The Architecture of Downtown Pittsburgh

A few weekends ago, Matt and I spent the better part of a Saturday late afternoon and evening walking around Downtown Pittsburgh so that I could shoot some of the architecture in those environs.

Like most industrial cities that rose to prominence across the early and middle 20th century, Pittsburgh's buildings are an eclectic hodgepodge of styles, materials, sizes, shapes, and colors.  From humble two and three story structures as ornate as Greek temples to a Brutalist/Modern steel tower that thrusts over 800 feet into the sky, Pittsburgh's signature style is hard to define.  But from that intensely jumbled juxtaposition, one is able to appreciate the unique details that define the 'Burgh as having a skyline unlike any other.

In the heart of downtown, just in front of the historic Omni William Penn Hotel, the place where Lawrence Welk's "Champagne Music" met up with the bubble machine that helped defined an era in entertainment, there is a small park called Mellon Square.  Standing in the middle of that space, one sees the  futuristic aluminum-clad facade of the ALCOA Building, the stately brick of the hotel, a sandstone neoclassical department store, and then this building seen at the right:  the Flemish-Gothic styled Union Trust Building.

Begun in 1915, the building features an exuberantly ornate mansard roof fronted by pierced gothic arches on the frieze.  Along the roofline, dozens of windowed dormers punctuate the golden tile work.  Atop the roof (and unseen in this photo) are two slender chapel-like rooms that are used as housing for mechanical systems.

The idea of stately simplicity of lower levels erupting into a signature-style roofline is not unique to the Union Trust Building.  Truly, the most original variation on this theme punctuating the Pittsburgh skyline is the main tower of PPG Place.

A decidedly modern twist on the Neo-Gothic look, PPG Place stretches skyward 685 feet before terminating in glassy turrets and mock battlements.  It seems only natural for a company once named Pittsburgh Plate Glass to be housed in a building that uses copious amounts of glass in such unique ways.  Opened in 1984, PPG Place encompasses a large plaza in the midst of the complex that, during the winter, features a skating rink.  Dwarfed beneath the soaring skyscraper and surrounded by lighted trees, skaters, and music, the environment is magical.

Like the combination of styles found near Mellon Square, PPG Place is located directly behind one of the oldest areas of the city, Market Square.  Surrounding the square are low-set two and three-story buildings dating back to the 19th century.  Recently renovated, Market Square is now free of vehicular traffic, lending a continental air to the traditional heart of Downtown with trees, cobblestone paving, and benches and cafe tables to serve as a lunchtime stop for the thousands of downtown office workers or tourists overwhelmed by the variety of sights to see around them.

But before you think that Pittsburgh can only do Gothic or slight shifts thereof, let me assure you that the skyline is also home to modernist buildings, art moderne, and - indeed - quite odd entries in the realm of skyscrapers.

The building dominating the center of this photo I took last summer is the U.S. Steel Tower.  A strange hybrid of the International, Brutalist, and Modern styles, the U.S. Steel Tower is Pittsburgh's tallest building, topping out at 841 feet.

Opened in 1970, the U.S. Steel Tower is some 400 feet shorter than the Empire State building in New York City, but has almost 100,000 more rentable square feet than the New York landmark.

Each floor, in fact, is nearly an acre of space unto itself.  This is building as behemoth.

The facade is dominated by what is called Cor-Ten Steel, an alloy patented by U.S. Steel.  Rather than needing painting and regular maintenance, the surface of the steel oxidizes - rusts, really - both strengthening and creating a protective layer atop the structural steel.

Note:  I had to use this older picture because there is almost no place close to the building where one can get a proper photographic vantage point.  This shot was taken in May, 2010 from the terrace of the Civic Arena, a landmark structure that is currently being demolished.  

Unlike most modern skyscrapers, this one is not about glass surfaces, sleek forms, or modern curves or angles.  This hulking triangular building is dark, even forbidding when you stand in its shadow.  The airy, two story glass-walled atrium at ground level doesn't feel quite right.  It's almost as if the structure is levitating, something a tower with that seeming bulk has no business doing.

This building is Pittsburgh.  It's symbolic of the city's past as a gritty industrial center as it stands side-by-side with such structures as the bright, sleek Bank of New York-Mellon Tower, seen to the left.  Banking, healthcare, and education have replaced blast furnaces and crucibles as the pivot point upon which Pittsburgh's economy turns.  Dominated by the U.P.M.C. (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center) logo since 2008, the past and present are layered upon each other on the U.S. Steel Tower.

Naturally, this is only a small taste of the wild array of architectural styles that make up Downtown Pittsburgh.  And, like any major city, the skyline is an amorphous and constantly shifting value.  Within the next few years, PNC Bank will be adding a $400 million, forty-story energy efficient skyscraper.  However, before the first glass curtain walls rise for that new building, Pittsburgh will be losing a significant piece of its cultural and architectural history: the Civic Arena.

Envisioned in the 1950s as the heart of a major cultural center that would feature housing, retail, office space, an opera house, and a symphonic hall, the Civic Arena was built with the best intentions of erasing urban blight and replacing it with clean, clear statements of modernity.

In its fifty years of existence, the Civic Arena went from hosting light opera in the summers to being the home of the Pittsburgh Penguins NHL team.  The Beatles, The Doors, and Elvis Presley played beneath the once retractable dome.  (It hasn't moved in decades thanks to the addition of seating decks high up in the structure.)  However, the arena outlived its use.  Not enough amenities, too-narrow concourses, poor sight lines.  Those factors all sealed the fate of the building that is defined by the largest retractable stainless steel roof in the world and the enormous support arm made of locally-made steel.

Will its absence be as acutely felt as some New Yorkers still claim for the loss of Penn Station in 1963?  It's too hard to guess.  This fall, the city and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals denied pleas to save the so-called Igloo from demolition.  The interiors are all but destroyed now and the roof will be dismantled come Spring.

Tracing the ebb and flow of a city is easy to do when you look up and around.  Stand on a street corner in any major city in America.  You'll see stone facades from the 1900s littered with ornamentation.  Bold curvilinear, streamlined buildings marked the boom years of the 1920s.  The Space Age brought sleek lines and glass exteriors.  And the last two decades have driven skylines ever higher in even more inventive ways.

Pittsburgh's evolution from the steel capital of the world, through the decline of the steel mills in the 1970s, and finally reinventing itself into the banking and healthcare center it is today is reflected in the towering walls of glass, carved into the granite and sandstone, riveted into the steel beams of this city.  The men and women who work in and around these buildings are as much Pittsburgh as the buildings they see from their office windows.  The skyline, like the three rivers that form the Golden Triangle of Downtown, defines the very essence of the American dream: ad astra per aspera.

Take a drive sometime on Interstate 376 Eastbound.  Go through the Fort Pitt Tunnels.  And as you emerge into the sunlight, see a city unfold across your dashboard.  A world connected by bright yellow bridges.  A city of steel.  Pittsburgh.

Sit in the upper deck along the third base line of PNC Park.  Don't go for the Pirates.  As the home team loses yet another one, watch the sunset turn the hundreds of colors on the skyline into blazes of glowing amber.  See the lights come up against the darkened sky, illuminating the spires, pinnacles, and roof lines.

It's more than steel or the Steelers.  Pittsburgh is a place of past, present, and future - of arts, sports, learning, and commerce.  Of men and women from far-flung corners of the Earth.  These buildings define all of it in largely concrete terms:  a city in and of the world, at once influenced by it and setting the trends.

There's a reason that the Economist voted Pittsburgh as the most livable city in America.

And this is surely a big part of it...

(All photos copywright The Cosmopolitan Bear, 2010 and 2011)