The Limbach Building is a good representative of what has been going on in Allentown over the past few years. Allentown was traditionally a German neighborhood, and the Limbach Building is a well-preserved example of the style old Pa Pitt calls German Victorian. Above we see it as it was just a few days ago; below in July of 2021. The building is in better shape now, and the downstairs tenant—a gym called “Death Comes Lifting,” whose slogan is “Fitness for the Misfits”—is weirder. Thus the whole progress of the Allentown business district is epitomized in one building: better and weirder.
It is especially cheering to see that someone is taking good care of the distinctive dome on the turret. The building would lose half its German flavor without that detail.
A Victorian frame house, built in the 1890s (according to old maps), whose siding was never replaced with one of the Four Horsemen—aluminum, vinyl, Insulbrick, and Permastone. The porch was filled in at some point, probably about a century ago—at any rate, so long ago that the siding of the addition is also wood.
The Beezer Brothers designed Wilkinsburg’s miniature skyscraper for real-estate developer and brewer Leopold Vilsack. It was built in 1902.1 It had been announced as the Vilsack Building; Vilsack named it the Carl Building (after his son) while it was still under construction; later it was called the Shields Building. It holds a curious place in the history of public housing: it was converted to apartments for senior citizens in 1975 as the first Section 8 housing project.
The Beezers’ rendering of the proposed building appeared in the Gazette for April 12, 1902:
You may notice, if you count carefully, that the building lost a floor between initial design and construction.
We transcribe the caption under the drawing:
Wilkinsburg is soon to have a sky-scraper—somewhat of an infant in its class, perhaps, but ’way above any of its neighbors, and abundant evidence of the hustle and pride that characterize the residents of Pittsburgh’s most attractive suburb. The Vilsack office building, for such will be the title of the new structure, will be a thoroughly high-class building, its owner, Leopold Vilsack, having spared no pains or cost in the plans to make it equal in convenience to any of the more pretentious structures downtown. The site for the building is at the southeast corner of Wood and Ross streets, on a lot 33×122 feet, which Mr. Vilsack purchased a few months ago through his agent, James B. Lawler, for $18,000. The building was designed by Beezer Bros. It will be seven stories high and absolutely fireproof in its construction. Architecturally the building will be an exceptionally handsome structure. The first two stories facing in Wood and Ross streets will be built of Indiana limestone and the upper stories of gray pressed brick and terra cotta. Two high-speed elevators will carry the tenants and the building will have a duplicate boiler system to furnish it with power, heat and light. The first floor will be used for storerooms. On the upper floors are about 90 offices, all finished in hard wood and provided with marble floors and wainscoting. A large barber shop and a photograph studio will be among the features. Water will be supplied from an artesian well. The building is to be erected under the immediate direction of Beezer Bros. and will cost at least $150,000. The house on the lot, now occupied by Dr. A. B. Smith, the former owner, will be moved about 150 yards up Ross street on to another lot of Mr. Vilsack’s. Work on the new building will begin May 1 and it is expected it will be finished by January 1.
It is interesting to note that, if you visit the building today, you will once again find “a large barber shop” among the features.
Urban legend says that these structures are chapels where the privileged can repent of their sins, but in fact they house the elevator mechanics and other rooftop necessities.
All summer long, all the rail routes have been detoured through Allentown. Stop and consider for a moment how thoroughly odd Pittsburgh transit is: do you know of any other subway system that keeps up an alternate route over the top for times when one of the tunnels has to be closed?
The few riders who look up from their phone screens have a chance to notice that Allentown is changing. Over the past few years, the Warrington Avenue business district has been going through a rapid trendification. It’s full of weird little shops too low-budget for the high rents of Lawrenceville.
The architect of this Byzantine-modern church was Charles J. Pepine, who designed a number of postwar churches in our area.1 It was dedicated in 1949 under the name “Nativity of Our Lady”; later it was known as Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, but it was usually just called St. Mary’s. It closed in 2010. Some attempts were made to turn the building into apartments, but they ran into objections from neighbors and we know not what other troubles; currently the building is vacant, though with building permits dated 2015 and 2019 in the front window.
The distinctive high domes of these towers were not part of the original plan when the new church was first announced in September of 1948, as we can see from this sketch by the architect.
If there must be parking lots, they should be marked by architectural elements in keeping with their buildings—like these pillars at the parking-lot entrance for St. Mary’s.
Built in 1916, the Wilkinsburg Masonic Temple was designed by Alden & Harlow. Mr. Alden had already been dead for eight years, but his famous name was kept at the head of the firm; Howard K. Jones, whose name was not added to the firm (as “Alden, Harlow & Jones”) until 1927, was doing much of the design work by 1916, and may have had a large hand in this building.
It’s a curious structure, two-thirds basement. Often lodge halls were put on upper floors to provide rentable storefronts on the ground floor that would pay for the building, but that is obviously not the case here. Perhaps the reason may be sought in pure symbolism. Whatever goes on in this building (which the uninitiated are not permitted to know) is so lofty that even the members must ascend through two and a half levels of basement before they can reach the main event.
A full-page photograph in the Architectural Record from 1925 shows us that the front of the building has not changed in any noticeable way, except for the new doors and windows:
Unlike some other landmark buildings in Wilkinsburg, this one has been preserved by new occupants, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Mosque, who clearly love the building and keep it in sparkling condition. Even the inscription and the cartouche have been attractively covered, not obliterated, by the Muslim community.
Of all the hundreds of lions on buildings downtown, the Romanesque lions that guard the county courthouse are the most distinctive. They used to be at street level, but the lowering of the Hump, the awkward hill that used to make navigating downtown even more difficult than it is now, left them stranded far above pedestrians’ heads.
MacClure & Spahr designed the headquarters for Jones & Laughlin, which is now the John P. Robin Civic Building. The entrance is lavishly decorated. The angle below shows off two of the most impressive lanterns in the city.
Built in 1903, this apartment building on East End Avenue was one of the early works of our future prophetic modernist Frederick Scheibler, while he was still in his classical phase. It is listed as No. 16, “Apartment building for Robinson and Bruckman,” in the Catalogue of the Works of Frederick G. Scheibler, Jr., in The Progressive Architecture of Frederick G. Scheibler, Jr., by Martin Aurand (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994).
