Heinz Hall Details

You need a sharp eye, and a long lens, to pick out some of the details on Heinz Hall from ground level. At first the exterior appears to be rather staid, but it rewards close examination with some charmingly whimsical decorations. (The white spots visible in these pictures are snowflakes.)

Eye Benches at Katz Plaza

Katz Plaza in the theater district: a dusting of snow highlights the contours of these eye-shaped benches by Louise Bourgeois, who also designed the waterfall fountain in the background.

If you sit on a bench whose back looks like a giant eyeball, shouldn’t you be able to see behind you?

Lobby of the Benedum Center

The lobby of the former Stanley theater, an opulent former movie palace that is still the largest theater downtown. This is yet another cell-phone photo, with too much glare and grain, but it gives us some idea of what the place looks like.

Cruising on the Monongahela

The Duchess, one of the Gateway Clipper fleet, putters down the Monongahela late in an autumn afternoon.

Diamond Building

The Diamond Biulding, at Fifth and Liberty Avenues, is a curiously shaped irregular pentagon, one of the many buildings forced into odd shapes by the colliding grids along Liberty Avenue. Except for the shape, it’s a fairly standard beaux-arts tower, with base, shaft, and cap, and  an exuberant bronze cornice at the very top. The building was designed by MacClure and Spahr, a Pittsburgh firm that gave us several other distinguished buildings, including the Union National Bank building on Fourth Avenue.