PPG Plaza

The glass spires of PPG Place rise from the sidewalk like a jagged, gothic cathedral built from mirrors. Philip Johnson designed these six buildings in the early nineteen eighties to anchor the downtown skyline. He used over nineteen thousand panes of reflective glass, angled to catch the Pittsburgh sun and bounce it back across the city. When the developer John Galbreath first proposed the site, he tore down the historic twenty-story department store that previously stood on this ground to make room.