User:Seddon/SandboxGrant Street

Grant Street is Pittsburgh's power alley, home to its courts and to the heavy-metal commerce that once made it a spectacular, fire-breathing city.

Grant Street's buildings tell the stories of the industrialists, bankers and, yes, the architects who made Pittsburgh great at the turn of the 20th century. They also reveal how the street evolved from a church-lined thoroughfare with a hilltop promenade to the flat, broad boulevard of office towers we know today.

In the early 20th century, many who traveled to Pittsburgh came through Penn Station (Point 1 on the map), an elegant introduction to a hell-with-the-lid-off town. Pittsburgh native Alexander Cassatt, brother of painter Mary Cassatt, was president of the Pennsylvania Railroad when he commissioned this station from Chicago architect Daniel Hudson Burnham, who provided a 12-story office tower and, for the cab stand, a magnificent domed rotunda.

Stand under the center of the dome and you may have the distinct impression that time has stopped, that it is once again 1900 and the world -- or at least the eastern United States -- is revolving around you. Each of the four "legs" of the rotunda acknowledges a city to which the Pennsylvania Railroad traveled: New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Pittsburg -- without the "h," the way the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, seeking uniformity, decreed it should be spelled from Dec. 23, 1891 until July 19, 1911 -- the date Pittsburghers reclaimed their "h."

After the railroad went bankrupt, Penn Station's office tower eventually emptied out but was reborn, in 1988, as The Pennsylvanian apartments. Peer through its oak and glass doors at the ornate paintings and classical motifs of the restored lobby, the station's former concourse, illuminated by a large, rectangular skylight.

At the time, the tall, handsome, affable Burnham was one of the country's most influential architects, planner of the famed White City of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. He was also one of America's earliest skyscraper designers, and we'll discover one of his finest a little farther along Grant Street.

But first, we must get past the Feds.

Leaving The Pennsylvanian, as you take the sidewalk down to Grant Street, look to your left, and you'll see the silvery skin of the Mellon Arena (formerly the Civic Arena). Its retractable dome -- the world's first -- made it a landmark in modern architecture and the pride of Pittsburgh when it opened in 1962. Now it's threatened with demolition as the Penguins seek a new arena next door.

After the Penn Station train sheds were demolished in the late 1920s, Grant Street was extended to the north of Seventh Avenue, which is why the next few buildings we'll encounter date to the late '20s and early 1930s.

Stay on the eastern side of Grant Street, walking alongside the monolithic U.S. Post Office and Federal Courts Building of 1932 (by the blue-chip New York firm Trowbridge & Livingston), which spans an entire block (Point 2). Across the street is the modernist grid of the William S. Moorhead Federal Building of 1964 (Point 3), followed by the 1931 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Pittsburgh branch (Point 4), with an Art Deco facade of white Georgia marble ornamented with three cast aluminum figures representing mining, agriculture and commerce, by New York sculptor Henry Hering. The interlocking "4" and "D" refer to the fourth of 12 Federal Reserve districts (D being the fourth letter of the alphabet). Walker and Weeks, the designer, was Cleveland's most prominent architectural firm in the early 20th century, specializing in monumental bank buildings.

Next door is the Gulf Tower (1932) (Point 5), and just across Seventh Avenue, the Koppers Building (1929). Both were commissioned by Andrew Mellon, whose family had controlling interests in Gulf Oil and what is now Koppers Industries. The illuminated tops of both towers are grace notes in the night sky, subtly advertising their presence with nary a neon letter or logo in site. Weekdays, you can walk through their marble lobbies.

The 44-story Gulf Tower, also by Trowbridge & Livingston in two tones of gray granite, was Pittsburgh's tallest building until 1970 and the headquarters of Gulf Oil until 1985. Its red-illuminated, stepped-pyramid roof is topped by a weather beacon and a strobe light that signals Pirates home runs and wins.

The Koppers Building (Point 6), headquarters of an international manufacturer of construction materials, was designed by Chicago architects Graham, Anderson, Probst and White -- Burnham's successor firm -- who topped it with a chateau-style copper roof. Inside, the Koppers Building features Pittsburgh's most sumptuous Art Deco interior, with colorful marbles on the floor and walls, bronze metalwork and polychrome cornice moldings. The mailbox is the Koppers Building in miniature; historic photographs in glass cases document the building's construction.

Across Grant Street, the rusty, triangular building of exposed Cor-Ten steel is the U.S. Steel Tower, at 70 stories Pittsburgh's tallest building (Point 7). Its 18 supporting columns are filled with water and antifreeze, designed by Harrison & Abramovitz to help it resist flames in the event of a fire. Completed in 1970 as the headquarters of the U.S. Steel Corp., it stands in a once-austere, sterile plaza that has been humanized in recent years with flowers, tables and actual humans.

