Tag Archives: Food

The Igloo

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  • The Igloo (Civic Arena)
  • The Igloo (Civic Arena) roof opening

For this year’s Architectural Dessert Masterpiece, I chose Pittsburgh’s Civic Arena for the subject mostly because of the pandemic. The travel restrictions of 2020 prevented me from finding an inspiring building while exploring a new place. The social distancing requirements meant that whatever I made I would have to eat myself. Earlier in the year, I found a granola bar recipe that actually sticks together, which inspired me to take another foray into domes. As December drew near and I put together the conditions of a single-serve dessert with a dome that had some relationship to the themes of the year, the Civic Arena was the obvious choice.

The result was a single-serve cake topped with a granola bar dome and frosted with cream cheese to keep the sugar content down. Once frosted it looked to me more like an igloo than the Civic Arena, but fortunately, the building’s nickname was the Igloo. So, it all worked out in the end.

Whether it will all work out in the end and for who are still open questions for the site of the Civic Arena. The Arena opened in 1961 as the central feature of the redevelopment of the Lower Hill neighborhood that had been deemed “blighted” and in need of “revitalization.” Intended as a cultural mecca housing the Pittsburgh opera company, hockey, and other uses under a retractable roof, it rarely lived up to its promises. In the end, it was surrounded by a sea of parking lots instead of a cultural park, the roof rarely opened, and the opera quickly found a different home more conducive to using sets that need support from the ceiling. For a time, the building did find success as a hockey arena and concert venue until it was deemed obsolete and a new arena was built. The Civic Arena was demolished 50 years after opening, paving the way for a new redevelopment of the Lower Hill to “revitalize” the area.

Architectural historian Franklin Toker describes the first redevelopment of the Lower Hill in his 1986 book Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait:

The reconstruction of the Lower Hill began in 1955 with $17 million in federal grants. In an area of 100 acres, 1,300 buildings housing 413 businesses and 8,000 residents (a majority of them black) were displaced in an attempt to extend the revitalization of the adjacent Golden Triangle. Even were one to overlook the devastating social impact of the Lower Hill redevelopment, its success could only be judged as minor. The new complex failed to graft on to the Golden Triangle because of the intrusion of the Crosstown Expressway and the misalignment of the street grids of the Golden Triangle and The Hill. Some bad luck also dogged the Lower Hill redevelopment, particularly the bankruptcy of William Zeckendorf, one of its major supporters, and the decision by the Heinz foundations to locate their new concert hall in the Triangle rather than on The Hill. But the major cause of its failure was the animosity between the developers and the black community. When that animosity boiled over as part of the nationwide racial riots of 1968, Pittsburgh’s dream of a cultural Acropolis on the Lower Hill ended. (234)

The second redevelopment started with restoring the street grid and building a CAP over the Crosstown Expressway. While it is easy to rebuild the roads, it will take a lot more to rebuild what was once “The Crossroads of the World” as the intersection of Wylie Ave and Fullerton Street was known prior to the first redevelopment, according to Mark Whittaker in Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance.

My series of posts Keeping an Eye on the Lower Hill is following the progress of this second redevelopment.

Want to see how my Architectural Dessert Masterpiece compares with the submissions in Pittsburgh’s 18th Annual Gingerbread Competition? Click here.

Previous Architectural Dessert Masterpieces:
Flying Cashews (Built December 2019)
Building the Bridge (Built December 2014)
Reaching for the Heights (Built December 2013)
Conquering the Dome (Built December 2012)
Gingerbread Blue Mosque (Built December 2011)
Parthenon Cake (Built December 2010)

Flying Cashews

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The near fail of the Leaning Marina Tower of Chicago left me determined to prove that brownies could successfully be used to create an Architectural Dessert Masterpiece. All I needed was a subject.

