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Comment by kibwen | Hacker News Reader

Pittsburgher here. My favorite building in the world is the Cathedral of Learning, a breathtaking 42-story Gothic Revival building at the heart of the University of Pittsburgh. It stood through Pittsburgh's industrial zenith, back when the air was so choked with soot that the streetlights burned all day and housewives swept the settled ash from their front porches every evening. You can imagine how that atmosphere took its toll on the building itself, staining the white limestone in great streaks of black and brown. A few years back they finally cleaned it; had to, apparently, as the clinging soot was eating away at the stone itself. It doubtlessly looks far prettier now, but I'm saddened at such a visible loss of the warning that my city's history represents, especially since humans seem to be so eager to repeat the past.

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Fellow Pittsburgher. The evidence is all around the city. Odd as it may seem, the soot-covered buildings are actually kind of beautiful in their own way. It marks the passage of time and the city's own evolution, which wasn't exactly a sure thing when the steel mills first started to close. But it has to be cleaned eventually lest we eventually lose the building facades instead.

A few years back, I was walking past a church downtown that was in the middle of being cleaned. The difference between the side that had been pressure-washed, and what remained to be done, was striking. Far more than just seeing the finished product. You look at something like that, realize that people lived and breathed it in daily for years, and you're almost surprised that anyone survived long enough to clean up the city's air in the first place.

The Cathedral of Learning is such a beautiful building. I wonder though: did they leave any dirty patches as a small reminder? When they cleaned the ceiling of the great hall of Grand Central Terminal of the tobacco stains and train soot, a small patch was left dirty to show how filthy it was before the restoration [1]. As a kid, seeing that patch was a powerful argument to never smoke tobacco.

1. http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/grand-central-ceiling-dar...

On the Carnegie Library, they left a corner deliberately un-cleaned to show the old Pittsburgh look. Not visible from Forbes Ave, you have to walk toward the library entrance past the mascot dinosaur.

A more perfect CounterStrike map was never conceptualized (I've been there as a high school student). I particularly enjoyed the themed country rooms.

Northwestern University's Med school removed the soot from its facade about 5 years ago. Chicago got to see the same thing. I had no idea the building was supposed to be white!

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