Posts Tagged ‘photowalk’
Monumental Pittsburgh
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned in earlier posts, a particular walking path was recently followed in Pittsburgh’s Oakland section which was landmarks based, and topical in nature – rather than granular. This was a ‘short walk’ for me, just a couple of hours in length, and it was more about developing a geospatial knowledge of this zone, which is an area I’d mainly driven through in the past to individual destinations like the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, or the Rodef Shalom and Poale Zedek Synagogues.
That’s the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum, dedicated to honoring all branches of these United States’ Military Veterans. It was completed in 1910, and designed by architect Henry Hornbostel.
Hornbostel, of course, is the fellow who dressed the Manhattan Bridge, back in NYC, in its Beaux-Arts finery. He also designed the nearby Rodef Shalom synagogue here in Pittsburgh, mentioned above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Charles Klauder, on the other hand, was the architect of the centerpiece of the University of Pittsburgh (aka PITT) campus, a 42 story tower building called the Cathedral of Learning.
One was heading for two particular churches, other than Bellefield Presbyterian which was mentioned yesterday, on my landmarks list. The Cathedral of Learning was a just ‘on my way’ sort of thing. My understanding of the place is that are sections of the tower that are public, but most of the space inside is used for PITT’s classroom instruction purposes.
As a note, one great thing about Oakland is that it’s the flattest section of Pittsburgh I’ve so far encountered, and is thereby ‘easy walking.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Where I was heading to next, and the subject of tomorrow’s post, is the St. Paul Cathedral. That’s the seat of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh.
Future exploration in Oakland, as a side note, will definitely occur during the winter months. Lots and lots of monumental architecture here. Giant buildings built in Greek and Roman styles abound. I’m concocting a grid based search pattern for future walks in the area.
Back tomorrow, with more, at your Newtown Pentacle.
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“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.
Driven to scuttle
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Yet another day on my exercise schedule arrived, during which I’d be visiting a few parts of Pittsburgh – which I’ve had fleeting glimpses of – but haven’t taken a ‘hard look’ at yet. I drove into town, and was frustrated at my initial destination while waiting for a train to come by.
Plan B was instituted thereby, and I navigated the Mobile Oppression Platform (MOP) from Pittsburgh’s North Side over to the neighborhood of Oakland. By design, this was going to be a short walk.
Along the way, I got this shot by sticking the camera up through the moon roof while waiting for a red light to change.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Oakland is defined by the presence of its universities and cultural institutions. University of Pittsburgh (PITT) and Carnegie Mellon are housed here, as are several smaller institutions of higher learning, and it’s a densely populated section of this municipality. Lots and lots of students and scholars reside here, most temporarily in dorms and such, and it’s a lot more ‘urban’ than most of the Pittsburgh area is.
There’s also a lot of hospitals and professional offices in Oakland, thereby there’s ample and fairly cheap parking. The MOP was thereby safely ensconced (which cost me seven bucks for an ‘all day’ spot), and I set out on foot. As is my habit, I had a few navigational ‘anchors’ which I would be heading towards set up in a Google map.
Serendipity is always appreciated, but if you’re not walking towards ‘something,’ you’re wandering aimlessly.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This may look like a ‘street,’ but it’s actually an alley. Most of NYC’s streets look like this, with the wires and garbage but without angle in parking. Here, it’s an alley.
Pittsburgh is full of such roadway designations, and it’s where commercial and residential building take deliveries and put out their trash for collection or host parking lots for customers and employees. Less than salubrious stuff occurs in these sorts of corridors as well, and when somebody in Pittsburgh tells you not to walk down some dark alley at night, it’s not just a metaphor.
Back next week with more sights from Pittsburgh’s Oakland at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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“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.
Low to high
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, one was executing a constitutional walk around Pittsburgh recently, stretching my legs and maintaining a steady level of activity which kept my heart beating in an elevated but therapeutic manner. After riding the streetcar ‘T’ line to the center of Pittsburgh, and then crossing a bridge over the mouth of the Ohio at the joining of the city’s three rivers, one proceeded along the south shore of the Monongahela River.
Luckily, a Norfolk Southern train was rolling past on an elevated set of tracks found along a secondary arterial roadway called Saw Mill Run Blvd. This Saw Mill Run section is a fairly scary pathway, pedestrian wise, but I was heading for one of the inclines so…
Having paid my fare on the T, I got a free transfer to the incline/funiculars. That’s how I got from low to high (1,000 feet up) without having to climb a mountain.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After being deposited atop Mount Washington, which the funicular is set into, my path led me to the P.J. McArdle Roadway which carries vehicular traffic from down on the waterfront flats all the way up to the ridge line of the landform. The views are fairly spectacular up here, and I quite enjoy them. There’s also a shared pedestrian and bike path which leads back down to the flatlands below.
One has been using an app on the phone to measure things of late, and apparently I walk at 2.6 mph. The phone also advises on the length of my stride (26.4 inches), approximates the number of steps taken in any given outing, and describes asymmetries in how I’m moving my feet about. No big revelation is encountered there, especially after the various issues and injuries experienced in my left foot in recent years,
I’m about 3% off in terms of that limb’s efficiency according to the phone. It seems that about a third of the time I’m out scuttling, I have both feet contacting the ground at the same time, which must mean that the phone wants me to hop like a bunny or something.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The fencing along this pathway is terrifyingly fragile, riddled with rust and the weathered corruption of old age. In several places it’s non existent and you’re looking at 1,000 foot drop along what has to be a 60 or 70 degree angle through woods. Brr.
This particular stretch of the cantilevered roadway sports concrete separation between the ped/bike lane and vehicular traffic but this is only for certain sections. There’s a long stretch of this P.J. McArdle roadway where all there is between you and the traffic that’s zipping past you at 40-50mph is just a regular three inch curb. Brrr.
