Father Pitt

Author: Father Pitt

Frank H. Mazza Pavilion, Brookline

The challenge: take a 1970s Brutalist retirement home that seemed to interrupt the neighborhood streetscape of Brookline Boulevard and re-imagine it as something bright and welcoming that would fit with the little one-off shops that make up the rest of the Boulevard. Rothschild Doyno Collaborative responded in 2011 with this design, whose muted but varied colors, large windows, and human-scaled ground floor seem at home on the street, whereas the previous incarnation of the building seemed to loom menacingly.

Olympus E-20N; Nikon COOLPIX P100.

Comments

August 5, 2025
Apartment Building with Storefronts by William E. Snaman in Dormont

It would have been a better composition with the original ground floor, but even so the upper two-thirds are attractive. We attribute this building to William E. Snaman because it is the only apartment building in the vicinity built at the right time to match this listing:

The Construction Record, October 30, 1915. “George E. McKee, Alger street, was awarded the contract for erecting a three-story brick store and apartment building on West Liberty avenue, Dormont, for Mrs. Mary Ivol, 6268 West Liberty avenue, Dormont. Plans by Architect W. E. Snaman, Empire building. Cost $10,000.”

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

Comments

August 4, 2025
Gustavus Adolphus Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Church, Bloomfield

Gustavus Adolphus was a Swedish congregation that began in Lawrenceville, but in 1908 it bought this lot at Evaline Street and Friendship Avenue. O. M. Topp, the favorite architect among Lutherans, was commissioned to design this imposing Gothic building.¹

Topp’s design, from “Cornerstone Laid in Storm,” Pittsburgh Gazette Times, July 13, 1908.

The cornerstone was laid in a howling storm on July 13, 1908,² and the church was completed in seven months—except for the main auditorium. It seems the congregation ran short of money and worshiped in the basement social room for several years. The main church was finally finished in 1916.

The church is now called Evaline Lutheran, but it is still Lutheran, and its spires still point heavenward—an unusual survival: probably a majority of churches of the era have lost their spires and must be content with bareheaded towers. It also has not been cleaned of its historic soot, making it one of our increasingly rare black stone churches.

Olympus E-20N; Samsung A15 5G.

The Tudor-style parsonage next door was also designed by Topp and built at the same time; it was connected with the church through the pastor’s study.

Comments

August 3, 2025
Centre City Tower

Built in 1971, this is now number 23 on the list of tallest buildings in Pittsburgh. The architects were the venerable Chicago firm of A. Epstein and Sons.

To make a more realistic-looking rendition of the building than is optically possible, old Pa Pitt adjusted the perspective on two planes. This adjustment has comical effects on the background, but the main subject looks natural now.

Comments

August 2, 2025
Harding School, Carnegie

In 1922, President Harding was popular—just about as popular as any president since Washington had ever been. He was a little less popular a few years later, after he had died and members of his circle who had not shot themselves began serving prison terms. But the name seems not to have been enough of an embarrassment to change the inscription on the school. It retains that inscription in its new life as a retirement home more than a century later.

The first school on this site was the old Chartiers Public School (we assume the date 1878 refers to the building of that school). In 1922, this much larger building went up around the old school—for it appears that the original school may still exist, invisible under a layer of 1922 construction.

The architect of the new school was Frank M. Crooks, the M. standing for McCandless, who was a lifelong resident of the little town of McDonald west of Carnegie.

Olympus E-20N; Samsung A15 5G.

Comments

August 1, 2025
Beechview Christian Church

T. Ed. (for Thomas Edward) Cornelius was the architect of this little Arts-and-Crafts Gothic church.¹ Cornelius was a lifelong resident of Coraopolis, but he flourished for decades as a designer of small to medium-sized projects all over the Pittsburgh area. This building has not been a church for quite a while, but its current owners keep it up neatly, though they have adapted it to radically different uses.

Olympus E-20N.