Across Strawberry Way is First Lutheran Church of 1888 (Point 8), a High Victorian Gothic vestige of Downtown's residential days, and the only survivor among four churches that once graced Grant Street.

For a glimpse of what 19th-century Downtown housing was like, turn right on Strawberry Way, walk down a block, and make a left onto William Penn Place. Here you'll find one of Downtown's most intimate spaces, the charming courtyard of the HYP Club (Point 9). Originally built for workers, these brick buildings were given a Georgian makeover in 1930, with an arched gateway framing a view of the rose window of Smithfield United Church (Point 10), which had been completed four years earlier. Its lacy spire is thought to be the world's first structural use of aluminum, showcasing a home-grown industry that once had its headquarters next door to the HYP Club, at the corner of William Penn Place and Sixth Avenue.

For a time in the late 1940s, however, Alcoa's allegiance to Pittsburgh was in doubt -- some in the company's hierarchy wanted to move Alcoa out of Pittsburgh completely. Richard King Mellon convinced them to stay with a new headquarters building and a new public plaza, Mellon Square. Designed by Harrison & Abramovitz and erected in 1953, the Alcoa Building is a 30-story advertisement for aluminum (Point 11). The curtain wall is made of prefabricated sections of aluminum panels that contained the windows, set in rubber gaskets, and the floor area. Eventually the company outgrew it, and in 1998 then-Alcoa chairman Paul O'Neill donated the building to the cause of regional enterprise development. (Alcoa's new headquarters complex will be something you encounter later on the tour.)

Now known as the Regional Enterprise Tower, the original Alcoa building on its first floor is home to Xplorion, an exhibit that offers weekday, virtual tours of southwest Pennsylvania destinations and online access to more than 1,200 regional information resources. Visitors can custom-design their tours, "flying" over a digital map of the city and dropping down at attractions of their choosing.

Back outside, cross William Penn Place and then Sixth Avenue to the Omni William Penn Hotel (Point 12), built in 1914-16 and enlarged in 1929 by architect Benno Janssen and his partners. Step up into the lobby's Old World elegance, with its potted palms, crystal chandeliers and classical music. The hotel's finest room, however, is on the 17th floor -- the Art Deco ballroom designed by New York architect Joseph Urban. The hotel is the last of four buildings in three adjacent blocks commissioned by industrialist Henry Clay Frick, who sometimes reserved the Presidential suite for his own use.

Come back down to William Penn Place, exiting the hotel the same way you came in. Turn left and cross Oliver Avenue to find another Frick building, the Union Arcade (1915-1917, now the Union Trust Building/Two Mellon Center) (Point 13). The architect of this Flemish Gothic fantasy was Pittsburgher Frederick J. Osterling, who had enlarged Frick's Point Breeze home two decades earlier. It is Frick's answer to the then-new Woolworth Building in New York City, the world's tallest. When it opened, it was Pittsburgh's most sumptuous shopping mall, although its four floors of shops have been reduced to one. Step inside, walk to the center and look up into the delicate lace of the stained glass dome.

Exiting on Grant Street, you can see One Mellon Center (Point 14) across Fifth Avenue, a 1983 building that literally cuts corners, permitting views of nearby historic buildings, especially the Allegheny County Courthouse. This is the center of the Pittsburgh financial empire that began in 1869 as T. Mellon & Sons -- Judge Tom Mellon and sons Andrew and Richard Beatty.

Across Fifth Avenue, you'll find the Frick Building (1901-02), the first of Frick's architectural ventures on Grant Street (Point 15). In 1903, Leslie's Weekly judged it "the finest office building in the world," and no wonder: Daniel Burnham gave the coke and steel king a vertical version of the White City, a neo-classical tower with a dazzling white, T-shaped marble lobby, clean and crisp as a new dollar bill; bronze lions flanking the entrance; and John La Farge's stained glass window, "Fortune and Her Wheel," above a marble bust of Frick installed after his death in 1919.

Frick, ironically, was always a man who made his own fortune, in both senses of the word. More than any other man, he shaped the fortune of Grant Street when he bought three churches on the block, on the site of the Frick Building, Union Arcade and William Penn Hotel. St. Paul's Cathedral and the Third Presbyterian Church were demolished, but Frick paid to have St. Peter's Church moved to Oakland, stone by stone, where it stood until 1990.

The Frick Building's fortune might have taken a turn for the worse in 1912, when the city began the last of several efforts to rid Grant Street of its hump. Instead, its removal ultimately made the Frick Building's lobby a loftier and more interesting space. But it had a disastrous effect on the courthouse across the street.

At this point, a little Colonial history is appropriate. On the morning of Sept. 14, 1758, British Major James Grant and his 800 Scottish Highlanders advanced on Fort Duquesne, hoping to draw the French and Indians out and into an ambush. But after a series of blunders, including announcing themselves by playing reveille on the drums, they were defeated on the mound that became known as Grant's Hill. About 270 men were either killed or taken prisoner. Grant, who refused to retreat, was captured, surviving to become a British brigadier general during the Revolutionary War.

