These are photos of the Penn Lincoln Hotel, which sits at Penn Ave. and Center Street in Wilkinsburg. It is, in all likelihood, destined soon for the wrecking ball. The hotel was built in 1927 (back when Wilkinsburg was one of Pittsburgh’s premier suburbs), and was designed by Benno Janssen, one of Pittsburgh’s most notable early-20th-century architects. He’s best known for buildings like the Pittsburgh Athletic Association, the Mellon Institute and the Masonic Temple (all three on Fifth Ave. in Oakland), as well as the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier, Kaufmann’s department store, and La Tourelle, one of Fox Chapel’s finest private residences, which he designed for Edgar J. Kaufmann (who hired Frank Lloyd Wright to build one of his other houses, a little country cabin called Fallingwater) …

In truth, the Penn Lincoln is hardly one of my favorite Janssen buildings, even taking into account that it’s been abandoned for a couple decades and is literally falling to pieces. Try as I might, I cannot squint and imagine it in its heyday as beautiful, imposing or otherwise eye-catching (despite its vast size). Indeed, I must have passed it often as a youth growing up in Pittsburgh, and even since my return, and I can’t say I ever noticed it. Until I read of its impending demise. But that’s merely my subjective opinion, and I’m neither an architecture critic nor expert (yes, those are two different things!). On the other hand, it is a Janssen building, and was once the centerpiece of Wilkinsburg’s formerly impressive business district. Also, in the last couple of years, efforts have been made to save it. And so, quoting Death of a Salesman,  “Attention must be paid!” …

Beginning in late 2009, The Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, which has  done so much amazing work preserving this city for almost 50 years, collaborated with Allegheny County officials on a feasibility study of the Penn Lincoln. The results weren’t promising. It might cost $10 million to repair the hotel. And then what? Wilkinsburg in 2012 is a borough that looks to me to be in very dire straits. To be more blunt, it looks like a disaster area. I know the borough is working hard to rejuvenate itself (and the PHLF has done excellent preservation work elsewhere in Wilkinsburg), and I truly hope for the best. But I hear people say now that Wilkinsburg could be the next East Liberty — a neighborhood brought back from the edge of extinction, and set on a path to equal or even surpass its glory days before World War II. And I think: “Maybe so. But not in time to save the Penn Lincoln.” Those in Wilkinsburg seem to concur. The latest news I’ve heard is that the borough is looking for ways to pay for the million-plus dollars it will take to demolish the Penn Lincoln Hotel. The once-proud building was described in a December 2011 borough meeting as being “in a state of collapse … [posing] a threat to public safety.” If anyone knows other or more recent info, I’d love to hear it.

That door can’t be more than 50 yards from the door of the house I’d grown up in, on South Linden Ave. But a quarter-century had passed since I’d said goodbye to my parents and moved to L.A., and that much time can make half a football field feel like an interstellar journey. Which is to say, one not capable of being undertaken by mere man, given the current restraints on our navigation of the Time-Space Continuum.  Instead of a starship or a time machine, I had only a new camera. So I’d step out Tibby’s front door and attempt my first photographs since I left Pittsburgh several light-years ago.

SUMMER STORM ON TIBBY’S GARAGE ROOF

PRE-DAWN ALLEY STREETLIGHT, WINTER

XMAS LIGHTS, TIBBY’S FRONT YARD

SPRING STORM GATHERS OVER TIBBY’S

DESCENDING CAR, ASCENDING BRAKE LIGHTS, EARLY SPRING

MOONRISE OVER ELYSIAN STREET, SUMMER

BLACK-EYED SUSANS AT MIDNIGHT, SUMMER. (30-SECOND EXPOSURE)

On a sunless winter day, the shades of grey just get darker and darker as the hours pass… Aluminum, pewter, and the soot that comes off in the rag when you’re polishing grandmother’s silver-plate.

The first four photos are from Mellon Park, in Point Breeze. The other three are from the Schenley Park golf course.

I’ve read that Hazelwood takes its name from the hazelnut trees which once flourished along the Monongahela. That the first settlers were of Scottish descent, and so the area was once known as “Scotch Bottom.” (As a Scot who has a couple of inelegant Scotch Bottoms to his credit, I’ll just say I prefer “Hazelwood.”) It began as Indian land, and then became American farmland. And then became steel mills. Now it is trying to become something else, but without the inevitability of Manifest Destiny or Manufacturing. So much more difficult a transformation!