Downtown Pittsburgh Walking Tour
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gateway center brochure 4-18.qxp_new 4/19/16 8:02 AM Page 1 Downtown Pittsburgh Walking Tour Gateway Center, The salvation, the rejuvenation of Pittsburgh in my lifetime, Downtown Pittsburgh has to my mind been one of the stunning accomplishments Gateway Center in our country and deserves more attention and credit. 1. Gateway Station –– David McCullough, Excerpt from “Through the Place,” 2. One, Two, Three PHLF’s 50th-Anniversary Documentary Gateway Center 4 3. Gateway Plaza Meeting 3 Location FREE TOURS 4. 625 Stanwix Tower 5 2 Old Allegheny County Jail Museum Apartments 1 H Open Mondays through October ( 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.) 5. Gateway Towers 6 14 (except court holidays) 6. Wyndham Grand Downtown Pittsburgh: Guided Walking Tours Pittsburgh Downtown 10 7 Every Friday, May through October (Noon to 1:00 p.m.) 7. Point State Park 8 13 8. River Vue Apartments • May: Gateway Center • June: Market Square Area 9. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 9 12 Building • July: Grant Street & Mellon Square 11 • August: Bridges & River Shores 10. Plaza at Gateway Center • September: Penn-Liberty Cultural District 11. Eleven Stanwix Street • October: Fourth Avenue & PPG Place 12. United Steelworkers 13. 201 Stanwix Street Place DOWNTOWN’S BEST 14. Four Gateway Center Special Places and Spaces in a 2-Hour Walk Not free. A guidebook is included. Advance paid reservations are required. The Pittsburgh Renaissance Historic District (indicated by the dotted line) includes Gateway Center. It is one of five National Register June through August: every Thursday 10:00 a.m. to Noon Historic Districts in downtown Pittsburgh. This prestigious federal designation does not place any restrictions or obligations on a property Other dates by appointment for groups of 10 people. May Fridays at Noon owner. It does provide opportunities for federal preservation tax incentives, and requires government agencies (if there is a federal undertaking) to evaluate alternatives to mitigate adverse impacts on historic properties. SATURDAY SPECIALS A FREE one-hour guided walking tour, Not free . Reservations are required. Space is limited. compliments of the Pittsburgh History May 14: Bus Tour to the Walker-Ewing Log House and 12 United Steelworkers panels. It now houses 158 luxury apartments, and City & Landmarks Foundation Pittsburgh Botanic Garden Curtis & Davis (New Orleans), architects, 1961-63 High Charter School occupies the first four floors. Within the colonnade is the Bell Telephone map, with reliefs of state May 21: Highland Park Urban Hike Originally the IBM Building (or Five Gateway Center), the landmarks, and a clock and globe denoting Bell’s worldwide June 25: Plein-air Sketching and a Neighborhood Walk 13-story structure is constructed like a bridge and rests on coverage. You can still read the words: “Anywhere, any time in Polish Hill Meeting Location eight concrete piers, which is quite a balancing act. There by telephone.” July 30: Aspinwall Urban Hike Gateway “T” Station, on Stanwix Street are no exterior columns, no corner columns, and no interior Aug. 20: Uptown Urban Hike columns. Three different steels were used in the trusses to Sept. 17: Bus Tour to the City of Butler, PA near Liberty Avenue resist the increasing loads from the top down. The trusses Four Gateway Center 14 Oct. 22: East End Urban Hike from Schenley Park Harrison & Abramovitz (New York), architects, 1958-60 were then clad with uniform stainless-steel covers, and through CMU to Rodef Shalom diamond-shaped windows were set into the openings. Go A curtain wall of glass supported by stainless-steel mullions inside the lobby to find the metal radiator grates punctured hangs from the 22-story steel frame. The interior floor plan with patterns derived from IBM computer punch cards. is open and columnless, since the elevators and mechanical FOR DETAILS & RESERVATIONS equipment are contained in a separate, windowless, ribbed- 412-471-5808, ext. 527 or [email protected] 13 201 Stanwix Street Place stainless-steel tower. Albert Tannler writes in Pittsburgh Dowler & Dowler, architects, 1955-58 Architecture in the Twentieth Century : “Gateway Four is Originally the Western Pennsylvania Headquarters of Bell the most elegant of Harrison & Abramovitz’s Pittsburgh Telephone, this 12-story aluminum-faced building is framed buildings, and with U.S. Steel Tower, it represents the firm’s best work here.” in Minnesota granite and has distinctive, embossed aluminum www.phlf.org Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation For more information, purchase Pittsburgh Architecture in the Twentieth Century: Notable Modern Buildings and Their Architects , Renewing Communities; Building Pride Pittsburgh. Mighty. Beautiful. Walkable. by Albert M. Tannler (PHLF, 2013). Visit www.phlf.org and click on “Store” or call 412-471-5808, ext. 525. 