Abstract

In a continuum of past and present, "Pittsburgh Then and Now" portrays the city through 161 pairs of matching photographs. Each archival image, culled from old books, municipal records, and library collections, was rephotographed in 1986-89 from the same camera position, forming an evocation of the past and a record of urban continuity and change. "Pittsburgh Then and Now" recalls specific locations in the city of the past and then compares them to the present, showing both how much and how little Pittsburgh has changed. Most of the pairs of photographs illustrate continuity with the past, features that have remained over the decades. A steep residential street in Perry Hilltop, for example, is little changed, and a jagged hillside staircase on the South Side is still in use. Other images document urban change. Massive Duquesne Gardens, on Craig Street in Oakland, is shown alongside the University Square Apartments of the present. The old Loew's Penn Theatre on Sixth Street in 1935 is copared to its modern manifestation as Heinz hall, 1987. The pre-Renaissance cornor of Stanwyx Street and Penn Avenue is recalled before the Gateway buildings were constructed.This journey into the past shows how change and continuity have mingled in the city landscape, reveling Pittsburgh as it has evolved from architecutral styles that reflected turn-of-the-century eclecticism to the more recent styles labeled "modernist" and "postmodernist, " from horse to streetcar to automobile, and from steel mills to high-technology centers. "Pittsburgh Then and Now" is a treasury of photographic images for those who remember the old Pittsburgh, those who are curious about its past, and anyoneinterested in the evolution of a city.