The Mexican War Streets are mostly flat, but at the back end they start to creep up the hill toward Perry Hilltop. This beautiful block of rowhouses is just about perfect: the street paved with Belgian block, the houses well taken care of but not ostentatiously overrestored, and filled with friendly neighbors.
Brick sidewalks have their own charm, and they become more charming as they age and grow more difficult to walk on.
Stream valleys with precipitous slopes–too precipitous even for Pittsburghers to build on–cut through the city and suburbs everywhere. In the spring, wild woodland flowers take advantage of the last few days before the leaves come out and the shade closes in. These flowers all grew within a few yards of each other in the Squaw Run valley.
Trillium grandiflorum, Large-Flowered Trillium
Mertensia virginica, Virginia Bluebells
Claytonia virginica, Spring Beauty
Phlox divaricata, Blue Phlox
Trillium cernuum, Nodding Trillium
Tiarellia cordifolia, Foamflower
Viola pallens, Northern White Violet
Viola pennsylvanica, Smooth Yellow Violet
The Spring Flower Show at Phipps Conservatory had a whimsically classical theme: Praxiteles by way of Salvador Dali.
The trees in the old arboretum are leafing out, the cherries and the violets are blooming, and the ducks in Lake Elizabeth are fat and happy.
A short stroll in the snow through an enchanted landscape filled with fantastic temples, angels, and cold beauties with warm hearts.
Lillian Russell may be the most celebrated beauty in the history of the United States.
Her fourth and last husband was a Pittsburgh newspaperman, which earned her a mausoleum in the Allegheny Cemetery. On Valentine’s Day, someone left glass pebbles spelling out “I love you” in front of the door.
Mr. O’Neill is possibly the only resident of the Allegheny Cemetery who is still working at a desk job post mortem. Eugene O’Neill is buried nearby, but not any Eugene O’Neill you know.
The Frick Art Museum in Point Breeze was built as a home for Helen Clay Frick’s art collection. It’s a small collection, but chosen with good taste–a Boucher here, a Reynolds there, and a roomful of priceless medieval religious art. The building itself is less than forty years old, but the timeless design could easily have been a Renaissance palace.
East Liberty Presbyterian Church dominates East Liberty from every angle. It was designed by the great Ralph Adams Cram, and, per square foot, it may be the most expensive church ever built in America. Because Mellon money built it, perhaps to atone for some of the sins inevitable on the road to becoming the richest family on earth, locals call it the Mellon Fire Escape.