On July 29, 1786, in the first issue of the Gazette (a predecessor of this newspaper), publisher Hugh Henry Brackenridge described Grant's Hill as "a beautiful rising ground . . . beset with green and flowers." Part of it held an Indian burial mound in the shape of a truncated cone, 30 feet across and 10 feet high, according to a British traveler who saw it in 1817. In good weather and on Sunday afternoons, the hill was a promenade from which strollers enjoyed a fine view of the town.

But in the late 1820s, a tunnel was dug through Grant's Hill to accommodate the Pennsylvania Canal, and as Pittsburgh grew, the bucolic hill eventually became a nuisance with an ignominious nickname, "the hump." The first cut probably was made before 1837, followed by more shavings in 1844 and 1847, which left the entrances to St. Paul's (on the Union Arcade site) hanging 20 feet above the street, and the county's second courthouse, built in the late 1830s, perched on a terrace.

When the courthouse burned in 1882, Boston's Henry Hobson Richardson won the competition the following year to design a new courthouse and jail with a thoughtful plan and muscular buildings of rough-hewn gray granite, with great, round-arched door and window openings. Although he died at age 47 before it was finished, Richardson believed it his best building; many architectural historians regard it as the finest public building in the United States (Point 16). It was designed to tower over the city and for a few years it did, until Frick put up the Frick Building, which visually walled it off from the rest of Downtown.

Richardson, who had studied in Paris, was inspired by the 11th- and 12th-century castles of France and Spain and in turn inspired others. Richardsonian Romanesque swept the country in the late 19th century, making it all the more unfortunate that one of the progenitors was so badly mangled at its entrance.

After the final cut from the hump was made between 1912 and 1914, it was still possible to enter the building much the way Richardson intended, this time after climbing a new double staircase. But when Grant Street was widened between 1926 and 1929, the staircase was removed and visitors were forced to enter through the basement, diminishing the "wow!" factor -- the immediate dramatic impact of Richardson's rhythmic, limestone arches and cascading stairs.

Stop to read the descriptive panel on the corner of Forbes Avenue and Grant Street, which explores the history and design of the courthouse and jail. (Another panel in the courthouse's courtyard focuses on Richardson's career.)

Now you're ready to go in. Turn right to get to the grand staircase and lobby -- one of the world's great architectural experiences -- where one of Vincent Nesbert's 1930s murals depicts the battle of Grant's Hill. In Room 101, the office of the Allgheny County Chief Executive, you can pick up a self-guided walking tour brochure for the courthouse and jail.

Leave the courthouse the way you came in, turn left onto Forbes Avenue and walk one block to Ross Street, spanned by the Bridge of Sighs (Point 17). It connects the courthouse to Richardson's jail, now converted to a county courts facility with minimal disruption to its great stone walls. Walk their perimeter if you like; you can also step inside to see how the old five-story rotunda has been transformed into a bright, welcoming public space. Nearby, several cells have been preserved to interpret the history of the jail.

Its most notorious episode began at 4:15 a.m. on Jan. 30, 1902, when brothers Ed and Jack Biddle, condemned murderers, escaped with the help of the warden's wife, Kate Soffel. Three days and a gunfight later, both Biddles were dead. Soffel spent 19 months in prison. Their story was romanticized in the 1984 film "Mrs. Soffel," filmed partly at the jail.

On the diagonal corner from the jail is the City-County Building of 1917, Pittsburgh's city hall (Point 18), designed by Henry Hornbostel and Edward B. Lee. Enter through the monumental arch on Ross Street into a light-filled corridor flanked by bronze columns and framed, at either end, by great arched windows spanned by catwalks. If you're lucky, someone will walk by on one of them, a silhouette on a tightrope. On the Grant Street steps stands a statue of the late Mayor Richard Caliguiri, shaper of Pittsburgh's second renaissance, by New York sculptor Robert Berks.

Walk west on Forbes two blocks toward the Point, then make a right on Smithfield Street at Kaufmann's department store, due to be renamed Macy's in early September of 2006.

On the opposite side of Smithfield in this block in 1905, Harry Davis and John Harris opened the Nickelodeon (Point 19), the world's first theater devoted exclusively to motion pictures, at 433-435 Smithfield (now demolished). Their first attraction was "The Great Train Robbery"; admission was a nickel.

Stop at the corner of Fifth and Smithfield, where Pittsburghers traditionally meet under Kaufmann's clock. Diagonally across the street is the Park Building (Point 20), where a row of crouching, muscle-bound telamones -- from the Latin and Greek "telamon," or bearer -- have been holding up the cornice since 1898. Look up and you'll see two more in bronze, flanking Kaufmann's clock (Point 21), which is where this phase of the tour ends.