Buildings Of Pittsburgh

At the forefront of national and international change, Pittsburgh has long been portrayed as a place for innovative architecture. From its origins as a fort built in 1753 at the urging of a twenty-one-year-old George Washington, through its industrial boom, and into contemporary times, when it has become a pioneer for the ideals and philosophy of environmentally friendly architecture, the city has a history of development that exemplifies the transformative nature of America's built environment. With The Buildings of Pittsburgh, we now have a substantive reference book (organized by area, with subsets of geographical entries) that relates the architectural history of this ever-changing city up to the present day. Franklin Toker examines Pittsburgh's architectural transformations from its early architecture following the Federal and Gothic Revival styles, to the city's importation in the mid-nineteenth century of new styles in the Romantic tradition, to industrial Pittsburgh with all its factories and huge institutional buildings, and finally to the city's environmentally conscious renaissance that began in the mid-twentieth century. In doing so, he shows why Pittsburgh has consistently been rated among the top three American cities for buildings by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and how the city once famous for embracing industry and pollution is now preaching the gospel of clean air and "green" architecture.

Intended to complement the forthcoming companion volume--Buildings of Pennsylvania: Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania--in the Buildings of the United States series, this book will pique the interest and curiosity of architectural historians and general readers alike. A volume in the Buildings of the United States series of the Society of Architectural Historians

This volume describes buildings in an area central to the development of the US. It shows the diverse styles of the Commonwealth State that has its hybrid regional architectural roots in both Britain and the new experiment in democracy. Following an overview of Pennsylvania's historical and cultural geography, sections organized by region, then county, present descriptions of the homes, commercial buildings, and public spaces of Philadelphia to the resort country of the Pocono Mountains.

Imagining the Modern explores Pittsburgh's ambitious modern architecture and urban renewal program that made it a gem of American postwar cities, and set the stage for its stature today. In the 1950s and '60s an ambitious program of urban revitalization transformed Pittsburgh and became a model for other American cities. Billed as the Pittsburgh Renaissance, this era of superlatives--the city claimed the tallest aluminum clad building, the world's largest retractable dome, the tallest steel structure--developed through visionary mayors and business leaders, powerful urban planning authorities, and architects and urban designers of international renown, including Frank Lloyd Wright, I.M. Pei, Mies van der Rohe, SOM, and Harrison & Abramovitz. These leaders, civic groups, and architects worked together to reconceive the city through local and federal initiatives that aimed to address the problems that confronted Pittsburgh's postwar development. Initiated as an award-winning exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art in 2014, Imagining the Modern untangles this complicated relationship with modern architecture and planning through a history of Pittsburgh's major sites, protagonists, and voices of intervention. Through original documentation, photographs and drawings, as well as essays, analytical drawings, and interviews with participants, this book provides a nuanced view of this crucial moment in Pittsburgh's evolution. Addressing both positive and negative impacts of the era, Imagining the Modern examines what took place during the city's urban renewal era, what was gained and lost, and what these histories might suggest for the city's future.

Winner, 2021 CAAA Charles Rufus Morey Book Award Winner, 2021 On the Brinck Book Award Shortlist, 2020 MSA First Book Prize In the nineteenth-century paradigm of architectural organicism, the notion that buildings possessed character provided architects with a lens for relating the buildings they designed to the populations they served. Advances in scientific race theory enabled designers to think of “race” and “style” as manifestations of natural law: just as biological processes seemed to inherently regulate the racial characters that made humans a perfect fit for their geographical contexts, architectural characters became a rational product of design. Parallels between racial and architectural characters provided a rationalist model of design that fashioned some of the most influential national building styles of the past, from the pioneering concepts of French structural rationalism and German tectonic theory to the nationalist associations of the Chicago Style, the Prairie Style, and the International Style. In Building Character, Charles Davis traces the racial charge of the architectural writings of five modern theorists—Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Gottfried Semper, Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and William Lescaze—to highlight the social, political, and historical significance of the spatial, structural, and ornamental elements of modern architectural styles.

Toker examines Pittsburgh in its historical context, in its regional setting, and from the street level (leading the reader on a personal tour through every neighborhood). Based on his 1986 classic, Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait, but with a completely revised text and lavishly illustrated with all new photos and maps, Pittsburgh: A New Portrait reveals the true colors of a truly great American city.