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Visited Oct 2003
Modern Pittsburgh is this amazing
tumble and jumble of hulking concrete skyscrapers and
totally anomalous marble buildings.
The town was home to one the great American robber barons.
Carnegie got his money from
steel and spent it on
churches and libraries and museums and universities. Here's CMU.
Historical, Pittsburgh was infamous for air pollution from all the
steel works. Before WWII, there's
stories of cars driving down main street Pittsburgh in the middle of the day
with the lights on, cause the coal dust was so bad. That folks went to work with a spare
shirt to change into since, by midday, they'd be so dusty.
Pittsburgh cleaned itself up something amazing in the 60s. These days, the coal
is gone from the air but the marks remain. Here's the side view of one of those
fantastic Carnegie-funded mock-Greek monuments. See how the coal dust magically
ends on one side of these column?
Well, the story goes that for the film Hoffa,
they needed one angle that didn't look disgusting for our anti-hero to stride into
court. So they scrubbed down the columns, just for that special camera angle.
Here are "The Inclines" where Hugh Clapin easily ambushed Meng.
Decades before that, the Inclines were a short tram ride that took workers down
to the steel works on the river.
One of the strangest buildings is the Cathedral
of Learning. This huge Gothic spike was building using public
money, donated during the depression. Its HUGE: 40 stories! Tim Burton would
use it in a second as the set for the next seven Batman movies.
The view from top is amazing- majestic
aerial shots of Pittsburgh through the grandest stone windows.
Pittsburgh University owns the building
and gives its students these elegant reading rooms on the one millionth
floor.
Lucky bastards.
The Cathedral of Learning looks down on
this copy of a medieval French church.
The church is, sometimes, guarded by an English gnome called
Martin.
The church boasts some wonderful
stain glass windows.
Glorious.
The glass show the usual religious icons and some unique American scenes.
Here's Abe Lincoln and
Liz Frey,
in glass.
Course, this ain't the only church in town.
Real pretty.
Pittsburgh is home to the legendary
Software Engineering Institute.
I want to meet the architect for the SEI building- SEI's front door
reflects the church across the road. This is no accident.
SEI also reflects
a religious belief by government agencies
in the benefits of SE process.
Ah, architecture. Gags that last generations.
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