Cornus florida blooming along the sidewalk in Manchester.
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Entrance to the Oliver Building
Impressive fat columns tell us that this is a colossal building even if we’re too close to see how colossal it really is. The architect was Daniel “Make No Little Plans” Burnham.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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John S. Dickson House, Shadyside
Peabody & Stearns were a Boston firm that kept a branch office in Pittsburgh to handle the many jobs they picked up in this city. They were responsible for rebuilding the Horne’s department store, and they designed the Liberty Market, later Motor Square Garden. But they also had a thriving business in Tudor mansions for the well-to-do in Pittsburgh’s East End. This one was built in 1902.
This picture from The Brickbuilder shows the house newly built. We can see that, except for filling in the side porch, very little has been done to change the house. Even the original diamond-paned upper sashes, or identical replacements, are still in the windows, and the windows in the sunroom that was made from the porch were matched to the rest of the windows in the house.
The gables were treated in a dark color scheme; the pastel blue of the current paint, along with the lacy wood trim, gives them a more feminine look than they would have had originally.
Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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Double Duplexes on Neeld Avenue, Beechview
These double duplexes represent a common phenomenon in the streetcar neighborhoods that developed around the turn of the twentieth century. They were built for C. M. Neeld in 1916 on land that his family had owned for generations. When the streetcar line was pushed through from downtown in 1905, the Neelds found that their old family homes were right on the car line, and thus right in the path of speedy development. They profited by developing some of their land, but they kept a whole city block for themselves until after the Second World War. These apartments—twelve of them in three buildings—would have turned some of the vacant land into a good steady income that couldn’t be matched by the small farming the Neelds had probably done before the streetcars came.
Father Pitt guesses that the architect was William Arthur Thomas, who favored this white face brick and designed other similar duplexes in Beechview.1
The lowest of the three preserves its original details best. The one at the top of the slope has been altered the most, with mid-twentieth-century “picture” windows replacing the original much larger windows.
The one in the middle preserves these original small windows in the stairwells.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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Kranjsko-Slovenski Dom, Lawrenceville
On 57th Street in Lawrenceville was a tight little community of Slovenians, known to their neighbors as Kreiners (from the German name of the Austrian province that is now Slovenia), who built a church, a school, and this Baroque clubhouse. Both this building and the parish school (now gone) were put up in 1911. We have not found an architect for this club yet, but the school was designed by Frederick Sauer; and, in a close ethnic community like this one, it is quite likely that the same people would hire the same architect—a guess made even more plausible by the buff Kittanning brick, Sauer’s favorite color.
The building suffered the usual fate of men’s clubs in Pittsburgh: all the windows were filled in with glass block. But in about 2017, after a period of abandonment, the building was renovated, and the windows were opened up again.
A photograph of the building just before its dedication appeared in the Press for May 28, 1911.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. The dedication was a big deal, with a parade, speeches, and music by the city’s only Slovenian singing society. Here is how it was reported in the Kreiners section of the Pittsburg Press:
Tomorrow, May 29, will take place the dedication and opening of the Kreiner Slovenian Home erected at Butler and Fifty-seventh street, Pittsburg.
The home has been built at an expense of $30,000. The dedication of the Slovenic home will be attended by all the local Slovenic societies of Pittsburg and neighboring towns. A parade will start at 9:30 a. m. from the Slovenic hall on Fifty-seventh street, then go down Butler street to Fiftieth street, to Hatfield street then to Fortieth street as far as Arsenal park, whence the parade will return up Butler street to the Kreiner-Slovenic home on Fifty-seventh street.
The formal opening of the home then will take place. The first speaker will be Ferdinand Volk, the president of the Kreiner Slovenic Home, and several prominent Slovenians will follow him. The Slovenic singing society “Precern” will sing several Slovenic songs. The Fifty-seventh street, Pittsburg. The religious part of the dedication will be looked after by the Rev. J. C. Mertl, of the Slovenic Catholic Church of St. Mary, near Butler. The Kreiner-Slovenic Home is the largest Slovenic hall yet built in the United States. More than 1,000 visitors are expected to come to Pittsburg for the dedication of this building, which will be the meeting place of the Slovenians (Kreiners) in Pittsburg and neighboring towns.
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Galliot Center for Newman Studies
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. As seen from the roof of Hampton Hall. The architect was David J. Vater; the building was put up in 2007.
We also have more pictures from ground level.
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Fish with Personality
Two cichlids from the pond in the Tropical Forest at Phipps Conservatory. Above, a “super red Texas cichlid,” which is a common aquarium hybrid; below, a pair of black belt cichlids (Vieja maculicauda).
Nikon COOLPIX P100. -
Some Houses on Wallingford Street, Shadyside
Wallingford Street is only two blocks long, but its rich assortment of houses in various styles makes it worth a visit for anyone who enjoys admiring old houses. The street is especially rich in examples of the turn-of-the-twentieth-century Georgian revival. Without any more introduction, here are some of the houses on the north side of the street.
Addendum: According to a correspondent, the house above was built as his own home by the architect Stanley Pyzdrowski, best known for many Catholic churches in the Pittsburgh area.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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Swissvale Baptist Church
This historically Black congregation has been in Swissvale just about since there was a Swissvale. According to our correspondent “Calvin,” this building was originally the First Presbyterian Church of Swissvale. When that church built its new stone church in 1909, this building was sold and moved. (Moving buildings was surprisingly common, and there were firms that specialized in nothing else.)
Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans f/1.4 35mm lens; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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