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Fifth Avenue Place

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1985–1987, The Stubbins Associates, with Williams Trebilcock Whitehead. 120 5th Ave.
  • (Matt Robinson)
  • Fifth Avenue Place (Matt Robinson)

Fifth Avenue Place is surprisingly unsubtle for a design by much-respected postwar modernist Hugh Stubbins. Its overscaled windows, arbitrary jumps between glass- and granite-paneled outer skin, and uninspired crowning pinnacle are unavoidable blemishes in the first view any Pittsburgh visitor gets coming in from the airport. The adjacent old Joseph Horne department store at the northeast corner of Stanwix Street and Liberty Avenue (1892, 1900, W. S. Fraser; 1922, Peabody and Stearns of Boston) was remodeled as an office block in the mid-1990s and renamed Penn Avenue Place. The configuration left the Beaux-Arts exterior of the old store intact as a dignified visual anchor to the downtown, but much compromised by neighboring Fifth Avenue Place.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Lu Donnelly et al.
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Data

Timeline

  • 1985

    Built

What's Nearby

Heinz Hall
Gateway Center
Renaissance Pittsburgh Hotel
Dominion Tower
PPG Place

Citation

Lu Donnelly et al., "Fifth Avenue Place", [Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/PA-01-AL8.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of PA vol 1

Buildings of Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania, Lu Donnelly, H. David Brumble IV, and Franklin Toker. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010, 49-49.

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