Four Dazzling Lobbies You Should Visit Downtown
An early skyscraper architect named Cass Gilbert described a tall office building as "a machine that makes the land pay." To attract potential tenants and the income their leases provide, developers demanded skyscrapers that would wow anyone who entered. These four stately structures have stood the test of time in a way few others can match.
Union Trust Building
1917, by Frederick Osterling
501 Grant St.
Gaze upwards long enough to marvel at the stained glass skylight
10 stories above in Pittsburgh's most dramatic interior, and your neck might
start aching. If so, the bartenders at the Speckled Egg in the central atrium
can whip up a tonic to take the edge off your muscle strain.
The last of a trio of towers built for Henry Clay Frick on Grant
Street, this opened as a four story, 240-store retail arcade — think early
shopping mall — with offices in the floors above. It is nearly all office now,
and its flamboyant Gothic trim and glinting ceiling mosaics convey the sense of
a cathedral, as do a pair of decorative rooftop "chapels," though
their sacred duty is merely to cover the elevator shafts.
Some claim the decor was mandated by the Catholic diocese, which
had its cathedral on this spot throughout the 19th century before it sold the
land to Frick and relocated to Oakland. That's just an urban legend — the real
reason for the look is simply that high Gothic was high fashion for big
projects of the era, including the the world's tallest skyscraper at the time,
the Woolworth Building in Manhattan.
Frederick Osterling, a prominent local architect who had
remodeled Frick's Point Breeze mansion, received only a fraction of his fee for
this project amid complaints that he delayed its planned opening by more than a year. He sued and the courts eventually required Frick's estate to pay a bit
more, though nowhere near the fee the architect wanted. Osterling would never
get another big project after that.
Koppers Building
1929, by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White
436 Seventh Ave.
This exemplary Art Deco skyscraper was briefly Downtown's tallest building until it was surpassed by the Gulf Tower, its neighbor across the street. Both were part of the portfolio of powerful banker Andrew Mellon, though when they were built he was U.S. Treasury Secretary and had stepped away from control of their corporations, at least officially.
Two levels of balconies overlook a soaring three-story lobby held up by boxy columns faced in beige, tan, and brown marble. The massive supports are given a classical finish in the form of carved pilasters and metallic painted ceiling molding. Bronze elevator doors and railings and angular Art Deco chandeliers lend further panache, while the original mailbox in the elevator lobby artfully reproduces the building's signature roof.
That steeply pitched green topper is made of copper, in perhaps a cheeky nod to company founder Heinrich Koppers. A German industrial chemist and entrepreneur, he figured out how to capture pollutants spewing from coke oven smokestacks and convert them into wood preservatives for railroad ties, telephone poles, and other productive uses.
The company remains based in the skyscraper and still manufactures chemicals to make wood last, though there is no sign of such sticky substances in its gleaming entry hall. Visitors can peruse a photo montage of its construction in the upper stairwell, as well as a Stars and Stripes-themed gallery presented by the National Flag Foundation.
Frick Building
1902, by Daniel Burnham
437 Grant St.
Famed Chicago architect Daniel Burnham designed this edifice just before drawing up his most famous skyscraper, New York's Flatiron Building. It was commissioned by coke and steel magnate Henry Clay Frick at least partly out of spite.
Frick was in a ferocious feud with Andrew Carnegie, who had bounced Frick from the top post at Carnegie Steel and tried to cheat him out of his shares in the company. Besides suing his former partner, Frick also bought the lot next to the Carnegie Building and ordered up this granite slab that blocked the sunlight from his rival's headquarters, Pittsburgh's first skyscraper, which was eventually demolished.
Burnham had overseen design and construction of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, so he had its chief sculptor cast a pair of bronze lions for the Frick Building entrance. Stained glass master John La Farge made a dreamy Art Nouveau window for the lobby portraying Fortune balanced on her allegorical wheel. After Frick died, his daughter had a bust of him installed beneath it.
Trolleys had trouble climbing steep Fifth Avenue outside, so the city dramatically regraded it and Grant Street, lowering the road surface 17 feet a decade after the Frick Building opened. Ever since, visitors have had to come in through the original basement. That explains the grand marble staircases leading to an extra set of elevator doors on balconies overhead -- it's where the ground floor used to be. To see how it looked before, go inside the Oliver Building on Smithfield Street, designed by the same architect with a similar floorplan.
Benedum-Trees Building
1906, by Thomas Scott
223 Fourth Ave.
Both cozy and opulent, this marble-lined lobby with polished bronze fixtures and plaster ceilings with genuine gold leaf was originally built for, and named after, a woman. Caroline Jones Machesney was the daughter of a successful banker, and she commissioned this early skyscraper to appeal to stockbrokers and investors who spent much of their time on the trading floor of the city stock exchange that once stood next door.
Sued by another woman who tripped outside the front door and broke her foot, Machesney soon tired of her skyscraper and sold it for $1 million in 1913 to two men, Mike Benedum and Joe Trees, who rechristened the tower after themselves and their eponymous oil company. Both men became philanthropists, and the Benedum Foundation is still quartered in this structure, which operates today as an office condominium.
As for Machesney, she got involved in the roiling debate over female suffrage — a cause she strongly opposed. Ultimately unsuccessful in her efforts to keep women like herself from voting, she faded from the public eye and lies buried in obscurity on a Texas Army base where her son was briefly stationed.
A large room with high decorative ceiling off the lobby that was originally the home of a brokerage firm is now an art gallery hosting the exhibition "Highrises: The Art and History of Classic Skyscrapers." The gallery is free and open to the public Thursdays and Fridays from 4-7 and Saturdays 10-4.
If you enjoy learning about Pittsburgh's historic architecture, consider taking an Antique Skyscrapers Rooftop Views tour with Mark Houser. His next tours are May 10-11.
