A Symbol of Pittsburgh's Literal Cleanup (Carnegie, Oakland: architectural, buildings, architect)

[Drover]

I found this picture in the Post-Gazette of the Trinity Cathedral downtown getting a century's worth of industrial grime cleaned off of it. Seems like a perfect allegory for Pittsburgh's shedding of its industrial past and the city-wide "Redd-Up" efforts. I believe there is also a church on the corner of Forbes and Murray that got a scrubbing about 10 years ago and they left a square of "uncleaned" space as a sort of "before and after" reminder. It took me noticing that church (or maybe it was some other building and I'm just remembering it wrong) to realize that all of the black stone buildings in the city are not actually "supposed" to be black. And to think hundreds of thousands of people spent decades breathing that crap into their lungs. A real eye-opener.

[pghlibrarian]

I just read somewhere that the Cathedral of Learning at Pitt will be cleaned from top to bottom very soon as part of a multi-million dollar renovation. It's nice to see all the industrial grime get cleaned off of such nice architectural treasures. From what I understand, there was some debate over whether the cleaning should be done or not at Pitt.

[Katarina Witt]

When we were there last fall, it was being cleaned. I think it will be a long process.

[Gerbil]

The building with the one stone left black is the Carnegie Museum in Oakland. I think the stone is on the side where the library entrance is. It really is amazing to see the difference.

[Jay_F]

Geez, I always figured it was black sandstone , but now it's nothing more than Pittsburgh Patina.... I'm crushed.