The Newtown Pentacle

Thursday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One of the sections of Pittsburgh which I’ve remained fairly ignorant about is found in the ‘Oakland’ section. This area is defined by the presence of the two big universities – Pitt and Carnegie Mellon – which are housed within its confines (there are other institutions of higher learning in Oakland, such as Carlow University, but PITT and CMU are the giants).

Oakland is one of the few sections of Pittsburgh where you’ll encounter truly ‘urban’ population densities and problems, with large apartment houses acting as de facto dormitories for both faculty and students of the schools. The streets here are fairly traffic choked, and there’s lots and lots of frustrating stop and go action for local drivers who are more used to navigating their pickup trucks along highways and stroads.

For this scuttle, I had myself dropped off by a rideshare, at the foot of the Neville Street ramp to the MLK Jr. Busway.

Yes, my ‘Operation Busway’ project is currently being sketched out, which will be a set of explorations to accomplish in the late autumn and early winter months, when I’ll be looking closely at this far flung pile of infrastructure in some detail.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Both CMU and Pitt have – historically speaking – academically created quite a few urbanists and architects, and as such the Oakland area is a bit of a history book as far as those particular occupations go.

It feels like a series of ‘Senior Theses’ were erected here in past eras, and when walking southerly down Neville from the bus ramp, a bunch of interesting and variegated residential structures are encountered. You can see all the historic fashions along this route; Modernism, Brutalism, you name it. A hundred years worth of ‘I know better than you, old man.’

Pictured above is the 1910 vintage, 12 unit, D’Arlington Apartment building, designed by Dr. Edward Keen (Kern). It’s a landmark.

It’s also pretty typical of an older style of apartment living that I’ve often observed here in always humid Pittsburgh, which includes those private terraces which are an artifact of an era prior to the ubiquity of ‘Air Conditioning,’ or HVAC, in residential spaces.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One kept on breaking stride along South Neville Street, as everytime I turned that hideous sensory stalk which protrudes from the collar of my t-shirt (said turning creates a sickly cracking and popping sound, along with a final detonation at the base of the skull that sounds a lot like sea soaked maritime ropes being stretched out by the tide), something new and interesting popped up and caused me to say ‘Wow.’

Over just a couple of blocks, about 125 years worth of architectural stylings and fashions were on display. A parsonage dwelling along the path was actually in Tudor Revival, and found directly across the street from this Brutalist beauty.

One was carrying his ‘bag of prime lenses’ camera kit on this particular day, and I was sort of ‘feeling’ that wide angle 16mm one.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Check out that exposed steel foundation!

There’s a pretty significant population of medical and educational professionals who live in this area, alongside the ever changing population of matriculated students. Nearby can be found several hospitals, and in fact – one of them even houses the laboratory where Jonas Salk discovered the vaccine for Polio.

I got to meet Salk’s son one day, who followed in his father’s footsteps and is now one of the showrunners at that same lab.

Great guy, inspirational too. Told him about how my depression era parents thought about his dad as being a kind of saint.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This structure had some sort of ceramic/terrazo emerald colored facing on it. Really grabbed my eye, as the tiles glittered in the sun.

I’m planning on walking several of the streets around this ‘zone’ during the winter, going north/south from river to river.

Remember that urbanist concept of ‘corridors,’ which I often offer and promulgate?

Most of these ‘corridor’ assemblages of buildings and institutions in Pittsburgh are set up in an east/west orientation, but the really interesting ‘corridors’ in this area seem to be the north/south ones. They are, of course, the paths with the steepest hills and amongst the most challenging pedestrian spaces but there we are.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Ok… define what a corridor is, Mr. Smarty Pants…

As always, let’s go back to the greatest city that the world has ever known, which happens to be a certain tidal backwater anchored into a series of sand bars found at the outflow of the Hudson River into the ocean. If you need to look anywhere on earth for definitions of what something ‘city related’ is, and want to look through the prism via which I ‘see’ the world, there has to be a bagel shop found around every three blocks with Bodegas on every corner and a Subway running below.

Third Avenue in Manhattan from 14th street to around 57th is a corridor. Everything that happens on the side streets it adjoins is consequential of the corridor offered by third. When you walk a couple of blocks west, to Fifth Avenue, you’ve entered a different corridor.

Back in Queens – Northern Blvd. And Queens Blvd. represent different ‘corridors.’ In Astoria, 30th avenue, Ditmars, and Broadway are the ‘corridors.’ So are Steinway, 21st street, 31st street, and Crescent.

Back tomorrow with more.

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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.