The Entrance to Phipps Conservatory

For about a century, Phipps Conservatory, the gift of Andrew Carnegie’s friend Henry Phipps, belonged to the Ciry of Pittsburgh. After it was turned over to a private nonprofit group, Phipps started to grow and flourish like a tropical vine. This new entrance, opened a few years ago, is a perfect match for the splendid Victorian glasshouses behind it. Yet it is also unmistakably contemporary. This is a textbook example of architecture that is sympathetic to its surroundings without being slavishly imitative. (Not, old Pa Pitt hastens to add, that there is anything wrong with slavish imitation once in a while.)

Hebe Among the Orchids

Hebe, Greek goddess of youth, cupbearer of Olympus, stands among the Phalaenopsis orchids in the Sunken Garden at Phipps Conservatory.

Schematic Map of Pittsburgh Rapid Transit

Update: The new Transit Development Plan will change the names of the streetcar lines from route numbers to colors, which is so obviously sensible that Father Pitt wonders why no one thought of it before.

Here is Father Pitt’s revised map of Pittsburgh rapid transit, which takes into account the changes that should take effect within a few months:

Click on the image for a PDF map.

The original version of this article, with the older version of the map, follows below.

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Father Pitt has already offered one map of Pittsburgh rapid transit. That one was meant to show the attractions along the way. This new map is an attempt at a schematic map, somewhat after the manner of the famous London Tube maps, that will fit comfortably on a single sheet of letter-size paper. Old Pa Pitt would not have attempted such a thing if the Port Authority had created a useful rapid-transit system map, but that august body has not done so, instead doling out partial maps in bits and pieces.

This map is an early draft, on which comments are invited.

Click on the image for a full-size PDF version.

And now, a few words about Pittsburgh’s rapid-transit system, which old Pa Pitt (who is admittedly prejudiced) thinks is an admirable start, better than almost any other system for a city of this size in the United States.

What is rapid transit, and how does it differ from plain old non-rapid transit? For our purposes, “rapid transit” means what the Port Authority calls “fixed-guideway systems”: that is, anything that has its own dedicated track. In addition to the lines on this map, there are nearly two hundred bus routes that run on the street in ordinary traffic.

Trolleys or streetcars (the terms are interchangeable here) run on rails. The Port Authority calls the cars LRVs, for “light-rail vehicles,” but no one else calls them that. Depending on how you count, there are somewhere from three to six routes.

Route 52 runs almost entirely on the street. Routes 42C and 42S run on the street in Beechview, but on their own right-of-way everywhere else. Routes 47L and 47S run entirely on their own right-of-way. The short spur to Penn Station is served by only two rush-hour cars (Route 42 Penn Park) a day.

Downtown, the cars run in a clean and pleasant subway. Routes 42 and 47 also run underground between Station Square and South Hills Junction, and Route 42 runs underground between Dormont Junction and Mount Lebanon. For reasons old Pa Pitt doesn’t pretend to understand, no one around here calls those other streetcar tunnels subways.

Subway stations, and major stations elsewhere, have high-level platforms on the same level as the floor of the car. Other stops on the lines have street-level platforms (if they have platforms at all). Because of this odd system, Pittsburgh streetcars have to be specially made with entrances at two levels. You can see the two levels plainly in this picture:

The disproportionate rail coverage of the South Hills is an accident of history. When shortsighted bureaucrats were abandoning streetcar lines right and left, the ones that stayed were the ones that had their own right-of-way for most of the route, and those happened to be in the South Hills. The exception is the Allentown Trolley, Route 52, which survives because it makes a vitally useful bypass for the other routes if the transit tunnel under Mount Washington has to be closed for some reason.

Busways in Pittsburgh are not like the half-hearted “bus rapid transit” lines some cities like Cleveland and Boston are installing. They’re more like rubber-tired metro lines. Like a true metro, they are entirely grade-separated, meaning that they never intersect with any cross streets or join with street traffic. Also like a true metro, they stop infrequently and reach high speeds between stops—sixty miles an hour or more. The main difference is that, at the ends of the busway, the giant articulated buses can go on into the streets; most busway routes make a loop downtown.

