Map of Pittsburgh Rapid Transit

[Update: Click here for a schematic map of Pittsburgh rapid transit, much tidier but without the points of interest.}

Public transit, like everything else in Pittsburgh, is wonderfully confusing. We have buses, busways, streetcars or trolleys, inclines, and subways (the main one where the streetcars run downtown, as well as a subway for the streetcars in Mount Lebanon, a transit tunnel for buses and streetcars under Mount Washington, and a long tunnel on the West Busway).

For our purposes, "rapid transit" means what the Port Authority bureaucrats call "fixed-guideway systems," meaning transit that runs on rails or on its own dedicated track. Streetcars or trolleys (the terms are interchangeable here) sometimes run on the street with the rest of the traffic, but they have their own rails. Busways are high-speed tracks for buses that work like subways, with infrequent stations rather than a stop on every corner. Inclines go from down to up or up to down.

If you prowl around the Port Authority's Web site long enough, you can find maps of most of these things. But you can't find a map that tells you how much fun you can have. Here's where old Pa Pitt steps in with a map that shows you how to use rapid transit to get to some of Pittsburgh's main attractions.

The obvious missing piece in our transit system is a rapid-transit line to Oakland, the intellectual heart of Pittsburgh. Bus service from downtown to Oakland is frequent, but many people refuse to ride buses who would ride rapid transit. There is, however, good reason to hope that the omission will be corrected soon. Meanwhile, here is a map of the otherwise excellent system we do have. Click on the image to download the map in PDF form.

Click on the image to download the map in PDF format.

P&LE Station

The Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad (which never made it to Lake Erie, by the way) was a little fellow compared to the gargantuan Pennsylvania Railroad. But it made good money, and when it built this station in 1899, it showed that it could play with the big boys. The station cost three quarters of a million dollars, which was a tremendous amount in those days. (It still sounds like a good deal of money to old Pa Pitt.) The interior is madly luxurious, and nowhere more so than in the stained glass. Besides the glorious semicircular window at the western end, the entire ceiling of the grand concourse is stained glass.

Passenger trains no longer stop here (they stop downtown behind the old Pennsylvania Station), but the building has been gloriously restored and turned into the “Grand Concourse,” which must surely be the most architecturally impressive restaurant in the city.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Gateway to the Smithfield Street Bridge

[Updated, with many thanks to "Mercator" for a helpful comment.] The 1915 gateway of the 1883 Smithfield Street Bridge, as seen through the snow of a January afternoon. The Pauli or lenticular truss is unusual; in Pittsburgh, with its more than 500 bridges, this is the only one. The oldest steel bridge in the United States, this was designed by Gustav Lindenthal, who knew a thing or two about bridges. The original span was half the width; for the better part of the twentieth century, the bridge carried automobiles on the downstream side and streetcars on the upstream side. In the 1990s (after the streetcars had been rerouted into the subway by way of the Panhandle Bridge), the bridge was refurbished and painted in bright Victorian colors to replace the utilitarian gray that had coated it for decades. This is our most popular bridge for pedestrians; it connects downtown with the shops and restaurants at Station Square.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Firstside in the Snow

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Firstside, the block-long row of human-sized buildings along the Mon Wharf, is a small taste of the Pittsburgh of the nineteenth century, before behemoths with steel skeletons rose to dizzying heights. But even here we see the seeds that would sprout into skyscrapers. The brown cube-shaped building with the fire escapes at the right end of the row is the Conestoga Building, the first building in Pittsburgh built on a steel cage, and one of the first few in the world. This kind of construction indefinitely extended the height a building could support, while simultaneously the elevator removed the human limit of about six flights of stairs.

PPG Place from Across the Mon

One PPG Place through the late-afternoon snow. Pittsburgh took Philip Johnson’s PPG Place to its heart at once. Finished in 1984, it almost instantly became the symbol of downtown Pittsburgh. Whenever you see those glass fantasy-Gothic spires, you know where you are.

Looking Up at PPG Place

The main tower of PPG Place, Philip Johnson’s masterpiece that has become the iconic symbol of downtown Pittsburgh.

Christmas Leftovers at PPG Place

The coldest weather of the year couldn’t keep a few intrepid skaters off the rink at PPG Place. The Christmas tree is still up, hiding the obelisk that Peter Leo likes to call the Tomb of the Unknown Bowler.

Fourth Avenue

The famous Fourth Avenue bank towers rise behind the fantastical glass castles of PPG Place.

A Map of Oakland

Father Pitt mentions Oakland more often than any other neighborhood, probably because Oakland, as the intellectual and cultural center of Pittsburgh, is more fun to look at than any other neighborhood. Here is a helpful map (click to download in PDF format) that shows most of the Oakland sights mentioned by Father Pitt so far. Print it on an ordinary letter-size sheet of paper, carry it with you, and take some better pictures than the ones old Pa Pitt has to offer.

Spiraling Crime

Everyone loves to talk about how much worse things are now than they were then. The golden-age fallacy causes us to imagine that our current state of sin and corruption is a decline from the high standards of the generations before us.

Thanks to the Library of Congress’ collection of printed ephemera, here is a notice (click to enlarge) that would have greeted hotel guests in Pittsburgh in the Victorian age, that time of strict morality and righteous virtue: