Father Pitt

Author: Father Pitt

  • Spencer Methodist Episcopal Church, Carrick

    Spencer Methodist Episcopal Church (now Spencer United Methodist Church)

    Now Spencer United Methodist. Charles W. Bier was the architect of this church,1 which opened in 1925. It sits on a steeply sloping lot at the southern end of Carrick, so that—like many Pittsburgh churches—it has ground-level entrances on two ground levels.

    Spencer Methodist Episcopal Church (now Spencer United Methodist Church)
    Tower

    An open belfry becomes a nuisance to maintain, and when the bells are silenced—as they have been in most of our churches—the belfry is often filled in.

    Basement entrance
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
    1. The American Contractor, April 14, 1923: “Carrick, Pa.—Church:$100,000. 1 sty. 100×72. Church st. & Spencer av., Carrick. Archt. Chas. W. Bier, Pittsburgh Life bldg., Pittsburgh, Pa. Owner The Spencer M. E. Congr., Spv. Gilbert G. Gallagher, 117 Spencer av., Carrick. Solid brk. Drawing prelim. plans.” The church as built does not seem like a $100,000 church. But the dimensions and estimate went up: November 3, 1923: “Church: $140,000. 1 sty. & bas. 75×143. Church st. & Spencer av., Garrick [sic]. Archt. Chas. W. Bier, Pittsburgh Life bldg., Pittsburgh, Pa. Owner The Spencer M. E. Congr., Rev. Gilbert G. Gallagher, 117 Spencer av., Garrick. Revising plans.” The current church looks like Bier’s work; we can only guess that the ambitious plans were scaled back a bit before construction began. ↩︎
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  • Base of the U. S. Steel Tower

    Base of the U. S. Steel Tower
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

    The base of the U. S. Steel Tower is where all the drama of the building is concentrated. From a distance, it’s a black slab dominating the skyline, but at the base, the impossibly spindly supports make the building seem to hover like something in a René Magritte painting.

  • American Legion Post No. 54, Bridgeville

    American Legion post

    The honest Depression-era simplicity of this building, dated 1931 by the stone beside the front steps, is very attractive. The windows have been replaced; but they have not been blocked in, which sets this apart from almost every other men’s club in southwestern Pennsylvania. Perhaps the explanation lies in the fact that there is a large and mostly windowless basement with separate entrances.

    American Legion post
    American Legion post
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Not Frederick Scheibler

    Row of houses on Alder Street

    This row of houses on Alder Street in Shadyside has been attributed to Frederick Scheibler, Pittsburgh’s most famous home-grown modernist, by the guesswork of certain architectural historians. But Martin Aurand, Scheibler’s biographer, could find no evidence that Scheibler designed them. Then who was responsible for this strikingly modern early-twentieth-century terrace?

    5931–5937 Alder Street

    Old Pa Pitt is confident that he has the answer. The architect was T. Ed. Cornelius, who lived all his life in Coraopolis but was busy throughout the Pittsburgh area. We can be almost certain of that attribution because the houses in the middle of the row are identical to the ones in the Kleber row in Brighton Heights:

    Kleber row in Brighton Heights

    And the Brighton Heights houses were the subject of a photo feature in the Daily Post of March 5, 1916, in which T. Ed. Cornelius is named as the architect.

    1916 picture of row in Brighton Heights

    The Alder Street houses are bookended by larger double houses, one of which—this being Pittsburgh, of course—is an odd shape to fit the odd lot.

    Row of houses on Alder Street
    5927 and 5929 Alder Street

    So remember the name of T. Ed. (which stands for Thomas Edward) Cornelius when you think of distinctive Pittsburgh architecture. It is quite a compliment to have your work mistaken for Frederick Scheibler’s.

    5931–5937 Alder Street
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990; Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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  • Merry Christmas

    A Christmas tree at Station Square.

  • P&LE Central Warehouse, Station Square

    Central Warehouse
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

    The central warehouse for the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad’s freight depot, now converted to offices and other uses and known as Commerce Court. These two pictures were taken just about a year apart, but nothing significant changed during that time. While he was donating the newer one to Wikimedia Commons, old Pa Pitt ran across the older one and realized he had never published it here.

    Central warehouse
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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  • House from the 1880s in Shadyside

    5973 Alder Street

    It is the northeastern corner of Shadyside now, but this house was built in the neighborhood that developed around the East Liberty station, which was not far from where the East Liberty station is today—now a busway station, but on the same route. This house was built in the 1880s for a family named McCully, to judge by old maps. It has been divided into three apartments, but it has kept many of its 1880s details.

    Front door

    This entrance is probably a replacement for a front porch that ran the width of the building.

    Carved brackets

    The original carved wooden brackets include the abstract cutout botanical decorations that were very popular in the 1870s and 1880s

    5973 Alder Street
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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  • Beaux-Arts Terrace in Sheraden

    3118–3112 Bergman Street

    Thomas Scott designed this terrace of four houses, built in 1912,1 and they are kept in remarkably fine shape. The updates have been handled with taste and an understanding of the original style, so that today there is hardly a finer Beaux-Arts terrace of cheap little rowhouses in the city. We have talked before about the challenge of making inexpensive housing seem attractive; it was a challenge that Scott met and conquered.

    3116 and 3114
    Front door

    The doors of the two end units are framed in scrupulously proper Doric fashion.

    Sawed-off Moravian arch

    The two inner units have these unique sawed-off arches over their front doors.

    3118–3112
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.
    1. Source: The Construction Record, December 2, 1911: “Architect T. M. Scott, Machesney building, has completed plans for four 2-story brick residences, to be erected on Bergman street, Sheraden, for W. McCausland, 3022 Zephyr avenue, Sheridan. Cost $15,000.” McCausland still owned them in 1923, according to plat maps. ↩︎
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  • Belplain Avenue, Dormont

    Belplain Avenue
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    From a distance, we can see how densely built Dormont is. It’s in the top 1% of municipalities by population density in the United States. Yet the streets never feel crowded or claustrophobic. That pleasant and efficient use of land is the reason why Father Pitt, without any irony, likes to talk about the Dormont Model of Sustainable Development.

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  • Old St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church, Bridgeville

    Old St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church

    The St. George congregation moved out of this little backstreet church a few years ago, building a much larger and more splendid church, with gilded domes and everything, just south of Bridgeville. A nondenominational congregation has taken it over and keeps the building in good shape. All the stained glass was removed when the building changed hands—except for Father Pitt’s favorite window, which was removed by the Antiochians themselves a few years before they left. It was in the lunette above the front door: a staring eye in glass, with the legend The eye of God is upon you.

    Old St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church
    Old St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church
    Old St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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