Franklin Toker e-mailed a couple of weeks ago with two questions. A professor of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, Mr. Toker is writing a book about Pittsburgh architecture for the Society of Architectural Historians. He wanted to know who designed the Post-Gazette's Downtown building and when.

	The Pittsburgh Press Building during a June 1956 bomb scare. Click photo for larger image.

It was a good excuse to head to the fourth floor, home to the hallowed, yellowed news clippings of yesteryear, and do a little digging. I've long been curious about the building in which I've spent the better part of the past 26 years, and I knew from photographs that under its 1960s' skin, there was a different, earlier building. But how early, and how much of it was left? It was time to take the time to find out.

Scripps-Howard purchased The Pittsburgh Press, then located on Oliver Avenue, in 1923, and three years later broke ground on a $3 million building. It was located on a lot bounded, clockwise, by the Boulevard of the Allies, Blockhouse Way, First Avenue and Short Street, which carried the tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

The Press' new home, which in the end cost $4 million, was a warm-toned brick building with large, round-arched windows at ground level, bringing natural light into the pressroom and giving the building some presence on the street.

Who designed it? Blueprints here show that the foundation and structural steel were the work of the Fort Pitt Bridge Co. of Canonsburg, which designed and built mill buildings as well as bridges. There are no blueprints for elevations and floor plans, which would have given the name of the architect for the building's exterior, assuming a different firm or designer was involved. W.T. Grange Construction Co. was the general contractor.

Apart from the seven Romanesque arches of the first floor and an elevator tower which climbed another two stories and eventually carried the word "PRESS" in large block letters, the building was straightforwardly utilitarian. But it was not without interest: vertical brick bands (not quite pilasters) of two alternating widths provided low-relief articulation. When the first papers rolled off the presses on Jan. 31, 1927, "the front of the new building, facing on the Boulevard of the Allies, was gaily decorated with flags," The Press reported.

Matt Freed, Post-Gazette The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Building, on the corner of the Boulevard of the Allies Commonwealth Place, as it looks today. On Jan. 1, 1993, Scripps Howard sold The Press and the building to the Post-Gazette, which ended The Press' 108-year-run. Click photo for larger image.

It was a different scene on March 17, 1936, when the St. Patrick's Day flood caused the great first-floor windows to collapse. Seven months later, The Press reported that "The entire lower floor of the building is being strengthened to withstand the pressure of tons of water," with steel doors and "honeycomb" windows made from 8-inch squares of thick glass, which would "enable passers-by to view the pressroom as easily as before," The Press reported.

"Reinforced Press Plant Ready for Next Big Flood," The Press headlined in December 1936. But with new flood control measures on the rivers, subsequent flooding spared the building, which today bears a plaque showing the high-water mark.

By 1942, the new windows were being painted over, blacked out for the duration of World War II in the event of an air raid. That, too, never came, but the war did bring increased steel production. In 1946, the building's exterior was cleaned of two decades of soot, as Press management anticipated passage of the anti-smoke ordinance that would go into effect the following year.

More improvements came in 1960: "In keeping with the park-like elegance of the lower Golden Triangle, the Press has installed flower boxes to add year-round beauty. In bloom at present are golden chrysanthemums and white petunias, tastefully arranged among clumps of English ivy in long horizontal boxes. The colors of the flowers from time to time are changed in accordance with plans executed by landscape architects Griswold, Winters and Swain." A more ambitious design and planting plan seem not to have made it past the blueprint stage. But the wall along Commonwealth Place was built at this time, and its glazed orange brick gives us a clue about the color of the building.

In 1962, after The Press and Post-Gazette entered a joint operating agreement, the building was expanded to accommodate the PG. A fifth floor was added, along with four floors above the one-story section at the rear of the building. There was more: A second, separate entrance and elevator for the PG; a new freight elevator; 600 new windows and a new skin.

"Some of the masonry on the facade of the building will be removed to permit installation of the new curtain wall, and all of the ornamentation and irregularities will be eliminated," The Press reported when it announced the renovation with a full-page story in January 1962.

"A Gateway landmark is vanishing with removal of the giant letters which spell out PRESS on the masonry tower atop The Pittsburgh Press Building," a Press photo caption reported in April. "Modernization of the structure dictated removal of the name to permit installation of the aluminum skin which will cover the building from street level to roof."

The building "has lost most of its fine brick finish. It has been blackened, scarred, laced with scaffolds and expanded all over the place," wrote Press columnist Gilbert Love in October 1962. "[Press] Artist Nat Youngblood, who went to the factory to help choose the exact shade of bronze for the building, says this material seems to change color with the light that strikes it. In the afternoon sun the building will be practically a gold bronze, but in shade it will take on a velvety sheen and be almost a greenish hue."

Architect for the renovation was the Pittsburgh architecture and engineering firm Hunting, Larson and Dunnells (now LLI Engineering Inc.), which specialized in industrial and commercial buildings.

"The remodeled and expanded home of The Pittsburgh Press is rapidly displaying the golden look of the Golden Triangle," The Press reported in January 1963. "The unique new aluminum exterior gives the building a modern face in keeping with its surroundings."

But sometimes today's forward-looking building is tomorrow's dated design. The new skin that reflected modernism's love of geometric pattern and play of sunlight and shadow looks tired, dull and seriously in need of a bath. Aesthetically it has not held up as well as some of the landmarks of Renaissance I, such as the Alcoa Building and former IBM (now Steelworkers) Building, but perhaps it's an unfair comparison; those were structurally innovative buildings that drew national attention, not makeovers.

On Jan. 1, 1993, Scripps Howard sold The Press and the building to the Post-Gazette, which ended The Press' 108-year- run. I may be one of the few who think the PG building has its merits: It has proven to be an unwitting habitat for small birds, which nest in the exterior's box-like spaces formed by protruding rectangles of aluminum.

One day last week as I stood on the sidewalk looking up at the facade, a colleague walked over.

"Still as ugly as ever," she said.

I'm pretty sure she was talking about the building.