Valentine's Day, Gerri and the Alcoa Building

Photo by Katy Buchanan
I don't have a photo of the Alcoa Building in my archives, but, in the spirit of Pittsburgh's mid-century renaissance, here's one of Gateway Plaza, with the Gateway 2 & 3 buildings in the background,

I took an acquaintance out for coffee on Valentine's Day.

She's 90 and has never driven. We met several years ago when I volunteered for Mt. Lebanon Village, part of a larger volunteer organization. We ran into each other at the grocery store a couple of weeks ago.

She's a nice lady, walks with a cane due to arthritis yet still gets out to do grocery shopping and lunch with other members of the group.

I remembered from our conversations of several years ago that she worked as an artist/designer for Gulf Oil and later Alcoa, back when Alcoa had just moved in to its digs in the-then new building bordering Mellon Square in Downtown Pittsburgh. (It's apartments now.)

She had such an interesting career, working for those companies designing brochures, creating messages.

She told me that when the Alcoa Building opened, one of the major innovations was that the windows opened from side to side (interiorly), not up and down, so that they could be cleaned without benefit of exterior window washers. And in some of the top-tier executive suites, the paneling was of Philippine mahogany.

It all sounded very "Mad Men." In the end, though, she was a woman who worked, cared for her son and lived the day-to-day.

And she still gets out and enjoys life.

That was a nice Valentine's Day get-together.