Father Pitt

Author: Father Pitt

  • Bethel Presbyterian Church, Perry South

    Bethel Presbyterian Church

    You might pass this building by on your way up North Charles Street and never think of it as anything other than another outcropping of generic ugliness. In fact it is a rare surviving frame church from the 1880s. It has been covered in sheets of cartoon fake brick, and the windows have been halved, but the building is still here. It was built before 1890 on Gallagher Street, near the intersection with Taggart Street, as the Bethel Baptist Church. By about 1900, Gallagher had changed its name to Melrose Avenue, and this was known as the Melrose Avenue Presbyterian Church. It kept that name as Taggart Street changed to North Charles Avenue.

    The Presbyterian congregation has almost been erased from history—it is hard to find more than glancing references to it—but the building has been occupied by a nondenominational congregation.

    Melrose Avenue Presbyterian Church
    Bethel Presbyterian Church
    Entrance
    Melrose Avenue Presbyterian Church
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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  • Dinwiddie Street: A Resurrection

    Houses on Dinwiddie Street

    In 1889, William Smith Fraser, one of our top architects in those days, supervised a whole long block of fifty elegant stone-fronted houses lining both sides of Dinwiddie Street.1

    A majority of the houses disappeared over the years; the street came to look like a battle zone, three-quarters abandoned.

    But the wheel turned again. About fifteen years ago, Rothschild Doyno Collaborative designed infill housing and refurbished the Fraser houses. The new houses were built at the same scale and setback as the old, and with some of the same massing; the old houses were refurbished with inexpensive materials that matched the new houses.

    Dinwiddie Street

    It’s still not a rich neighborhood. But it’s a beautiful and welcoming streetscape again, and it’s an inspiring example of how an interrupted streetscape can be made whole. The new houses are definitely of our century, but they belong on the street. Without duplicating the Fraser designs, they make themselves at home in the neighborhood.

    Houses on Dinwiddie Street

    In this picture, the houses with stone bays in front are some of the original Fraser houses. Their more colorful neighbors are the “infill” houses.

    Fraser houses

    A pair of the original Fraser houses.

    Looking down the row on Dinwiddie Street
    Houses on Dinwiddie Street
    Dinwiddie Street
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
    1. Source: Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, May 29, 1889, p. 246. “The contract for the fifty modern dwellings, previously reported, to be erected on Dinwiddie street by Mr. Lockhart, has been given to Henry Shenck. W. S. Fraser, Seventh street and Penn avenue is the architect. These dwellings will be of brick, with stone fronts, bay windows and porches, and all modern conveniences.” ↩︎
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  • Trillium

    Trillium grandiflorum
    Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6.

    The Great White Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) is a trinity of trinities: three petals, three sepals, and three leaves. In its pure white form it seems a perfect emblem of Easter.

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  • Hazelwood Christian Church

    Hazelwood Christian Church

    Here is another church with the sanctuary upstairs, if you look at the front. This is Pittsburgh, though, so upstairs is the ground floor in the rear.

    Front elevation
    Entrance
    Cornerstone: “Christian Church, 1921”
    Front elevation really big
    Nikon COOLPIX P100; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G
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  • House by Frederick Sauer in Highland Park

    5906 Callowhill Street

    Perhaps the best way to describe the architect Frederick Sauer is to say that he was a high-functioning mad genius. He produced some very respectable church designs—St. Stephen Proto-Martyr, St. Stanislaus Kostka, and St. Mary of the Mount, to name three. Meanwhile, he went home every evening and started pulling rocks out of his back woods and piling them up into whimsical buildings with his own hands.

    When he designed a private residence, Sauer sometimes pushed the limits of current styles. Here is a big stony house built from his design in 1893. It hits some of the fashionable Romanesque notes, but that immense crowstepped Flemish gable makes a big impression on the neighbors. (The high-pitched roof and big gables also give the house a roomy third floor.)

    5906 Callowhill Street
    5906 Callowhill Street, capital
    House by Frederick Sauer
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Tulips

    Tulip
    Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6.
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  • New Granada Apartments, Hill District

    New Granada Apartments

    The patchwork-quilt style of architecture has been popular in the last decade, but this is by far the most colorful implementation of it old Pa Pitt has seen. The whole block that includes the New Granada has been redeveloped, and these cheerful apartments, with ground-floor storefronts, make this section of the Hill seem lively and inviting again.

    Perspective view
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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  • Willock House, Allegheny West

    Willock house

    We’ve seen this house before, and all old Pa Pitt can say is here it is again, in more detail. Steel baron B. F. Jones, who had a big house next door, hired architect W. Ross Proctor to design this narrow chateau for his daughter and her husband (the house belonged to the daughter, according to plat maps). A few years later, B. F. replaced his big house with an immense mansion that dwarfed his daughter’s house.

    Porch and entrance
    Willock house
    Willock house

    In the rear you can see a carriage house, built a little later than the main house. The carriage house alone is bigger than most people’s houses, and it had ample living quarters for the coachman upstairs.

    Carriage house
    Alley side of the carriage house
    Carriage house
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Kodak EasyShare Z981.
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  • Redbud

    Redbud flowers

    Cercis canadensis blooming in the arboretum in West Park on the North Side.

    Redbud blooming
    Cercis canadensis
    Redbud
    Twig of redbud flowers
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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  • The Howard, the Delaware, and the Norfolk, Highland Park

    Howard, Norfolk, and Delaware from up the street

    When we last saw this triple building, it was getting a fresh coat of paint. The new color scheme looks much better, and old Pa Pitt offers his congratulations to the people with taste at Mozart Management.

    The Norfolk

    The three connected buildings were put up in 1901 as the Howard, the Delaware, and the Norfolk, and we can just barely make out the ghosts of the inscriptions above the entrances. The architect was William E. Snaman.1 The Norfolk, above, preserves the original appearance. In the other two, the balconies have been filled in to make closets, and they looked forbiddingly blank with the old paint scheme; the more artistic new scheme at least emphasizes the surviving trim.

    Eaglemoor Apartments
    Pediment of the Norfolk
    The Howard, the Delaware, and the Norfolk
    1. Source: Pittsburg Post, September 25, 1900. “It developed yesterday that ex-Mayor Bernard McKenna and a syndicate of local capitalists will be the owners of the three apartment houses now in course of erection in the Highland avenue residence district, particulars of which were announced in this column last week. They were designed by Architect William E. Snaman, and the contract for their erection has been let to L. E. Umstead, of Allegheny. Each will stand on a lot 40×100 feet each at Highland avenue and Bryant street, and will be of brick and stone, and three stories high. When completed and ready for occupancy the houses will represent an investment of over $100,000.” Thanks to David Schwing for finding the clipping. ↩︎
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