Looking back on 2019, the most significant architectural moment for me was the fire of Notre Dame Cathedral. I felt gratitude that I had the opportunity in 2005 to see inside the cathedral from the vantage point of the organ loft; disappointment that all I really remember from the experience was how dark it was; curiosity about what they would do with the remaining structure (perhaps put a glass roof on it to increase the light?); and amazement that neither the cathedral nor Paris had experienced any major fires before in their centuries of existence.

The Great Fire of London in the 17th Century cleared the way for the construction of St. Paul’s Cathedral. One third of Pittsburgh burned in 1845. According to legend, the Great Chicago Fire of the 1870s was started when a cow kicked over a lantern. This fire destroyed approximately 17,500 buildings. Paris, Texas, experienced three major fires between 1877 and 1916. Yet, Paris, France, remained unscathed by significant fires until 2019.

To commemorate the incident, I reached for my brownie pan, only to stop short at the challenge of creating the flying buttresses. While I believed that brownies were structurally sound enough to use as building blocks, I did not trust them to fly. In the spirit of the season, I briefly considered candy canes. However, their shape didn’t really match the flying buttresses of Notre Dame. I also hesitated to use candy as I have become more sugar conscious since my first Architectural Dessert Masterpiece. Sugary candy on top of sugar-heavy brownies seemed like a bad idea. I began to think I would have to give up on making Notre Dame as I didn’t have time for the meticulous, but safe process of designing and cutting out numerous pieces of gingerbread for the cathedral. Before I gave up completely, I walked the bulk foods aisle of the grocery store searching for inspiration. I found it between the candies and the grains. Nuts of all shapes, sizes, and flavors sparked my imagination. They go well with brownies and would counterbalance the sugar. I compared the shapes of the peanuts, walnuts, Brazil nuts, and cashews and determined that cashews were made to fly.

After selecting my materials, there were several more moments of anxiety that my walls and towers would collapse. I am pleased to say that like the cathedral it was based on, my structure stood through the test of time (eight hours from construction to consumption).

IMG_20191224_160442

‘Tis the Season

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…for gingerbread!

Pittsburgh’s Annual Gingerbread House Competition moved this year from the PPG Winter Garden to the City-County Building. For several years, I’ve enjoyed making the time to go down to the Winter Garden for the gingerbread houses, santas from around the world, music, and ambiance. This year, I am finding it harder to identify a time to browse the entries. I changed my mind multiple times as I remembered the new location requires passing through the metal detectors and it just didn’t seem the right time to go through that annoying and unreliable process.  In my travels through other downtown buildings, I am finding other gingerbread house displays to enjoy. Perhaps, I will get to the big competition at some point this season, but if not, I will at least have enjoyed some hassle-free displays.

BNY Mellon Building Gingerbread Houses

Omni William Penn Gingerbread Hotel

Reaching for the Heights

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After having tackled dome-making, I decided it was time to try a skyscraper.  The Marina Towers in Chicago fascinated me with their double uniqueness, which I decided to imitate in a dessert.  My brilliant idea for pulling this off was to make one large, thin brownie sheet, cut out circles, stack, and ice.  In theory, by far the easiest Architectural Dessert Masterpiece yet.  That theory overlooked the fact that brownies, like cakes, cupcakes, and other desserts, raise more in the middle than they do at the edges of the pan.  Cutting out the circles that had flat bottoms, but tilted tops, I thought I could stack them in a way to counterbalance the unevenness…I was still trying for a quick, easy masterpiece.

At first, it appeared I had succeeded, until I turned the cake around and found I had brought Pisa to Chicago…

Leaning Marina

P.S. Somehow it managed, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, to stay upright until my friends arrived and helped me devour it.

Layers of the City: Chicago Edition

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The first place to show me how a city can be stacked like a layer cake, Chicago provided ample opportunities to explore all levels of the city. The experience of noticing the expansion joints in roads that I assumed were on solid ground opened my eyes to the possibilities of stacking uses.

