In some ways the Strip has changed enormously in the past quarter-century. In other ways it hasn’t changed at all. Penn Avenue between 17th and 22nd Streets is still a permanent street fair, and many of the old businesses are still there. This picture, taken in July of 2000, includes the accordion player who used to be a regular character on Saturday mornings. It was taken with a Lomo Smena 8M, and it wasn’t perfectly focused or perfectly steady, so be a little forgiving if you enlarge it.
The McCormick Company, a firm that seems to have specialized in buildings for the food industry, designed this beloved landmark on the Boulevard of the Allies. It was built in 1929 for Isaly’s, a chain of dairy-delicatessen-restaurants that had begun in Ohio but took over the Pittsburgh market in a big way. At its peak, there was an Isaly’s in just about every neighborhood business district. This building had a big Isaly’s restaurant on the ground floor.
Today the building is given over to medical offices, but the Art Deco details are still well preserved.
The life of Christ is depicted in relief at the main entrance to East Liberty Presbyterian Church. We believe the sculptor was John Angel (but we would be delighted to be corrected). Above, the Nativity.
The baptism of Christ by John the Baptist.
The Sermon on the Mount.
The Commission to the Disciples.
Christ washing the disciples’ feet.
The Last Supper.
“Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Parables and miracles of Christ are illustrated in the smaller panels below.
Ralph Adams Cram considered this church his greatest accomplishment, and it would be possible to argue that it is the greatest work of Gothic architecture in North America. Cram was intensely aware of the Gothic tradition, but he was not an imitator: he was as unique and original among the Gothicists as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe among the modernists. The tower of this church is a feast of Gothic detail, but it also takes inspiration from American skyscrapers, and it looms higher than the Highland Building, a steel-framed skyscraper across the street.
Cram himself was a high-church Episcopalian, a monarchist, and a member of the Society of King Charles the Martyr, so it is one of history’s amusing little jokes that his greatest work was built for Presbyterians. But the Mellons, Richard Beatty and Jennie King, gave him complete freedom—a privilege seldom granted even to the greatest architects. The Mellons poured so much money into this church that locals still call it the Mellon Fire Escape, and the late Franklin Toker guessed that it was probably, per square foot, the most expensive church ever built in America.
W. Ward Williams was the architect of this fine hall, built in 1912 for the local lodge of the International Order of Odd Fellows. Like most lodge halls, it was built with the meeting hall upstairs, so that the ground floor could be given over to rent-paying storefronts. The building has been neatly restored and is now home to Community Kitchen Pittsburgh.
The three-link chain is the emblem of the Odd Fellows.
This striking design was by Janssen & Abbott, and it shows Benno Janssen developing that economy of line old Pa Pitt associates with his best work, in which there are exactly the right number of details to create the effect he wants and no more. The row was built in about 1913.1 The resemblance to another row on King Avenue in Highland Park is so strong that old Pa Pitt attributes that row to Janssen & Abbott as well.
The terrace on King Avenue, Highland Park. In some secondary sources, this one is misattributed to Frederick Scheibler, but Scheibler’s biographer Martin Aurand found no evidence linking him to this terrace.
These houses are not quite as well kept as the ones in Highland Park. They have been turned into duplexes and seem to have fallen under separate ownership, resulting in—among other alterations—the tiniest aluminum awnings old Pa Pitt has ever seen up there on the attic dormers of two of the houses.
Nevertheless, the design still overwhelms the miscellaneous alterations and makes this one of the most interesting terraces in Oakland.
The houses in this row at the upper end of 46th Street were all built on the same plan. They were put up in two stages around the turn of the twentieth century, though they are not much different from Pittsburgh rowhouses of a hundred years earlier. The rising value of Lawrenceville real estate has caused an epidemic of third-floor expansions recently; Father Pitt will admit to thinking they are ugly, but by matching the square footage to the value of the location they keep the main structure of the house in good shape. Below we see one house with its original dormer (and classic aluminum awning) and one house with a new third floor (and apologetic little contemporary awningette).
The Bayard Street face of Bayard Manor. Yes, that odd little half-timbered projection on the roof really is skewed in relation to this side of the building. That is because Craig Street and Bayard Street do not meet at exactly a right angle; the roof projection (it probably holds elevator mechanics) is oriented at right angles to every side of the building except the Bayard Street front.
