The Newtown Pentacle

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.

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