Underground Life

A vacant lot two stories below street level solved the mystery of the expansion joints, by exposing the inner guts.  Two more roads sit below street level to segregate trash pick-up and deliveries from the flow of traffic.  These lover levels also provide some opportunities for parking without monopolizing valuable real estate above.  Retail shops connected by pedestrian passageways are also interspersed in these layers.

River Life

At the same elevation as the “underground life,” the Chicago River flows through the heart of the city.  On and along the river are a variety of activities.  Pedestrian paths, cafes, housing, parks, industrial uses, and homeless encampments line the shores.  Meanwhile, the river abounds with ducks, boat tours, water taxis, construction staging, and marinas.

Street Level

Back up on the street level, life buzzes.  Vehicular and pedestrian traffic rush passed, occasionally pealing off to visit the numerous shops, offices, museums, restaurants, cafes, parks, and trails.

Pie in the Sky

Yet, more life looms above.  Several of the skyscrapers have penthouse, or nearly penthouse, restaurants.  Others have rooftop observation platforms.  Between these and the street are many other opportunities for enjoying life including a religious sanctuary, the “L”, gardens, art, pedestrian bridges, and of course, offices, apartments, hotel rooms, and shops.

Unlike Pittsburgh, in Chicago, the public is welcome in some form on every level to gain a full experience of the city.

Layers of the City: Pittsburgh Edition

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I clench my teeth every time the “T”, Pittsburgh’s light rail system, slowly makes the first 90 degree bend leaving Gateway Station, squeaking like fingernails on a chalkboard.  After traveling a few hundred yards, it turns back 90 degrees–squeak, scratch, squeak–before pulling into the Wood Street Station.  As everyone knows that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, I struggled to understand why the T was built with turns so sharp it is impossible for the trains not to screech, until my friend pointed out that there might be building foundations or basements that the underground tracks need to maneuver around.

Like many metropolises, the density of downtown Pittsburgh creates various physical layers of activity.  Yet compared to other some other cities (see future post Layers of the City: Chicago Edition), Pittsburgh’s layers can be hard to notice.  The T is perhaps the most obvious example.  For most of it’s length through the southern neighborhoods and suburbs, the T travels at grade.  Once it crosses the Monongahela River into Downtown, it becomes an elevated train for a few blocks before submerging underground until it passes under the Allegheny River to the North Shore, where it reemerges to end as an elevated train.

Underground Life

If you get off the T at Gateway Station and walk down a block to the start of 5th Ave, which actually feels like an alley, you might notice that the Highmark Building is built over an underground garage.  I assume that this garage has multiple levels below grade and is at least part of the reason for the T’s sharp turns.

The new PNC Tower also has a garage below grade.  Yet the most recent new construction project downtown, on the former site of Sax Fifth Avenue, places the garage between the first floor retail and proposed upper level residences.

The building I work in, the former Jones & Laughlin Steel Mill Headquarters, has at least 3 1/2 levels of basement.  The building is long past its days of glory with peeling paint, cracked foundation, and elevators that you may never make it out of again.  The mezzanine level of the basement is a maze of building supplies, file cabinets, discarded furniture and boxes upon boxes of documents.  It is damp and dusty.  Five minutes down there could lead to a severe allergy attack.  Yet the stairs keep going down and down, plunging further into the dark depths.  I’ve heard rumors of more documents being stored in the lower levels.

Street Level

Coming back above ground, most activity in downtown Pittsburgh takes place at street level.  Pedestrians, bicyclists, buses, cars, delivery trucks, dumpsters, and more compete for space on the narrow streets and sidewalks.  Most shopping and restaurants are located at street level.  The Highmark Building and the Oxford Building still have some retail above the first floor.

Pie in the Sky

As you walk around downtown, if you look up, you might catch a rare sight of pedestrian sky bridges.  The most famous of which is the Bridge of Sighs connecting the Allegheny County Courthouse with the former Jail.  The second most famous (speaking with pure bias) is the bridge connecting the parking garage with what used to be the shoe section of the former Kaufmann’s Department Store (always a necessary stop when shopping for back to school).  A handful of others are sprinkled throughout downtown.  Indianapolis has got us beat though.  That city has a network of pedestrian connections that enables you to walk for miles between the stadiums, office buildings, and other structures downtown without ever getting a taste of fresh air.

