McKeesport’s own Charles R. Moffitt, whose office was a short stroll down Walnut street from the construction site, designed this automotive palace for a Studebaker dealer.1 It was built in 1926, and shortly after it opened a picture of the auto-accessories section of the showroom was published in India Rubber and Tire Review for April of 1927:
We can still see the Studebaker emblem at the top of the long side of the building.
A view from a couple of blocks away on Shaw Avenue gives us a better idea of the scale of the building.
- The Iron Age, April 15, 1926, p. 1113. “The Ninth Avenue Garage, Ninth Avenue, McKees Rocks [sic], Pa., operated by Baehr Brothers, has plans for a four-story and basement service, repair and garage building, 70 x 140 ft., to cost about $100,000 with equipment. C. R. Moffitt, Masonic Building, is architect.” This listing puts it in “McKees Rocks,” but that’s obviously an editor’s error: there was never a Ninth Avenue in McKees Rocks, and Moffitt was a McKeesport architect, and the dimensions are right for this building. We might add that “Baehr Brothers” is a very unusual name, so unusual that there seems to have been only one automotive-related firm by that name. ↩︎
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