Father Pitt thinks busways are inferior to rail transit, for the simple reason that no one loves a bus, no matter how quick or convenient. Rail transit attracts more riders. Nevertheless, the busways (which were built with eventual conversion to rail in mind) are efficient and very fast. Pittsburgh invented the busway (the South Busway was the first one in the world, as far as we know), and we got it right the first time.

Inclines are funicular railways that climb steep hillsides. The cars come in pairs attached to a long cable; the weight of one car going down helps pull the other car up. The cars move slowly, but because an incline goes straight up an otherwise impassable hill, it’s the fastest way to get from up to down or down to up.

Pa Pitt debated with himself whether to include the Fifth Avenue bus lane, but eventually decided to keep it. Outbound through Soho and Oakland, the buses travel against the flow of traffic in a lane of their own, so that even in rush hour they move smoothly through the most congested part of the city. And the link to Oakland is so vital that including it markedly increases the utility of the map. The inclusion of the bus lane, however, should not be taken as a sign of old Pa Pitt’s acquiescence in the current state of affairs. Some form of subway, trolley, monorail, maglev, or teleportation between downtown and Oakland is still our highest transit priority.

The Smithfield Street Bridge

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Seen from Mount Washington, the graceful Pauli truss of the the Smithfield Street Bridge leaps over the Monongahela.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, Polish Hill

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It is impossible to get a good picture of Immaculate Heart of Mary without a forest of cables in front of it. But part of the magnificence of the building is the way it rises up from an impossibly cramped and sloping lot in a crowded hillside neighborhood; it is more impressive because it can never be seen all at once.

The madly ambitious Polish railroad workers who built this church with their own hands chose a design that intentionally resembles St. Peter’s in Rome. The rest of the neighborhood is still modest and picturesquely shabby, but Immaculate Heart of Mary is a building that could easily pass for a cathedral.

Allegheny Arsenal

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The Allegheny Arsenal, next to 40th Street in Lawrenceville, is most famous for blowing up during the Civil War, killing a large number of women and children who worked there. In those days, it was considered wise and prudent to employ young children in the manufacture of dangerous explosives. In our more enlightened time, we are careful to employ only well-trained adults in our munitions works, so that our bombs will kill only the children we aim them at.

The Arsenal, or what’s left of it, is also notable for being the last remaining work of Benjamin Henry Latrobe in Pittsburgh. Latrobe is more famous as the architect of the United States Capitol in Washington.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Textures in the Skyline

Slices of the skyline of downtown Pittsburgh, with every kind of stone, brick, steel, and glass glimmering in the noonday sun.

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Victorian Woodwork on Mount Washington

The entrances to a pair of 1880 rowhouses on Grandview Avenue, showing all the fun you can have with wood in even so simple a structure as a porch roof.

“Chapel” on the Union Trust Building

This wonderfully ornate protrusion on the roof of the Union Trust Building, the masterpiece of Frederick Osterling, has given rise to the urban legend that there is a secret chapel on the roof, where perhaps Henry Clay Frick himself went to repent of his many sins. The truth is more prosaic and yet more impressive as an architectural accomplishment: the chapel-like structure houses the mechanics for the elevators and other necessities that normally make ugly blisters on the roofs of large buildings.

The Union Trust Building is just across the street from the Grant Street exit of the Steel Plaza subway station.

Allegheny County Courthouse

A winter morning’s sunlight, reflected from the windows of the Frick Building, paints the tower of the Allegheny County Courthouse with stripes of gold. Henry Hobson Richardson, one of America’s greatest architects, considered this his masterpiece, though he did not live to see it completed. Philip Johnson, whose PPG Place has become the iconic symbol of the Pittsburgh skyline, called the Courthouse the best building in America.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then this is an unusually well-flattered building: the city hall of Minneapolis is an acknowledged copy of it. It is not unusual for an architect to copy a famous classical or medieval building, but quite rare to copy one that was only a quarter-century old at the time. Such was Richardson’s reputation that Long and Kees, architects of the Minneapolis City Hall, were willing to pay this ultimate tribute to their master in what is widely considered their own masterpiecce.

The Courthouse is half a block south on Grant Street from the Grant Street exit of the Steel Plaza subway station.