Every city used to be full of stables because every city used to be full of horses. Garages have replaced stables, and most of the old stables have vanished. Here is a rare survivor. It was in the beer business for at least a century, but that it was a stable before that is fairly obvious. The grinning horse tells the story. Even then it may have been a stable for a brewery; the earliest owner old Pa Pitt has been able to trace was J. P. Ober, the Ober of Eberhardt & Ober, whose brewery at the base of this same hill is now the Penn Brewery.
A little modernistic apartment building whose details have been marred somewhat—the stock “picture windows” do it no favors. But enough remains that we can imagine the clean late-moderne look the architect was going for.
Father Pitt knows nothing about this building other than what you see here. It is an interesting combination of traditional and modern, with a simple cornice that could easily date from the 1890s, but more modernistic corner windows making bright sunrooms that invite tenants to use them as conservatories. The original windows have been preserved in most of the apartments; a few have been replaced.
The glass and metal awning needs just a little working over to make it a splendid and impressive statement at the entrance again.
Joseph Hoover’s firm designed this modernistic apartment house, which was planned in 1950. It was named for Dr. Paul A. Knott, a medical doctor on the Hill who went into the landlording business. Except for the windows of one apartment, which were recently replaced, the building still stands very much as the architect designed it.
Note in the drawing how much the architect was relying on the grid patterns of the windows for the effect of the front. That is precisely the detail that vanishes when those windows are replaced. “God is in the details,” as Mr. Mies said, and that is especially true of a modernist building like this, where the details are few and therefore chosen with care.
This charming little Gothic library was designed by Andrew Isles and built in about 1916. Back in February, old Pa Pitt caught it in the middle of a thorough restoration and renovation—and then for some reason forgot about the pictures until now. As he was taking pictures, Swissvale residents walking by stopped to point out how beautiful the library was going to be when the restoration was finished: it was obvious that they love their library, and a borough that loves libraries deserves one like this.
Vrydaugh & Wolfe, famous for churches and millionaires’ mansions, were the architects of this tiny bank, built in 1904. Newspaper stories of the time seem to tell a tale of contracted ambition, and it is probable that the building as it stands was meant to have more floors added as the bank prospered. (Instead, in the late 1920s, the bank built a much larger building across the street and down the block a bit, and then shortly after that failed in the great bank massacre of the early Depression.)
In January of 1904, we read that the Franklin Savings and Trust Company was planning a $30,000 four-story building on its newly purchased lot1. But just four and a half months later, in the middle of May, we read that the bank had occupied its new building, which had cost $20,000 and had only one floor.2 It was fairly common in those days to plan a building so that it would support additional floors when they were needed, and old Pa Pitt suspects that is what happened here: the bank decided it would be prudent to save some money for the moment. Perhaps the luxurious interior appointments of mahogany and marble had cost more than the directors had anticipated.
The result was a little bank that looks almost as if it could be towed away by a large truck. But the pediment over the entrance and the arched windows (now filled in and muraled over, except for the shrunken one in front) would have given it a prosperously bankish look.
“Eastern Men to Build Apartments,” Gazette, January 16, 1904, p. 13: “Through the Commonwealth Real Estate and Trust Company the Franklin Savings and Trust Company has purchased the J. W. Roberts property at the southwest corner of Penn avenue and Twenty-first streets for $13,000. The lot measures 24×57 feet and is improved with a two-story brick building. As this is the first sale in this immediate locality since the boom last spring, it is interesting to note the price paid, $541 a front foot or $9.50 a square foot. The purchasing company has had plans prepared by Architects Vrydaugh & Wolfe for a four-story brick and terra cotta building to be erected in the spring at a cost of $30,000.” ↩︎
“Trust Company at Home,” Press, May 5, 1904, p. 8: “The new building of the Franklin Savings & Trust Co., at 2850 Penn avenue, was occupied for the first time this morning. It is a one-story buff brick and stone structure and was erected at a cost of $20,000. The interior of the new bank is finished in mahogany and marble.” ↩︎
The school was built first, in 1926, so we begin with the school. The architect was William P. Hutchins, who chose the “collegiate Gothic” style to send the twin messages that this was a school and it was Catholic.1
The congregation, meanwhile, worshiped in a small frame church for more than twenty years. After the Second World War, Leo McMullen was hired to design a new church and school expansion.2 Both the era and McMullen’s taste dictated a simpler style, but the new building fits well with the school to which it is attached.
The pictures of the church are from back in March; the pictures of the school are from last week. Yes, it does sometimes take old Pa Pitt that long—or longer—just to complete a set of pictures.
The Venerable Bede was the great light of the Dark Ages, the author of the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, which is the best source for very early English history. Here he is depicted pausing to think while writing one of his books. Bede was exceptionally good at thinking, which set him apart in the early 700s.
“Tremendous Building Program Looms in Pittsburgh Diocese,” Pittsburgh Catholic, March 28, 1946. “St. Bede’s, Rev. John F. Enright, pastor: Combined school and church building; Leo A. McMullen, architect.” ↩︎
Who else would do this for you? Here is a huge composite photo of the dedicatory inscription on the Carnegie Institute building in Oakland: “This building dedicated to literature science and art is the gift of Andrew Carnegie to the people of Pittsburgh.” If you enlarge the picture below, it is 19,662 pixels wide. You can use it for all kinds of illustrations. For example, suppose your magazine has a department devoted to literature. Well, here is the word “LITERATVRE” cut in stone, big enough for any practical purpose. Or “ART IS THE GIFT”—you could make something of that.
Old Pa Pitt does not indulge in clickbait headlines. If he did, the headline for this article would have been,
This Picture Is Impossible (but We Did It Anyway).
This building faces Canal Street, which is an absurdly narrow street. The other side of the street is a wall, on top of which trees grow, and behind them a railroad. So there is no way to stand back and get a picture of the front of the old Allegheny Turnhalle except by trickery. But Father Pitt has never been above trickery. The image above is not perfect, but considering the adverse circumstances it came out pretty well. It is made from ten separate photographs.
The Allegheny Turnhalle was designed by Joseph Stillburg for the Turners of Allegheny; it is one of his few remaining large works. The original front was more elaborate, as we see in this picture from Preservation Pittsburgh.
Here we see the adroit combination of classical and Romanesque detailing that marked Stillburg’s work—a style architectural historians like to call Rundbogenstil, because Rundbogenstil is much more fun to say than “round-arch style,” which is what the German word means. There was also an interesting diagonal asymmetry to the front, doubtless reflecting stairways in the interior. The current state of the building is the result of its conversion into a warehouse, which is what has saved it when almost all of the old Schweitzerloch neighborhood—an isolated rectangle just off the Sixteenth Street Bridge—has been razed to weedy vacant blocks.
The cornerstone tells us it was laid on July 21, 1889. Newspapers of the time tell us that about two thousand people were there to watch the ceremonies. Since they were Germans, there was probably good beer, too.
What used to be a dense Swiss-German, and later Slovak, neighborhood is now mostly weeds and overgrown asphalt. It’s shocking that this emptiness is right across the river from the bustling Strip and a short stroll from the lively North Shore, but it’s hemmed in by railroads, bridges, and expressways.
