Liberty Bridge, so get ready lords and ladies. Thrills and chills.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My next goal post was to get to the South Tenth Street Bridge, pictured above, and use that crossing over the Monongahela to situate myself properly to catch the T light rail back to HQ. Remember, I had left the Mobile Oppression Platform parked in my driveway, and used the T to get to the center of things in Pittsburgh – where I had a moment of Epiphany and then passed by St. Benedict the Moor, and admired the old timey vibe encountered on the Bluff.
Seriously though, height and I are old friends, but a humble narrator will admit to having what has always described as being a very deep and quite logical respect for heights. Others might describe it as phobic.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The rickety wooden steps didn’t bother me one bit. The concrete planks which formed the ‘run’ of the middle section were badly seated and you felt a distinct shift and clicking sound when in that section. At the very top, the stairs are made from a kind of metal grate, which allows you to look down through them. Forgive my french, but that was ‘effed up.
I’ve always gotten a certain physical sensation, specifically tingling in the fingertips and a feeling of numbness in the palms, when I’m situated at a high spot. I’ve found myself on the roof of a surprising number of skyscrapers in Manhattan, and seem to have spent the last fifteen years walking across bridges so it’s not like it slows me down or anything. I don’t lock up as some do, but I become extremely deliberate and restrained while moving in high environments, a postural affectation which contrasts with the norm.
A friend of mine once described my locomotive style as ‘herkie jerkie, like a spasmodic flying jew.’ I’ve also been told that I always look angry, and that my ‘scuttling with a purpose’ posture imparts the impression that I’m on my way to murder someone or something.
Truth be told… both POV’s in this YouTube video clip link are pretty much how the world looks and feels to me, most days.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just so you don’t think I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, nor ‘that I’ve seen too many movies,’ or any of the other crap I’ve heard over the years – the top right brick building is part of Duquesne University. Follow that to the black structure on top of the cliff. That’s photo and panorama one. There’s power lines and a lamp post in shot two, and if you follow those power lines down to where that white van is on the extreme lower left side of the shot above, that’s the bottom of the stairs. Whew.
Holy Pittsburgh!
“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 