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Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Don't want to work in a building downtown, no don't want to work in a building downtown
We’re starting this reasonably short Weekend Trips Slideshow in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of the better sited American cities, with three rivers and lots of bridges that create good angles all over the place to take good pictures of the city.
Sure it might be scaleless and soulless, but it's also kind of cool in an "at least I don't have to work/live here" kind of way. Pittsburgh Plate Glass' headquarters was designed by architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee way back in the early 1980s when Post Modernism both allowed and encouraged large black glass towers to dress up like medieval fortresses right in the center of downtown. The result is both simultaneously striking and just plain wrong- take your pick, either description works just fine.
With the possible exception of San Francisco, there is probably no better sited North American city than Pittsburgh. First of all it is located at the junction of three big rivers, second the downtown area immediately between them is (relatively) flat and (relatively) buildable and last there is a fairly continuous ridge several hundred feet high that flanks the south bank at the south side of the city. Rising along that ridge are two operating funicular trains, each taking you to a neighborhood where large observation platforms allow you to enjoy unparalleled views of the city no matter how bitterly cold it may actually be at the time.
We’re making a quick stop at the Andy Warhol Museum, just across the Allegheny River from downtown Pittsburgh. The museum, operated by the Carnegie Museum and featuring works from the Dia (yes, that Dia) Foundation, is not especially large but holds a good collection of interesting work and features a piece called Silver Clouds, an installation which basically consists of a room filled with flying balloons that in and of itself is reason enough to visit Pittsburgh. More fun than anything at a museum should be.
The big museum in town is the Carnegie, a museum split down the middle just like Batman. Half of the museum's building is all about Natural History (dinosaurs, Eskimos, Egypt) and the other half of the building is all about art (featuring a little bit of everything from Monet and Serra and all the way back to the Middle Ages). Somewhere in-between is the Heinz Architectural Center, itself split between galleries featuring forward looking design and the unabashedly backwards looking Hall of Architecture, an almost unparalleled room (especially if you don't count the one like it at the V&A in London) filled to the brim with giant fragments of other buildings. None of the fragments are exactly real (like the V&A they're all very well done plaster casts) but that hardly matters as much as you think it might.
The last four shots from this page are all from the Penguins-Flyers game, a 4-3 Pittsburgh shootout win that certainly had its moments. I had chosen a Pittsburgh game this year primarily for the reason that the Penguins (up until yesterday) were threatening to leave Pittsburgh behind for Kansas City, Missouri. The team has a history of financial issues, in fact co-owner and former player Mario Lemieux was given partial ownership as compensation years ago when the organization was unable to pay his considerable back salary. This latest threat involved the horrors of playing at the Mellon Arena, horrors I was unable to verify during my all too short visit. Personally I liked the building, liked my seats, liked the club area and was even impressed by the tiny little blimp that threatened to drop pizza coupons at unsuspecting fans.