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.
A gray day
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was exercise day again, so the now familiar ritual of walking to and riding the T streetcar, from HQ to the metropolitan center of Pittsburgh, was enacted. I’ve been using my headphones again on these walks, after a quite long interval of not doing so, and one was listening to an audiobook.
This time around one was listening to a ‘various hands’ reading of the text of Nietzsche’s ‘Beyond Good and Evil,’ with different narrators reading the various chapters, a file I had long ago downloaded from the LibriVox outfit. It’s a series of awful readings actually, of a book written by an awful man and the audiobook uses a not so great translation as its source. The audiobook has a series of what sounds like 19 year old American college students do the readings. Seriously, if you want to produce something like this, find somebody who sounds like Werner Herzog or Brother Theodore to do the narration. It’s Nietzsche, after all.
Thus spake Waxathustra, while watching as a village fool, walking on a tightrope of aspirant desire, took that first step in order to delight the sheep below.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I switched over to a different audiobook, and proceeded to scuttle towards Pittsburgh’s West End Bridge, spanning the Ohio River. The T had dropped me on the North Shore of the Allegheny River, nearby the sports ball stadium utilized by the Pittsburgh Steelers to thrill the community, and at the streetcar service’s terminal stop not too far from the aforementioned West End Bridge.
The new audiobook I had keyed in was Nellie Bly’s ‘Ten Days in a Mad-House.’ The text triggered a vast set of reminiscences for me, about Roosevelt Island and the Queensboro Bridge. This narration was read by a woman who sounded quite young, and quite apropo for the voice of Nellie, who was the inspiration for Lois Lane.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After crossing the Ohio River, one encountered the outfall canal of its tributary ‘Chartiers Creek,’ a waterway which was mentioned in a post about a recent visit to the community of Carnegie for a short walk, not so long ago. This day’s endeavor, however, was one of my ‘long walks’ and there were a few things which I planned on getting a look at along the way, which included the outfall pictured above.
Ten Days in a Mad-House, if you’re not familiar, revolves around a 19th century Reporter Nellie Bly getting herself committed to New York’s Welfare Island (today’s Roosevelt Island) asylum, as part of an undercover assignment for the New York World newspaper. If you want to check out the free audiobook – here you go.
Later in her career, Bly would ‘go around the world in 72 days,’ write a novel, and then married a 73 year old millionaire when she was 31. After her husband’s death in 1904, Bly became an industrialist running his steel can and container manufacturing business. Nellie Bly was a pen name, she was actually named Elizabeth Cochran.
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.
St. Joseph’s RC church, Oil City
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When people get rich, suddenly, they generally want to say ‘thank god.’ When people stay rich for a generation or two, they start building churches. In the case of Oil City, there’s a real cracker of a Catholic Church enjoyed by the local parish, dubbed the St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church.
Since I was in town, a visit to this particular ‘sacred space’ was on my to-do list. My companion for the day and I strode up to the place, and found the front doors locked, but the side entrance was open and we stepped inside for a somewhat breath taking visit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
St. Joseph was built on a hill found on the north side of Oil City, in a fairly well kept residential neighborhood. I’m told that no matter where you are in Oil City, the spires are visible and provide a landmark which the locals use to navigate the streets with. There were earlier versions of the church on this site, with decidedly lesser structures. The current building was opened in 1894, with the congregation officially having been established in the Oil City/Titusville area all the way back in 1862.
A detailed historical account of St. Joseph Parish is available for inspection at this site. It’s somewhat difficult to read, due to some curious choices regarding typography, but it’s a sound narrative and very well researched.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We entered the building, and found the cavernous chapel completely empty of congregants. One affixed a wide angle lens, the one I was blathering on about last week, to the camera and got busy. I’m told that the church has been quite recently renovated and refinished, in 2020, by a Wisconsin based outfit that specializes in this sort of thing.
I’m told that the architectural style of the building is ‘gothic and late gothic revival,’ but I’m not at all schooled in such matters and cannot speak intelligently about the subject.
Check out this page from archipedia for the details on its style.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This church is ultimately overseen by the Bishop of Erie, Pennsylvania – the ‘Most Rev. Lawrence T. Persico.’ The Bishop, in 2020, combined the nearby St. Stephen Parish with St. Joseph Parish at the request of the local pastor, one Rev. John Miller. It’s all St. Joseph Parish now.
This sort of combination and restructuring is a region wide phenomena which the Roman Catholic hierarchy is undertaking, due to the decline in local populations here in the so called ‘rust belt,’ and it’s a process I mentioned in a post about St. Bernard’s RC church back in the South Hills of Pittsburgh (which has a different Bishop, and Diocese).
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What I can say, categorically, is that the interior space in St. Joseph is striking and glorious. Great lighting design, gorgeous stained glass, and kept neat as a pin. As long time readers will tell you, a humble narrator has had a long fascination with photographing ‘sacred spaces,’ and in particular ones belonging to the Roman Catholics.
I seldom use a tripod in these sorts of places, as it seems disrespectful. This time, however, my companion and I were the only ones in the chapel, so I did. My little ‘platypod’ mounting plate was deployed and the camera affixed to it. It allowed me to use flat surfaces in the church itself for the camera to rest upon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We still had that long drive ahead of us, described a couple of days back in this travelogue, some two and change hours back to Pittsburgh with a quick stop mid journey to drop my traveling companion off.
One thereby bid adieu to Oil City, having also decided to return in the spring for another go at satisfying my shot list and getting the rest of the points of interest I had encoded into a Google Map, which we didn’t get to. The oldest continually producing oil well in the United States is nearby, for instance… and I’m interested in riding on the Oil City & Titusville Railroad as well.
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.
The Newtown Pentacle 