Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Station

The old Pittsburgh and Lake Erie station, now the centerpiece of the Station Square entertainment district, with the Monongahela Incline in the background.

Although the angle is distorted here by a telephoto lens, the building is not rectangular. A satellite view reveals the odd shape.

A view of the interior, now a restaurant called the Grand Concourse, is here.

Rainbows and Bessemer Converter

Rainbows glow as the late-afternoon sun hits a fountain in Bessemer Court, Station Square. Behind the fountain is a Bessemer converter salvaged from a steel mill; behind that is the Monongahela with downtown Pittsburgh on the other side.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Alley at Twilight

A South Side alley, crammed with little houses, in the fading light of a summer evening. In dense neighborhoods like the South Side, alleys were built between the main streets to serve the rear entrances of the rowhouses; but soon the real estate became so valuable that, one by one, the property owners sold off their back yards for smaller rowhouses. Alley houses like these are especially typical of the South Side, Lawrenceville, Bloomfield, and the Mexican War Streets, all of them old rowhouse neighborhoods.

Belgian Block on the South Side

Belgian block is a pavement made of brick-shaped stones, more or less uniform, but usually rather less than more. Pittsburghers call it “cobblestone,” having lost the memory of what real cobblestones are like. (A real cobblestone is an irregular smooth, round stone, and cobblestone pavements are quite a bit bumpier than Belgian-block pavements.) Countless Belgian-block pavements still exist in Pittsburgh, and often preparations for repaving an asphalt street reveal the Belgian blocks beneath, still perfectly intact, as they will be when archaeologists dig them up a thousand years from now.

This pavement is on an industrial street near the river on the South Side. Old Pa Pitt admits to not knowing the purpose of what appear to be iron spikes in a more or less straight line.

Neon at the South Side Works

An inherited camera with fifteen-year-old film took this picture of the front of the South Side Works theater at night. It’s a bit grainy, but recognizable.