Pittsburgh is now striving energetically to reinvent itself as a model for the post-industrial city of the twenty-first century. The moment visitors to Pittsburgh exit the Liberty Tunnel and aeeess the high-level Liberty Bridge, they enjoy an instant iconic panorama of Downtown and the confluence of Pittsburgh's three defining rivers. Displayed below, between the massive trusses of the double-decker bridge, is a tight array of urban architecture from H. H. Richardson's Allegheny Courthouse and Jail (1884-88) to Harrison Abramovitz's Alcoa Tower (1953) and - in a comparatively rare moment of Post-Modern posturing ― Johnson Burgee's PPG Place (1979-84), that audaciously reinterprets London's Houses of Parliament in Pittsburgh Plate Glass's own reflective glass. The Liberty Bridge spans the Monongahela River just before it joins the equally broad Allegheny to form the Ohio, a primary artery of the Mississippi system. The apex of land between the Monongahela and Allegheny was the site of Fort DuQuesne, France's eighteenth-century trading post. That name survives in such Pittsburgh institutions as Duquesne University, with Mies van der Rohe's 1968 Hall of Science, and the blue chip decidedly not blue collar Duquesne Club now somewhat marooned Downtown. The English, however, quickly dislodged the French and renamed the settlement in honour of William Pitt the Elder. Thus Pittsburgh is in a small group of cities -Melbourne, Wellington, Salisbury (now Harare) - named after British prime ministers. An omen perhaps of modernization and a long way from previous royal affectations (Charleston, Annapolis, New York) in the Colonies.
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