Higher up, there is a sprinkling of rooftop or penthouse restaurants.  This is one of our complaints at work: while many new, good restaurants have opened downtown in recent years, there is still a dearth of restaurants and bars with views.  Sienna Mercado’s Il Tetto, Harris Grill, and the Biergarten at Hotel Monaco all have rooftop decks, but they are surrounded by taller buildings limiting views.  Ollie’s Gastropub on the top floor of the Oliver Building has some good views, but no fresh air.

There isn’t much connection or relationship between the different parts of these layers in Pittsburgh.  It is like they are experiments, like the city is only dabbling.  As if to say, it can’t make up its mind whether or not to let the public leave street level and participate in or explore all levels of the city.

 

Harrisburg: Coal or Gem

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I didn’t understand the pitying looks I received when I announced my fall vacation to Harrisburg.  Now that it is over, I still don’t understand.

As a capital city, the downtown is quiet on the weekends, but the neighborhoods are still full of people.  Even on a chilly, sleepy Sunday morning, joggers, bikers, and walkers enjoy the fresh air along the riverfront park that is part of the 20-mile Harrisburg Capital Area Greenbelt Trail.  Sculptures dot the public spaces and art coats the fire hydrants and signal control boxes.  Beautiful and intriguing architecture abounds.  A former theater houses the largest used bookstore I’ve ever visited.  Across the street, the Broad Street Market is filled with vendors of such mouthwatering temptations as Amish baked goods, hot Indian food, exotically flavored ice cream, fresh baked pretzels, and more.

A relatively compact and walkable city, I find surprising gems each time I visit Harrisburg.

Conquering the Dome

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St. Paul's Cathedral Cake

Shortly after facing the dilemma of how to create a dome for my Blue Mosque Architectural Dessert Masterpiece, I saw an gingerbread creation of Moscow’s St. Basil’s Cathedral which used rice crispy treats to form the shape of the domes of this cathedral.  I held onto this idea for almost a year in preparation for my Third Annual Architectural Dessert Masterpiece.

St Paul's Dome  St Paul's Cathedral

For this one, presented and eaten December 2012, I chose St. Paul’s Cathedral.  First, because it has the perfect dome for trying the rice crispy method.  Second, because St. Paul’s was a significant part of my trip to London earlier in the year.  I experienced a wonderful view of the City despite minor issues with heights and major issues with claustrophobia.  I successfully climbed to the top of St. Paul’s (at least as high as they allow tourists to go) and made it back down again.  The first flights of stairs to come back down were particularly challenging as they were very narrow and steep with very short ceilings–it reminded me of the first and last time I went caving as part of a school trip in 8th grade, where I somehow managed to crawl through impossibly small places.  The praise of my teacher, Mr. Wolfe, from that occasion was essential in helping me make it down the stairs at St. Paul’s.  Thanks, Mr. Wolfe, you were my hero this time!!

Top of the Dome Looking Down

In making my St. Paul’s Cathedral Architectural Dessert Masterpiece, the design was influenced by the memory of how long it took to create the Gingerbread Blue Mosque.  I determined to take a quicker route this time around by baking sheet cakes and cutting them out in the shape of St. Paul’s.  Again, I referred to my textbook from my Western Architecture course (see Parthenon Cake post) to determine what the appropriate proportions were in cutting out the shape of the Cathedral.  To approximate the proportions in height, I made a double layer cake, plus additional layers at the towers and dome.

