Glass and granite office towers packed into a river triangle, and the streets The Dark Knight Rises used for a bomb chase across Gotham.
What Downtown Pittsburgh looks like
The Golden Triangle narrows to a point where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers meet, and holds a fountain and the Fort Pitt Museum right at the tip. Two street grids run parallel to the two rivers and meet at odd angles through the middle of downtown.
steps up from six storey glass buildings around its plaza to a neo-Gothic tower forty storeys tall at the center, its spires cut from panes of reflective glass rather than stone. runs narrow a few blocks south, lined with red brick and pink granite bank towers from the turn of the century, arched entrances and cornices at the corner with Wood Street.
The stands on Grant Street, a granite Romanesque Revival block with round arches and a five storey tower rising from its own courtyard. Narrow lanes named , Exchange Way and Strawberry Way cut between older brick buildings near Penn and Liberty avenues, barely wide enough for a single truck.
Three identical yellow suspension bridges cross the Allegheny side by side toward the North Shore, built in 1924 and 1928 and named the Roberto Clemente, Andy Warhol and Rachel Carson. Painted the same Aztec Gold, they give downtown three matching river crossings within a few blocks of each other.
Shot in Downtown Pittsburgh
For The Dark Knight Rises, the production tracked a truck loaded with the film's nuclear device along four downtown streets. Seventh Avenue, Strawberry Way, William Penn Place and Exchange Way were all closed for the chase. The Batmobile's crash into a sinkhole was staged separately on Cherry Way.
The Dark Knight Rises, 2012
Played a street chase, Gotham City, present day
The chase to track the truck loaded with the bomb ran along this stretch of Seventh Avenue, with Strawberry Way, William Penn Place and Exchange Way closed for the same sequence. Exchange Way, Garrison Place and Penn Avenue between Ninth and Tenth Streets were also closed for the shoot. Street View
Fourth Avenue's narrow canyon of Beaux-Arts bank towers in granite and brick reads like a smaller version of the Financial District's own turn of the century office row. Preservationists already describe the block that way, pink granite bases giving way to brick and terra cotta upper floors at the property line. Fourth Avenue is two lanes wide against the Financial District's wider streets, so tight framing looking straight up the block keeps the scale honest. Try searching narrow canyon of bank towers now.
PPG Place and 190 South LaSalle Street share an architect and the same postmodern gothic office tower design, both around forty storeys with a steep crown instead of a flat roof. LaSalle Street's tower is pink granite rather than glass, so the resemblance is close but not exact. Shoot PPG Place's spires against the sky to hide the glass, since a wider frame gives away the reflective curtain wall LaSalle Street lacks. Try searching postmodern gothic office tower now.
