William Shakespeare hard at work on something brilliant. One of the larger-than-life Noble Quartet in front of the Carnegie in Oakland, Shakespeare represents Literature (along with Michelangelo for Art, Bach for Music, and Newton for Science). The picture was taken with a cheap toy digital camera, then turned to grayscale because the cheap digital colors were just awful.
Made entirely of glass, this art-deco mural, or sculpture, shows a “puddler,” a man who stirs the molten iron ore until it’s tasty enough to make good steel. The location should be obvious from the photograph, but note that the Puddler himself is around the corner over the Wood Street entrance.
Every year, the old Joseph Horne department store turned one corner of the biulding into a Christmas tree. The department store is gone, but the new owners have kept up the Christmas-tree tradition.
The top of the CNG Tower on Liberty Avenue, which opened in 1987. One of the “postmodern” masterpieces of the 1980s boom, this is now called the Dominion Tower. Architecturally, it is a notable revival of the base-shaft-cap formula of the earliest skyscrapers.
An impressionistic view from the rotunda of Daniel Burnham’s Pennsylvania Railroad Station, now offices and condo apartments under the name “The Pennsylvanian.” Amtrak trains still arrive at a smaller modern station grafted on to the main building.
Winter is a beautiful time of year, but sometimes in the cold and snow it’s good to remember summer. Here’s a small taste of midsummer in the woods and meadows around Pittsburgh.
The rough-fruited cinquefoil, Potentilla recta.
A woodland waterfall.
A red clover, Trifolium pratense.
A white clover, Trifolium repens, in an unusually strong bicolor.
A birdfoot trefoil, Lotus corniculatus.
When you come across any wildflower in Pittsburgh and nearby, Wildflowers of Western Pennsylvania is an essential resource. Dr. Bob Zuberbuhler has built a unique and comprehensive Web reference, both informative and beautiful.
A pair of tiny houses in the West End, founded as the teetotaling community of Temperanceville and later famous for its bars and taverns.
