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Pittsburgh Quarterly Contributors

Charles Rosenblum

Charles Rosenblum is a journalist, critic, and scholar who specializes in the built environment and visual arts. His work has appeared in Architectural Record, Preservation, Architect’s Newspaper, Public Art Review, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Quarterly. Charles has taught history and theory of art and architecture at Carnegie Mellon University since 1998.

Night light // Though compact, PNC's Lantern Building's ambitious contemporary design and prominent downtown site give it a high degree of visibility on its corner where Liberty Avenue, Sixth Street and Market Street meet.

Architecture & Neighborhoods

Local Angles

2013 Fall

Raising the Bar

The widely repeated story goes something like this: Gary Saulson, PNC’s senior vice president for real estate, would regularly have lunch at a certain restaurant, from which he would have a direct view toward the Liberty Travel Building, a billboard-slathered misshapen lump, whose prominent location at the corner of Liberty and Sixth meant…

Architecture & Neighborhoods

2014 Fall

Local Angles

The Enduring Dollar

They don’t call it the lion’s share for nothing. Those sculpted felines at Dollar Bank’s Fourth Avenue building have grabbed the limelight. A crowd attended their unveiling last year, with substantial press coverage, because master carver Nicholas Fairplay had both restored the original lions, which were placed inside the Dollar Bank building, and…

A birds-eye-view rendering of the Sharpsburg Community Library (in a preliminary color scheme) shows off the building's dynamically shaped forms which help define different use areas within the library.

Architecture & Neighborhoods

Local Angles

2014 Summer

From drab to daring

You could easily miss the Sharpsburg Community Library, even at its Main Street location next to the post office. This is not a Beaux Arts gem of the Carnegie system. Rather, it is 1,300 square feet in a one-story concrete-block former Indian restaurant. The little facility is well used and beloved, but we…

Pittsburgh’s tiny troubles

“Tiny houses” are a hot trend on the Internet and occasionally in real life. The widespread but not entirely formal movement includes residences of between 100 and 400 square feet, depending who is counting. They come from builders and owners who want to live more economical and less complicated lives by getting rid…

The facades are inspired by local warehouses, with proportions and details that are residentially scaled. Interiors are contemporary and spacious compared to the neighborhood's traditional housing.

Architecture & Neighborhoods

2014 Winter

Local Angles

Hatfield and Home

At the corner of Hatfield and Home streets, lively currents in Lawrenceville’s past, present and future converge in vivid architecture. Historic rowhouses line the street in one direction, and in another are some of the remains of industrial infrastructure. The substantial remaining open space toward the river seems to ask almost vocally what…

Architecture & Neighborhoods

2013 Summer

Local Angles

A Sustainable Aesthetic

What is sustainable, or green architecture, anyway, and what is it supposed to look like? The fact remains that the operation of buildings uses 40 percent of the earth’s energy resources, so construction aimed at reducing that consumption is both admirable and necessary. But do you know it when you see it? A…

A new front door

Nestled comfortably at the intersection of Schenley Park and the Junction Hollow Railway, at the border of Oakland and Squirrel Hill, the campus of Carnegie Mellon University could appear as a serene grove of academia, where eminent professors and industrious students perambulate through green spaces from one building to the next. In fact,…

Opening day festivities for Buhl Community Park at Allegheny Square, June 23, 2012.

Nonprofits

2013 Spring

Architecture & Neighborhoods

For the children and the community

Mist emerges with an audible hiss from the vertical stainless steel poles of “Cloud Arbor,” the new artwork by Ned Kahn in the redesigned Buhl Community Park on the North Side across from the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. A delighted toddler runs toward it, to assess the wafting, San Francisco-like fog that collects…

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Charles Rosenblum

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