Father Pitt

Author: Father Pitt

  • Shaare Torah Congregation, Squirrel Hill

    The striking feature of this modernist synagogue is the huge relief over the entrance that symbolically depicts the Twelve Tribes of Israel surrounding the Tablets of the Law. The architects were Ben Friedman and Nathan Cantor, although Father Pitt has not yet sorted out whether they worked together or at different times.

    Ground was broken for the first part of the building on April 20, 1947; first services were conducted September 3, 1948. Ground for the Rabbi Sivitz Memorial Talmud Torah and Main Building was broken August 17, 1952; it was dedicated on August 27, 1955.

    Friedman’s preliminary sketch of the Shaare Torah synagogue

    This preliminary sketch for the synagogue was published on the cover of the Jewish Criterion, August 23, 1946. The sketch is quite different from the building as it stands, but obviously an early stage in the evolution of the same idea. Through the halftoning, we can just make out the name “Friedman” in the signature.

    The symbols are taken from the prophecy of Jacob in Genesis 49:

    Reuben, unstable as water;

    Simeon and Levi: instruments of cruelty are in their habitations (but Simeon’s sword is mitigated by a wreath of olive, and Levi later became the priestly class, and thus is represented by a swinging censer);

    Judah is a lion’s whelp;

    Zebulun shall be for an haven of ships;

    Issachar is a strong ass, crouching down between two burdens;

    Dan shall be a serpent in the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse’ heels, so that his rider shall fall backward;

    Gad, a troupe shall overcome him, but he shall overcome at the last;

    Out of Asher his bread shall be fat, and he shall yield royal dainties;

    Naphthali is a hind let loose;

    Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well, whose branches run over the wall;

    Benjamin shall raven as a wolf.

    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • A Rainy Day? Let’s Visit the Museum

    Entrance to the Carnegie Museum

    A rainy November afternoon is the perfect time to spend an hour or two in the art museum. Here are a few of the things you might see if you visited the Carnegie right now.

    Aurora Leigh

    Aurora Leigh, by John White Alexander, 1904: an imaginative portrait of the heroine of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s verse novel. Alexander’s last and greatest work was the decoration of the Grand Staircase in the Carnegie, so you’ll have a chance to see those murals, too.

    Sunrise Synchromy in Violet

    Sunrise Synchromy in Violet, by Stanton Macdonald-Wright, 1918.

    Rue de L’Abreuvoir, by Maurice Utrillo, 1911

    Rue de L’Abreuvoir, by Maurice Utrillo, 1911.

    Harbor Mole, by Lionel Feininger, 1923

    Harbor Mole, by Lionel Feininger, 1923.

    Rue de Beaujour, Pontoise, by Camille Possarro, 1872

    Rue de Beaujour, Pontoise, by Camille Pissarro, 1872.

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  • Fifth Avenue Place, Remodeled

    Entrance to Fifth Avenue Place
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.

    The shopping arcade at Fifth Avenue Place, like almost all indoor shopping arcades and a good many enclosed shopping malls, withered and emptied, so advertising it on the Liberty Avenue entrance no longer made sense. The new entrance is much more restrained, modernist rather than postmodernist. This, in case you don’t remember, is what it used to look like:

    Entrance in 2019
    Samsung Digimax V4.

    Father Pitt will not fault the tasteful modernism of the new design in isolation—in fact he thinks it makes a good picture—but it does not fit the spirit of Reagan-era excess in the building itself. It would have been better to leave the old entrance, with its gold-foil arch and its giant clock, and just remove the signs.

    It is a rule, however, that the style of the previous generation is always the most embarrassing, and the style of the generation before it is always to be preferred. It seems to old Pa Pitt that today’s architects and builders are embarrassed by the exuberant postmodernism of the 1980s, and are taking every opportunity to remold it into fussily correct International Style modernism, exactly the same way their ancestors of a century ago were embarrassed by the exuberant Victorianism of the 1880s and were taking every opportunity to remold it into fussily correct classicism.

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  • Tower of the Allegheny County Courthouse

    Tower of the Allegheny County Courthouse, Pittsburgh
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Seen from across the Mon.

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  • Dormers on the Allegheny County Courthouse

    Dormer on the Allegheny County Courthouse
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.

    Above, on the Grant Street front; below, on the Fifth Avenue side.

    Dormer
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Allegheny County Courthouse

    Allegheny County Courthouse
    Samsung Digimax V4.

    From the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue (and try to explain that to an out-of-towner).

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  • Fintex

    Fintex sign

    Perhaps you have wondered, as you walked down Wood Street, what “Fint-x” was, whose prominent sign mostly reappeared a few years ago after having been covered for a long while.

    Fintex was a men’s clothing shop founded by Morry Goldman, noted Pittsburgh haberdasher. In its heyday, Fintex had multiple locations and advertised high style at low prices.

    Men, Too, Talk About Clothes
    Ad in the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, March 8, 1934.

    In the 1950s, Fintex expanded into the suburbs: here we see the announcement of a new store at the Great Southern shopping center in Bridgeville.

    Grand opening of Fintex in the Great Southern Shoppers Mart
    Full-page ad in the Press, December 9, 1955

    Morry Goldman was the sponsor of a pro basketball team called the Pittsburgh Morrys, and a glance at their Wikipedia article will take you back to a lost age of small-time professional sports of which most modern sports fans have no notion.

  • One Mellon Center

    One Mellon Center
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Or BNY Mellon Center, or whatever it is called now that BNY Mellon is just BNY, seen from across the Mon.

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  • A Broad View of Steel Plaza

    Steel Plaza station

    An “ultra-wide” view of a Red Line car coming into Steel Plaza station, thanks to the five-megapixel “ultra-wide” auxiliary camera on Father Pitt’s phone.

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  • McGinley Hall, Duquesne University

    McGinley Hall
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.

    A massive new apartment tower for Duquesne University students, and a big improvement in the Uptown cityscape (it replaced a parking lot). The architects were Indovina Associates, who designed the building in a subdued version of the currently popular patchwork-quilt style, with materials that harmonize well with the other buildings along the Uptown corridor.

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