Comments

July 31, 2025
Apartment Buildings by W. A. Thomas on Friendship Park, Bloomfield

This striking building, which dates from about 1906, was designed by W. A. (for William Arthur) Thomas, a prolific architect and developer who is almost forgotten today. It’s time for a Thomas revival, Father Pitt thinks, because wherever he went, Thomas left the city more beautiful and more interesting.

The most attention-getting part of this building is the tower of half-round balconies in the front, and here the design is amazingly eclectic. Corinthian capitals on the pilasters and abstract cubical capitals on the columns—and then, on the third floor, tapered Craftsman-style pillars. But we don’t see a disordered mess. It all fits together in one composition.

Now, it’s possible that the interesting mixture of styles was the product of later revisions. But we are inclined to attribute an experimental spirit to Mr. Thomas. At the other end of the block…

This building is so similar that we are certainly justified in attributing it to Thomas as well unless strong evidence to the contrary comes in. But it is not identical. Here the columns go all the way up, and they terminate in striking Art Nouveau interpretations of classical capitals.

Volutes and acanthus leaves are standard decorations for classical capitals, but the proportions and the arrangement are original.

Olympus E-20N.

A fourth floor of cheaper modern materials has been added, but the addition was deliberately arranged to be unobtrusive, or indeed almost invisible from the street. Most passers-by will never even notice it.

Comments

July 30, 2025
Crafton Ingram Apartments, Ingram

Philip Friedman was busy in the years after the Second World War. He designed an incredible number of apartment buildings, and he seems to have owed his success to two things (in addition, of course, to hard work and skill in managing projects): a knack for combining modern design with more traditional elements to attract a wide range of renters, and a willingness to compromise. When the July, 1950, issue of the Charette, the magazine of the Pittsburgh Architectural Club, published a layman’s criticism of Friedman’s work, Friedman replied that he was at the mercy of his clients, and sometimes they really did throw out his drawings and stick classical columns on a modernist building. However, he did what he could. “He contends…that while his buildings are admittedly far less esthetic achievements than economic realities, many other new multiple dwellings in this area reflect no concern for esthetics whatever.”

The Crafton Ingram Apartments, originally called the Crafton Ingram Arms, are typical of Friedman’s work. They were built in about 1950. The buildings are square brick modernist boxes. But they have quoins and pediments and other Georgian details to convince the rubes that this is a high-class establishment. Originally there were four identical groups—three in Crafton and one in Ingram. Two of them have disappeared: this is the one that still stands in Ingram.

Olympus E-20N; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

Comments

July 29, 2025
Faces on the Keenan Building

The Keenan Building, designed by Thomas Hannah for the Colonel Keenan who had built the Press into the city’s leading newspaper, was elaborately decorated. Although the shaft was modernized somewhat half a century ago, most of the decorations remain, and among them we find portraits in terra cotta of people who were considered important to Pittsburgh when the building was erected in 1907.

William Penn, the Proprietor, who gave Pennsylvania a republican form of government.

William Pitt, friend of the Colonies, for whom Pittsburgh was named.

George Washington, Father of His Country.

Stephen Foster, at the time Pittsburgh’s most famous composer.

Mary Schenley, who owned half the city and donated Schenley Park.

Andrew Carnegie, who was a big deal.

Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States.

Edwin Stuart, Governor of Pennsylvania.

George Guthrie, Mayor of Pittsburgh.

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

There are faces on the second floor as well, but they are identical decorative faces.

Comments

July 28, 2025
Deutche Vereinigte Evangelische-Protestantische Johannes Kirche, Carnegie

This old church was built in 1872, just a few years after the Civil War. It is now (according to neighbors) used for storage of lumber and building materials. Because money is not spent on extensive alterations, storage is, from a preservation point of view, one of the best uses that can be found for a church. Several Southern churches from the 1600s were preserved because they were turned into barns in the late 1700s, when the future Bible Belt was the most irreligious section of the country.

Inscription: “St. John’s German United Evangelical Protestant Church, A. D. 1872.”

Olympus E-20N; Samsung A15 5G.

Comments

July 27, 2025