Old Pa Pitt takes it as one of his missions to record things that may vanish soon, so that posterity will have some visual memory of them. This apartment building is abandoned, and it had been given some unsympathetic remodelings before it was entirely given up on. Nevertheless, it was an attractive if ordinary building, and it could be made attractive again if Wilkinsburg became a trendy neighborhood. Right now it survives because no one has the money and the will to tear it down.
Addendum: Thanks to our correspondent David Schwing, we can identify the architects as Wilkinsburg’s own A. Dudgeon & Son. The building was called the Eleanor; it was built in 1905.1
- Gazette, February 17, 1905, p. 13. “Architects A. Dudgeon & Son have plans nearly completed for an $18,000 flat building for J. M. Lesher in South avenue, Wilkinsburg.” Plat maps show the building, called the Eleanor, owned by J. M. Lesher in 1915. ↩︎
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