What Frontier Landscapes Lack

I'll add another quick post before I hit the road for a week. One of Pittsburgh's charms, and challenges, is the urban landscape. The shiny new cities in the Sun Belt may look clean and even inviting, but they lack the rich character of the Burgh:

Andrew Moss of Moss Architects has something old and something new in the works in East Liberty. With Rob Pfaffmann, he is designing prototypes for East Liberty Development Inc. to build in-fill houses. He also has a 90-year-old ghost to resurrect at Whitfield Street on Penn. It's a two-story rectangle that used to house a showroom for cars.

"It's fun to do something new," he said, "but it's more interesting to recreate an existing building, to be part of the evolution of an old building.

"One reason I came back from Denver was the architectural heritage and building stock here," he said. "Pittsburgh is rich with it, and there's more money going into it now than in the last 50 years."

I didn't expect to find a Diaspora tale in that article, but there's another boomerang migrant.