George Schwan was the architect of this building, according to a city architectural survey. Its modernistic classicism makes it a good neighbor to a wide variety of architectural styles. From a distance, it gives us the impression of an all-stone building, but in fact the effect is achieved with a carefully balanced mixture of terra-cotta tiles and stone-colored brick.
More pictures of the Fifth Wood Building.
We promised some cheerful news from the Hilltop neighborhoods, and here it is. The restoration of the old Beltzhoover Sub-District School, which is being turned into apartments, is being done with care and not a little ambition. The appearance of the original school, designed by W. J. Shaw, is being kept as close to original as practical, including new windows of the right size (never guaranteed when schools are converted). Beside it a whole new addition is going up, which will complement the style of the original school. The restored school will give Beltzhoover a building to be proud of, and we can hope that it may be one of the seeds of a neighborhood renaissance.
The school was set on a mound in the middle of a city block, with a lot of climbing for students no matter which street they entered from. (Palmetto Way, however, mounts the hill between the main streets, and will give residents a level entrance to the building.)
Three and a half years ago, old Pa Pitt visited this church to take pictures of the exterior. It was not in use then, although the grounds were maintained. Neighbors reported hearing a smoke detector’s low-battery signal for quite a while. Two days ago, a commenter alerted Father Pitt that a fire had seriously damaged the building.
We’ll put the rest of the large number of pictures we took today behind a link, so that the sad evidence of the conflagration will not be the dominant impression in visitors’ minds for the next week and a half. Furthermore, we promise to balance this article soon with some very cheerful news from the Hilltop neighborhoods.
Far and few, far and few
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
A house on Fair Oaks Street in the Murdoch Farms plan, Squirrel Hill. Above, a Moravian arch over the door.
A tiny dead-end street of little houses in a little ravine next to Holy Ghost Greek Catholic Church, showing how even the most unlikely holes in the landscape filled up back when Pittsburgh was booming and desperately in need of housing. They appear to have been built all at once, except possibly the little gambrel-roofed Dutch Colonial cottage.
The preservation of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie station complex as “Station Square” showed Pittsburgh that historic preservation could be good business. As “the Freight House Shops,” the freight house was a successful shopping arcade for many years. But all the shopping arcades, and many of the indoor shopping malls, have collapsed in the past decade or two as shopping habits changed. Now shoppers demand stores and restaurants with individual external entrances. But the shopping arcade saved the building; and now, though other uses have been found for most of the space (a large part of it has been turned into a rock-climbing gym, because where would you find rocks in the wild in Pittsburgh?), the building itself is in no danger of demolition.
This was the first Passionist convent in the United States. The architect was Edmund B. Lang, whose firm would soon be known as Edward B. Lang & Brother, the Brother being Herman J., who would design some fine churches, including St. George’s in Allentown and St. Basil’s in Carrick.
The cornerstone was laid in 1910, and the Pittsburg Press covered the event in its “Religious and Charitable” section for September 2, 1910 (p. 9).
The cornerstone of the first Passionist convent in America will be laid in Carrick next Sunday afternoon at 4 o’clock. This convent, the mother house of the order in this country, is also the first cloistered convent to be built in the local diocese. The ceremony of laying the stone will be conducted by the Rev. Father Stanilaus Grennan, provincial of the order in this country. Bishop J. F. Regis Canevin, of the Pittsburg diocese, and a number of prominent members of the clergy and laity are expected to be present. The convent, which has been designed by Architect Edmund B. Lang, is severely plain in plan. It is being built of brick and stone. The American Passionist Sisterhood consists of the five nuns who came to this country from Italy, arriving in Pittsburg May 5. Since coming here the number has been augmented, two Pittsburg girls and one Baltimore girl being now in the novitiate, preparing themselves to join the order.
The chapel is a good example of the late Rundbogenstil as practiced by the Langs.
Ingham & Boyd were the architects of this very respectable French cottage overlooking Wilkins Avenue from a little service road.1 It was built for W. A. Steinmeyer, vice-president of the Allemannia Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburgh. The placement of the entrance at the left instead of in the center is uncharacteristic of the architects, and we can only assume that some desirable interior arrangement made it worth departing from their usual rule of exact symmetry.
This picture was taken on a dim winter day from a very long distance, and therefore is soupy with noise reduction if you look at it too closely. But it makes its point: the restoration and conversion of the old Beltzhoover Sub-District School is proceeding with decent respect for the design of the original architect, William J. Shaw. Note the brand-new windows in the correct size and shape.
Here is a remnant of the old middle-nineteenth-century commercial Pittsburgh, when a large part of the population lived downtown and shopkeepers often lived above their shops. In addition to being an unusual relic of the mostly obliterated past of downtown, this particular building is famous for its mural, “The Two Andys,” by Tom Mosser and Sarah Zeffiro.
