Fourth Avenue Historic District (Boundary Increase)

Low-rise banking houses and steel-framed skyscrapers line a dense street grid in downtown Pittsburgh, centred on Fourth Avenue and Wood Street. Dollar Savings Bank, built 1868-1871, is the oldest building in the district and has a brownstone facade with recumbent lions at its entrance. Banking houses typically had a large public banking hall behind a monumental stone facade. The Peoples Savings Bank Building of 1901 was the first of the district's early skyscrapers, with fourteen storeys of offices above banking rooms. The district is regarded as Pittsburgh's principal concentration of banking architecture. Its financial institutions expanded after the 1873 panic and especially between 1890 and 1905, drawing on money from oil and then steel. Several major firms, including Osterling and Alden and Harlow, designed buildings here. Exterior alterations have been limited, and marble-lined lobbies and brass fittings survive.