Father Pitt

Author: Father Pitt

  • College Club, Oakland

    College Club

    The former College Club, designed in 1931 by Lamont Button, now in use as Whitfield Hall of Carnegie Mellon University. This is a phone picture from a few weeks ago, with the usual exaggerated colors that come from using the default Samsung camera app. In fact old Pa Pitt toned down the radioactive greens considerably, but the picture still looks a bit clownish. However, the colors of the trees and bushes were at least almost as bright as they appear, and you might as well have the picture, clown makeup and all.

    We have more pictures of the College Club in slightly more subdued colors.

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  • Three Civil War Veterans Uptown

    20, 18, and 16 Chatham Square

    Without moving an inch, these old houses have been on three different streets. They were built, probably just after the Civil War (since they appear on an 1872 plat map), on Chestnut Street. After the conquest of Allegheny by Pittsburgh, duplicate street names were eliminated—most often by changing the ones on the North Side, but in this case the Chestnut Street in what had been Allegheny was richer and more influential, so this became Hooper Street, defying the usual rule that the new name should begin with the same letter as the old. When the Lower Hill was deleted by “urban renewal,” Hooper and Washington Streets were merged to make Chatham Square. Through it all, these fairly modest houses have remained intact, and they seem secure now that Uptown is becoming more desirable again.

    20, 18, and 16 Chatham Square
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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  • Snow

    Snow on a butterfly bush
    Snow on branches
    Snow on a fence
    Snow on a tree trunk
    Snow on roses of Sharon
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • A Short Stroll on Longuevue Drive in Beverly Heights, Mount Lebanon

    176 Longuevue Drive

    We’ve seen some of these houses on Longuevue Drive before; others are making their first appearance here. Father Pitt’s ambition is to document every house in the Mount Lebanon Historic District. If he ever succeeds in balancing that ambition with all his other ambitions, he may get it done. Meanwhile, here are a few beautiful houses to enjoy, and we need no more excuse than that for these pictures.

    176

    To avoid weighing down the front page for a week and a half, we’ll put the rest of the pictures below the metaphorical fold.

    Many more pictures…

  • Gateway Station

    Gateway station in black and white

  • Pair of Italianate Houses in Manchester

    1429 and 1431 Pennsylvania Avenue

    A pair of rowhouses whose elaborate Italianate details have been meticulously restored. And since, as longtime readers know, old Pa Pitt collects breezeways…

    Breezeway
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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  • Spire of the German Evangelical Church

    Spire of the German Evangelical Church
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.

    Now the Smithfield United Church of Christ, and it has had several other names. This lacy spire has an honored place in history as the first structural use of aluminum. (The aluminum point on the Washington Monument was just a lump of aluminum set on top, not a structure.) The architect Henry Hornbostel’s other experiment in this building, the use of decorative concrete panels on the exterior walls, has not held up as well; for years the rest of the building has been shrouded in netting to prevent bits of concrete from raining on pedestrians. Below is a picture Father Pitt took of the tower in 2000, before the shrouds went up.

    Tower of Smithfield United Church in 2000
    Lomo Smena 8M.

  • CNG Tower

    CNG Tower (EQT Plaza)
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.

    Now called EQT Plaza, this is one of old Pa Pitt’s favorite Postmodernist buildings from the 1980s “Renaissance II” boom. The architect was William Pederson of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates.

  • Morrowfield Garage, Squirrel Hill

    Morrowfield Garage
    Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.

    The garage next to the Morrowfield (both designed by J. E. Dwyer) is a utilitarian building, but it has some virtues. First of all, it continues the line of shops at ground level, so that it does not kill a whole section of commercial street the way large parking garages often do. Second, the rhythm of window and wall is right. It’s not an inspired design, perhaps, but it does not strike us as a sudden interruption of the cityscape. The tile decorations at the top and the little tile diamonds scattered like snowflakes all over the front add visual interest, even if they are not terribly artistic. The same decorative scheme is carried on in the rear, where for both the apartment building and the garage Mr. Dwyer decided to treat the back-alley side as a second front.

    Rear of the garage
    Samsung Digimax V4.
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  • Victorian Store and Apartments in Homewood

    529–531 North Homewood Avenue

    A good example of the style old Pa Pitt thinks of as German Victorian, with heavily eyebrowed Rundbogenstil arches and prominent finials. It was probably built in the 1890s; it appears on plat maps in the early twentieth century (check the “1903–1906” box) as owned by L. Vilsack—almost certainly the Leopold Vilsack who was a prominent real-estate developer in the East End and one of the founders of Iron City Brewing, whose mausoleum in St. Mary’s Cemetery is in an exaggerated version of the same style. The windows have been filled in with new ones of the wrong size, and the ground floor has been altered (the storefront originally had a corner entrance), but most of the decorations that give the building its Victorian character have survived.

    Front elevation
    529–531 North Homewood Avenue
    529–531 North Homewood Avenue
    529–531 North Homewood Avenue
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.

    Correction: When this article was first published, old Pa Pitt had negligently typed “Homestead” instead of “Homewood” in the headline. Thanks to a correspondent for pointing out the error.

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