Aerial St. Paul's Cathedral Cake

The dome was made using the rice crispy treat method, which ended up being much more challenging than I anticipated due to the stickiness of rice crispy treats.  It did not work to try and shape the dome in my hands.  I ended up using wax paper to form the shape, but found the rice crispies still stuck to the wax paper, but not as badly as to my hands.  Then, I frosted the whole creation, using chocolate frosting as an accent color to suggest the different color of the domes (including those on the front towers) from the rest of the building.  I also used the chocolate frosting to indicate the break in design from the lower and upper portions of the exterior walls.  Chocolate Crunch Bells were used for the small domes on the front towers.

This one was easy to cut like a normal cake for eating and tasted quite good.

Gingerbread Blue Mosque

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Gingerbread Blue Mosque Blue Mosque

Figuring out how to design an accurate representation of the Parthenon out of cake and cookies (see post) was an intriguing task that set me on a new hobby of designing models of existing buildings out of deserts.  Beginning with my second Architectural Dessert Masterpiece, all my creations are based on buildings/structures that I have personally encountered in my urban explorations.

I created my second desert building in December 2011.  While eating the Parthenon the previous year, suggestions were put out about how to create other shapes and buildings such as using jello and creating round shapes.  I was particularly engaged by the idea of how to create a dome.  I had not figured out how to create a dome such as those on capital buildings in the US, but I thought I could create one that would be close to those on the mosques I visited in Istanbul.  I chose the Blue Mosque as a visually interesting structure that would require a diversity of desserts to create.

Gingerbread cookies seemed to be the best way to design the frame of the building given the variety of heights and shapes of the building.  I used sugar cookies for the larger domes and half domes.  I knew someone growing up who was able to create perfectly rounded sugar cookies, no matter how I try I have never been able to create the same effect.  My sugar cookies worked well for the medium-sized domes, but I had to put two cookies together for the larger domes.  M&Ms made great small domes–they were also the base unit that determined the scale of my model.  I think another reason why I chose to create a mosque was so I’d have an excuse to use the Pirouette cookies again, this time as minarets.  I love these cookies, but hardly ever get them.  Using my piping set, I was able to create pointed tops on the minarets and add balconies.

This was by far the most time-consuming Architectural Dessert Masterpiece to create (at least of the four I’ve made so far) because of having to design the required sizes and shapes for the gingerbread cookies and cutting them out and then also baking sugar cookies, which somehow always takes forever.  I also played with “whitewashing” the gingerbread walls, but the method I tried didn’t create the desired effect so I gave up on it.

Eating Architectural Dessert Masterpieces is also an interesting experience, as they often require creative thinking to destruct them.  With the Parthenon, I employed a karate-chop method for cutting through the wafers.  On the other hand, with the Blue Mosque a free-for-all of pulling it apart with your fingers seemed most appropriate.

Gingerbread Blue Mosque Blue Mosque

Parthenon Cake

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Parthenon Cake

My hobby of creating Architectural Desert Masterpieces began about three years ago, when I was an AmeriCorps volunteer.  Searching for activities to do with my kindergartners in the after-school program, I somehow came across a recipe for making an Ancient Temple Cake.  While this was not at all feasible to do with my students, I thought it was an awesome idea and saved the recipe to try one day.

The following December, I decided it was time to try the Ancient Temple Cake.  By that point I was back in school and had taken a history of Western Architecture course, which included detailed discussions of ancient temples including the Parthenon.  When I pulled out the recipe, I decided it needed some improvements to make it a reasonable imitation of the Parthenon.  The directions were to bake a sheet cake, frost it, stick Pirouette cookies around the edge and top the Pirouettes with wafer cookies.  However, from my architecture course I knew that proportions were important as were the steps up to the temple.

I created a step to the temple but cutting off the edges, cutting them in half (height-wise) and reattaching the bottom halves to the cake body with frosting.  Then I added a number of Pirouette cookies based on the proportion of columns on the long and short sides of the Parthenon.  When I was done, I had a much better representation of the Parthenon in cake form than the recipe I started with.

Unfortunately, my cake temple aged rather quickly resulting in the collapse of the columns on one side.

Ruined Parthenon Cake