100 West Station Square Drive, Suite 450 Pittsburgh, PA 15219-1134 © 2016 gateway center brochure 4-18.qxp_new 4/19/16 8:02 AM Page 2 three-hinged, post-tensioned concrete arch was designed and GATEWAY CENTER WALKING TOUR Places in 2013. On most days of the year, a walk through the 3 Gateway Plaza Renaissance Historic District is a peaceful and exhilarating Clarke & Rapuano (New York), landscape architects, built to support an eight-lane highway that connects the Fort Duquesne Bridge (north over the Allegheny River) and the experience. Buildings made of steel, glass, and aluminum–– 1950-53 The Pittsburgh Renaissance was an extraordinary episode Fort Pitt Bridge (south over the Monongahela River), and materials Pittsburgh was world-famous for producing––are set This formal garden brings nature into the city with trees for in American urban development. It had no precedent provides pedestrian and vehicular access to Point State Park. shade and colorful plantings. The focal point is the bronze in terms of mobilization of civic resources at the elite within mature landscapes of trees, walkways, and fountains. During major city events, such as the Three Rivers Arts Festival “Fountain of the Three Rivers,” dedicated on June 6, 1956. River Vue Apartments level and wholesale environmental intervention. The It celebrates the significance of the three rivers to Pittsburgh’s 8 achievement, however, was administrative and political and Three Rivers Regatta, the area is filled with people, Altenhof & Bown, architects, 1957 founding in 1758, development, and culture. Renovations: Jim Smith/Design4Studio, 2010-12 in character … . Architecture and design were always exhibitors, art, music, food carts, and activity. secondary considerations … . Pittsburgh’s natural Walter C. Kidney summarized the need for the Renaissance 625 Stanwix Tower Apartments Originally constructed as the State Office Building serving 4 Western Pennsylvania, River Vue now contains 218 luxury endowments were not exploited fully … . and for the Counter-Renaissance in Pittsburgh’s Landmark Tasso Katselas, architect, 1967 Architecture: The Historic Buildings of Pittsburgh and apartments. The original curtain wall of blue-anodized –– Roy Lubove , Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh: Government, Originally Allegheny Towers Penthouse Apartments, this aluminum has been replaced, thus diminishing the architec - Allegheny County (PHLF, 1997): Business, and Environmental Change 24-story concrete-frame building houses commercial services, tural integrity of the building. Therefore, this building is (University of Pittsburgh, 1969) Historic preservation has been a sort of Counter-Renaissance, a parking garage, and 12 stories of apartments. It was created a noncontributing resource in the Pittsburgh Renaissance … because the progressives of the Renaissance too often to house those who worked in the Renaissance buildings and Historic District. Pittsburgh’s Renaissance (194 6–1974) was born from ignored what was good about the city’s past. They failed has maintained its purpose over time. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Building a partnership between Republican financier Richard King to see, certainly, that to break the continuity of a neighbor - 9 5 Gateway Towers Howell & Thomas (Cleveland), architects, 1927 Mellon and Democratic Mayor David L. Lawrence. It hood’s visible history, to sponge away whole streets of Emery Roth & Sons (New York), architects, 1964 Renovations: Hunting, Larsen & Dunnells, 1962 involved the nonprofit Allegheny Conference on Community buildings, risks diminishing the inhabitants’ sense of––their This 27-story residential highrise is the tallest building in the Originally constructed for The Pittsburgh Press, this land - Development (founded in 1944), the Urban Redevelopment right, even, of sensing––who they are and what they are Pittsburgh Renaissance Historic District. It originally housed mark newspaper building survived the St. Patrick’s Day Authority of Pittsburgh (incorporated in 1946), the New- part of. … Renaissance brought order, and a prosperity 314 luxury apartments and now houses 270 condominiums. Flood (March 17, 1936) and a remodeling in 1962: the York based Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United demonstrated in a way that attracted more prosperity, but it On the sides of the building, notice how pre-cast striated con - Romanesque Revival brick building was entirely refaced States, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The was not the most sensitive way of reshaping a city. It had to crete vertical bands with recessed steel spandrels are grouped with aluminum panels to be in harmony with its modern Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation (PHLF) was work fast, and there were penalties inherent in such speed. near