Another picture of a Spotted Lanternfly nymph, just because it was posing so decoratively on a ray of Cosmos sulphureus.
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Spotted Lanternfly Nymph on Cosmos
Olympus EN-20 with cheap screw-on close-up lens. -
Woodwell Building
Rutan & Russell designed this building for a hardware company that had already been on this corner—Wood Street and Second Avenue (now the Boulevard of the Allies)—for sixty years when the new building opened in 1907.1 It belongs to Point Park University now, and it is so thoroughly integrated with the buildings around it that most people probably pass it by without noticing it. But it is a unique survivor, as we’ll learn in a moment.
The first Joseph Woodwell hardware store was opened in 1847, and it looked like the engraving above, which was published in Fahnestock’s Pittsburgh Directory for 1850.
A larger building was put up only ten years after the first one, and then this small skyscraper in 1907. Obviously the company was prospering, and it would continue to prosper for quite a while. The frontispiece to a Joseph Woodwell catalogue from 1927 shows us the all the Woodwell buildings up to that date.
You notice the main Woodwell Building in a picture from 1907, and then the same building surrounded by newer construction in 1927. But although it’s the same building, it’s not in the same place.
Until 1920, Second Avenue was a narrow street like First Avenue or Third Avenue—streets that would count as alleys in most American cities. But in 1920, when the Boulevard of the Allies to Oakland was being planned, the city began widening Second Avenue by tearing down all the buildings on the north side of the street.
All but one. The Woodwell Building was not demolished: instead it was moved, all eight floors of it, about forty feet to the right. That makes it the sole surviving complete building on the north side of the street from before the widening project. (The Americus Republican Club survived in a truncated form.) The building gained a four-floor addition (now replaced with a more modern building) to the right on Wood Street, and yet another new building went up for the prospering Woodwell firm behind the relocated building on the Boulevard of the Allies.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. So the next time you walk down the Boulevard of the Allies, pause briefly to acknowledge the Woodwell Building. It’s a stubborn survivor as well as an attractive design by one of our top architectural firms, and it has earned some respect.
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Joyce Kilmer Memorial, South Park
Joyce Kilmer was only 31 when he died in action in the First World War. But he had written one poem that made him immortal: “Trees,” which for two generations was inescapable at school recitations and equally inescapable set to music by Oscar Rasbach, in which form it was performed in every style from amateur opera to Benny Goodman’s swing.
The Joyce Kilmer Memorial in South Park, which sits in the middle of a circle at a prominent intersection, was designed by Henry Hornbostel, who donated his work on the project.
The monument is simple, designed to focus attention on the one thing visitors will really care about: the poem “Trees” itself, inscribed in a bronze book.
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS. The architectural part of the memorial is in good shape. However, the main part of Hornbostel’s design is missing, as we can see from his drawing published in the Sun-Telegraph.
Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, April 8, 1934, page 31. The memorial was meant to be ringed by trees, the only truly fitting tribute to Kilmer’s legacy. Hornbostel chose elms, and the Dutch elm disease has made merely keeping elms alive a difficult endeavor. The blighted trees were taken down in 1961, and the circle was left almost bare. Other trees have been planted more recently, but the effect will not be the same: his drawing shows that Hornbostel chose elms for their characteristic shape. But at least there will be trees again.
The local historian Jim Hanna has made a short video about the memorial.
Map.
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Old St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cathedral, Munhall
Back in 2014, old Pa Pitt took these pictures of the old St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Munhall. In the intervening years Father Pitt has learned much more about making adjustments to photographs to produce a finished picture that looks like the scene he photographed, so he presents these pictures again, “remastered” (as the recording artists would say) for higher fidelity.
The church was built in 1903 for a Greek Catholic (or Byzantine Catholic, as we would say today) congregation. When Pittsburgh became the seat of a Ruthenian diocese, this became the cathedral.
The mad genius Titus de Bobula, who was only 25 years old when this church was built, was the architect, and this building still causes architectural historians to gush like schoolgirls. It includes some of De Bobula’s trademarks, like the improbably tall and narrow arches in the towers and side windows and the almost cartoonishly weighty stone over the ground-level arches. It’s made up of styles and materials that no normal architect would put together in one building, and it all works. Enlarge the pictures and note the stonework corner crosses in the towers and all along the side, which we suspect were in the mind of John H. Phillips when he designed Holy Ghost Greek Catholic Church in the McKees Rocks Bottoms, which also makes use of De Bobulesque tall and narrow arches.
The rectory was designed by De Bobula at the same time.
This illustration of the church and rectory was published in January of 1920 in The Czechoslovak Review, but it appears from the style to be De Bobula’s own rendering of the buildings, including the people in 1903-vintage (definitely not 1920) costumes.
Kodak EasyShare Z1485; Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3. The Byzantine Catholic Cathedral moved to a modern building in 1993, still in Munhall, and this building now belongs to the Carpatho-Rusyn Society. According to the Web site, the organization is currently doing “extensive renovations,” which we hope will keep the church and rectory standing for years to come.
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Rowe Building (Penn-Highland Building), East Liberty
Built in 1898 for Rowe’s department store, this building has been called the Penn-Highland Building for years now. The architects were Alden & Harlow.
Lions stare back at you from all over the building.
Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans f/1.4 35mm lens.
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Spotted Lanternfly Nymph
Olympus E-20N with cheap screw-on close-up lens. These little black bugs with sporty polka dots are the earlier nymph stage of the spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula), the pest that has invaded Pittsburgh by the zillions and is threatening to kill off our local population of Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima), another invasive pest that is the spotted lanternfly’s primary host. Old Pa Pitt recalls an old Roman saying about the curse of an answered prayer that seems appropriate here.
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Frick Annex
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. Built in 1906, this skyscraper was designed by Daniel Burnham, architect of the neighboring Frick Building, as the second part of Henry Frick’s architectural tantrum that cut off the light and air from the Carnegie Building. The Carnegie Building was demolished to make way for the nearly windowless Kaufmann’s Annex; this building, which gets plenty of light, is now luxury apartments.
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Building More Hospital
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Presby Reflects Presby
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. The older Presbyterian Hospital (designed by E. P. Mellon) reflected and distorted in the curved surface of the new UPMC Presbyterian building now being finished up in Oakland.
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City-County Building
Edward B. Lee won the competition for the design of the City-County Building in “association” with Palmer & Hornbostel. Lee’s was the name in the headlines, and Lee was the only architect mentioned in the ordinance ratifying the results of the competition. But years later Lee explained that the design was Henry Hornbostel’s, with Lee just executing drawings from Hornbostel’s design. As flamboyant as he could be, Hornbostel was also generous and encouraging to his colleagues.
Front page of the Pittsburgh Post, January 20, 1914. But old Pa Pitt has a suspicion that there might be more to the story than mere generosity.
In 1904, Hornbostel had won the competition for the Carnegie Tech campus, beating—among others—the famous Cass Gilbert.
In 1907, Hornbostel had won the competition for Soldiers and Sailors Hall, beating—among others—Cass Gilbert.
Now he was entering another really big competition, and the judge was Cass Gilbert, who had been selected to “prepare and conduct” the competition.1 Perhaps Hornbostel calculated that his design would have a better chance with somebody else’s name on it.
Reliefs by sculptor Charles Keck depict the arms of the City of Pittsburgh (above) and the County of Allegheny (below). Keck also contributed sculptures for Soldiers and Sailors Hall.
Fujifilm FinePix HS10. The three enormous arches are the most distinctive features of the building. Comparing the preliminary elevation above with the finished building, we can see that they were made even larger later on in the planning.
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