This will by far be the largest post of the series.  I took over 150 shots of downtown but I will certainly cut it down a little bit.

 

All in all I am very impressed with downtown Pittsburgh.  It is as dense as downtown Cincinnati yet about twice as big, its skyscrapers are very impressive even including most of its modern skyscrapers, the interior of many of the buildings are lavish, and ornate and the street life is very vibrant.

 

These are some pictures I took my first night in Pittsburgh.  This was an extremely misty and foggy day, yet it gave some pretty interesting shots of downtown.

Here is my favorite modern building downtown- Pittsburgh Platt Glass Company:

Here is the PNC building in construction (everytime PNC is brought up I shutter a little bit "obviously I'm from Cleveland")

 

These are shots taken across the Monongahela River.

Station Square:

I just grabbed a few shots of the original train station.  There is a massive redevelopment project named Station Square which I did not explore.

The inside

The crest of the Pitt family is embedded on the bridge.

As you can see Pittsburgh has preserved a large number of their 3/4 story historic buildings.  It adds a lot of vibrancy and character to the street life.

This might be the skinniest building in the whole country!

There is still some grit in the city

This is one of my favorite buildings in downtown. 

I had no idea that "The exchange came out of Pittsburgh"

Unfortunately I did not have the pleasure of eating here:

If found this building in one of the alley ways

 

Here are a series of street scape photos to give you a better feel of the street life.  I was very impressed by the all the bricks streets (many of them are new)

This style of sculpture reminds me of the bus stop in the Buckeye neighborhood of Cleveland

Here is an example of a "Pittsburgh surface lot".  I could count the number of surface lots on one hand. 

 

 

 

Good use of the bottom floor of the parking garage:

Here is the banking district of downtown...It's ancient!

If only I could take pictures of this bank's lobby..

You'll notice that there are no shots of the entire buildings.  This was because the street is so narrow that I wasn't able to zoom out far enough to get a shot of the entire building.

 

Here is an amazing shot! 

The three buildings in the foreground were my favorite historic skyscrapers.  All of them were built in the 1910s and have incredible detail on the facades.

Here are the buildings closer up:

 

Pittsburgh's Theater District:

Back to the Pittsburgh Plated Glass Company

 

Market Square:

This is the main square in downtown Pittsburgh.  I wish Cleveland's Public Square could look more like this especially with Market Square commercial activity and vibrancy. 

 

Here are some of Pittsburgh's historical skyscrapers

This reminds me a lot of one of Cleveland's skyscrapers near Key Tower

I really liked this red topped skyscraper.  It reminds me of a Russian onion dome except on top of a skyscraper:

Art Deco!!

I've Never seen Flemish Architecture before visiting Pittsburgh:

Here's the interior of the Union Trust Building  :-o

Here is the interior of the Frick Building

 

Here is the interior of the city county building:

I don't remember who this is a statue of:

 

Here is the interior of Point Park university's library.  It is a converted Arcade.

Now its a study space:

 

The Allegheny Courthouse designed by Richardson

Going into the courtyard..

This bridge connects the courthouse and the jail.  There is a name for this bridge but I can't remember it.

 

Modern Skyscrapers:

Here is a huge complex from the 50s.  I do not remember its name though..

The Alcoa Building; the exterior of this building is entirely made of Aluminum:

 

Here are shots I took on the Duquene incline on the way up. 

 

And a beautiful night shot to end my long post yet..

 

 

 

 

While I love Cleveland's Public Square physically, there are definite vibrancy advantages to the scale of Market Square. You find that kind of intimacy on East Fourth, but Public Square gets the expectation.

Pittsburgh feels much bigger than it is.  Great tour.

Man, do I hate Pittsburgh (out of sheer jealousy)  They've certainly got it going on.

 

So the building in the foreground of these two pics is a subway station, Wood Street Station.  It's really a great station, with an art gallery on the second floor.  Here's the gallery website: http://www.woodstreetgalleries.org

 

 

I really love the compactness of buildings downtown.  Small footprints, but very heavy in appearance.

Great Pittsburgh photos! Thanks for shooting those interiors; those are often overlooked. The Frick Building is gorgeous, despite the fact that Henry Clay Frick was a ruthless, unforgiving SOB.

 

There's a very good book that tells the story of Carnegie and Frick and their business partnership that ended in bitter dispute and lifelong enmity. The title of the book is "Meet You in Hell" but I can't remember who wrote it. It's a must-read for anyone interested in labor history, especially as it related to the early iron, steel, coal, and coke industries in the southwestern Pennsylvania.

 

This shot is the interior of the Koppers Building, designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White, successor firm to D.H. Burnham & Co., and constructed 1927-1929. It's sort of obscured by the density of big buildings around it and the narrow streets, but it has a great entrance and I think it's one of Pittsburgh's best 1920s buildings. When I did some work in that building in the mid 1990s, it had a barber shop and a pretty decent lunchroom in the basement.

Well done.

Great Pittsburgh photos! Thanks for shooting those interiors; those are often overlooked. The Frick Building is gorgeous, despite the fact that Henry Clay Frick was a ruthless, unforgiving SOB.

 

There's a very good book that tells the story of Carnegie and Frick and their business partnership that ended in bitter dispute and lifelong enmity. The title of the book is "Meet You in Hell" but I can't remember who wrote it. It's a must-read for anyone interested in labor history, especially as it related to the early iron, steel, coal, and coke industries in the southwestern Pennsylvania.

 

This shot is the interior of the Koppers Building, designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White, successor firm to D.H. Burnham & Co., and constructed 1927-1929. It's sort of obscured by the density of big buildings around it and the narrow streets, but it has a great entrance and I think it's one of Pittsburgh's best 1920s buildings. When I did some work in that building in the mid 1990s, it had a barber shop and a pretty decent lunchroom in the basement.

Thanks for the great information.  Are you currently living in Pittsburgh?

I live in Fort Wayne (Fort Mundane), Indiana, which used to be headquarters for Lincoln Financial. Through the 90s I worked there in IT. I got to travel around to some of Lincoln's regional marketing offices with a team setting up hardware and software and training users. I had been to Pittsburgh before, and when they posted it on the list I was quick to call dibs.

 

I didn't take any photos on that trip, but I posted some from earlier and later trips on the forums some time back. If you'd like to see them, they're here.

 

I live in Fort Wayne (Fort Mundane), Indiana, which used to be headquarters for Lincoln Financial. Through the 90s I worked there in IT. I got to travel around to some of Lincoln's regional marketing offices with a team setting up hardware and software and training users. I had been to Pittsburgh before, and when they posted it on the list I was quick to call dibs.

 

I didn't take any photos on that trip, but I posted some from earlier and later trips on the forums some time back. If you'd like to see them, they're here.

 

 

Cool Thanks a lot for the link.

Great series finished with a nice extensive tour of DT.

Downtown Pittsburgh looks like Downtown Cincinnati on steroids.  Thanks for the great photos.

what an epic thread... great interior shots... the Frick building is glorious...

 

 

Youse guys must come down next time we have a gallery crawl.

Youse guys must come down next time we have a gallery crawl.

 

I was hoping to go to that on Friday, but instead ended up playing scrabble with friends. 

Yeah, this one snuck up on us. And with the weather forcast being iffy, we opted not to go.

 

Stupid KDKA.

Wow...if Pittsburgh could actually find a way to grow and attract a critical mass of the demographic that would like to live downtown it would be an awesome city...