As the holidays approach, so does the need for presents and hostess gifts. While it may be tempting to get on your iPad at 2 a.m. and order mass-produced items that will show up on your doorstep in two days, there are unique or personalized options that support local businesses…
Great architecture should be built for the ages. Imposing piles, whether in stone or steel, are supposed to indicate heroic resistance to the ravages of the elements as both practicality and art. And yet in the era of the environmental movement, some portion of this equation has been inverted. We…
Since its completion in 1931, the towering stone St. Helen’s Catholic Church has stood like a beacon atop Main Street in East Pittsburgh. Now it’s a car club and garage with country club perks.
Everything must change. Nothing stays the same, and there aren’t too many things you can be sure of. At least that’s what George Benson says. It’s a heartbreaker of a song, but I think he’s right.
Joseph Meyer lives in the former manager’s home of an abandoned company town, where there is no running water, no cell service, and until recently, there was not a single resident. On this cold Saturday in December, 63-year-old Meyer splits wood to heat his three-story home. The scene would be…
Lynda S. Waggoner is vice president of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and director of Fallingwater. On the occasion of her retirement, we asked her to look back on more than 50 years at Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece.
At their best, cities cultivate relationships among buildings across time. Destroy too many historic structures, and you lose memory, craft, and persistent cultural value. Fail to build new buildings well, and you risk stasis and irrelevance. The balance of time periods should be art as well as commerce. Accordingly, a…
For a sprawling building in an ambitious Romanesque style on a conspicuous riverfront site, Western Penitentiary has spent most of its life in architectural obscurity. After an auspicious start, it fell quickly from prominence. Now, it may soon fall to the wrecking ball.
Take a look at Pittsburgh’s North Side neighborhood through the lens of David Aschkenas in this never-before published photo collection from our archives.
Tucked in a valley off the Allegheny River along Route 28, Millvale teems with homes, churches and stores that follow the contours of the flood plain along Girty’s Run. Long before its 1868 incorporation, the land marked the beginning of the Venango Trail, which led to Erie.
Photographer Clyde “Red” Hare moved to Pittsburgh in 1950 to work on the Pittsburgh Photographic Library, covering the city’s Renaissance I, with noted editor Roy Stryker. Hare had his own car and camera and Stryker offered to pay him $50 a week to photograph the city.
Stand at the top of the angles stairs in the entry to the Squirrel Hill Library, and you are cantilevered out and over Forbes Avenue, beyond the facades of surrounding buildings. The way the building creases and folds here, you can see outside and back in at the same time.…
Sometimes a building aims to look as if it has always been there. Frequently, architects match the brick of the surrounding neighborhood and use slightly modernized versions of traditional details to make a structure appear that it’s been there longer than it has. This is not such a bad thing.…
It’s early morning on Christmas Eve in the town of Economy, Pennsylvania. The year is 1828. Twenty-seven-year-old Catharina Langenbacher awakens to the five o’clock gong of the grandfather clock in the sitting room downstairs. By the time she clambers down the crude staircase, her widowed mother is preparing breakfast. Catharina’s…
