I can't believe I've been visiting Pittsburgh for fifteen years and I'd never once been inside any of the Carnegie Museums. We finally went on this last trip and the kids got to see the collection of dinosaurs, which is one of the best around. Nothing like the massive skeleton of a Jurassic monster to make you feel like a kid again.

 
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We were heading from Oakland to my father-in-law's place in the South Side hills when we saw this weird church tower on a corner floating alone against a modern office tower. I looked up what it was, and it turns out the tower once belonged to the Bellefield Presbyterian Church (built in 1889), which merged with a nearby church in 1967 and most of the original structure was torn down in 1985. The developer of the office tower sawed off and sealed up the original bell tower, though it contains no bell today. There is no real reason for it to be there, but there's something kind of lovely about that, isn't there?

 
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I didn't intend to take this photo, and didn't even know I had until I looked over what was on the card. I must have accidentally pressed the shutter while putting the camera back in my bag after taking some follow-up photographs of the ghetto pieta (it's still there, still looks great). If you're in Pittsburgh and want to see it for yourself, the cross streets are Brownsville and Amanda Ave. (maybe half a block north on Amanda).

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We're back from Thanksgiving weekend in Pittsburgh. I took about 700 photos walking the dog around the neighborhoods around my father-in-law's house in the South Side Slopes, as well as a trip I took over to Homestead, Braddock, and McKeesport. I'm trying to write about my thoughts visiting this region where the decline of the steel industry turned so many communities into ghost towns, but I'm afraid everything I write turns into a damn essay and no one wants to read an essay on a blog. I will try to have something up later this week.

But the pictures! Those are easier. Pittsburgh is such a beautiful city.

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