Father Pitt

Author: Father Pitt

  • The Castle, Wilmerding

    This splendid palace, officially the Westinghouse Air Brake Company General Office Building, presides benevolently over the pleasant company town of Wilmerding. The architect of the main part was Frederick Osterling, one of the great names in Pittsburgh architecture; the section at the left end was added later.

    As a kind commenter notes, this is a bit of a white elephant for the little borough: it needs restoration work, but its out-of-the-way location makes it hard to sell. For a while it was operated as a museum of things Westinghouse, but the small nonprofit group that owned it could not afford the major renovations necessary to keep it open. One plan that has been fermenting for some time is to turn it into a boutique hotel.

    Camera: Olympus E-20n.
    Camera: Samsung Digimax V4.

    This is the building as it looked in about 1905, before the addition.

  • Westinghouse Memorial High School, Wilmerding

    This Art Deco school occupies a prime location right on the town square—or town quarter-circle—in Wilmerding. After Wilmerding joined other municipalities to send its children to East Allegheny High School, this became an elementary school; then it was abandoned and sold. Old Pa Pitt hopes the new owners understand that they possess one of western Pennsylvania’s better Art Deco buildings, one that deserves careful preservation.

    Camera: Olympus E-20n.

  • Second Empire House in Lawrenceville

    In addition to its architectural interest, this house on Penn Avenue is notable because it stands on the site of the cottage where Stephen Foster was born.

    Camera: Olympus E-20n.

  • Snow in the Woods

    OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

    With bonus deer tracks.

    OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

    Camera (all pictures above): Olympus E-20n.Mount Lebanon Woods, 2015-01-10, 04
    Camera: Samsung Digimax V4.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERACamera: Olympus E-20n.

  • Sphinx in the Snow

    The Emil Winter mausoleum, a bit of Cecil B. De Mille Egyptian fantasy in the Allegheny Cemetery, was designed by John Russell Pope, architect of the Jefferson Memorial and the National Archives in Washington. It is almost an exact duplicate of the Woolworth mausoleum in Woodlawn, the Bronx, which means that—believe it or not—there are two of these things in the world. The sphinx guardians are probably its most striking feature.

    Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS.

  • The Charlotte Apartments, Observatory Hill

    A typically dignified small Pittsburgh apartment building in the neoclassical style. This particular one has an enviable location, right at the entrance to Riverview Park, with a view of the Allegheny Observatory and the Byzantine Metropolitan Archbishop’s palace. Smaller Pittsburgh apartment buildings of this era were frequently given women’s names.

    Camera: Olympus E20n.

  • Allegheny Observatory

    As seen through a gnarled tree, which is the best way to look at almost anything.

    Camera: Olympus E20n.

  • Study in Brown

    Mount Lebanon woods, 2014-01-04, 01

    Yesterday’s rain made the leaves damp and the streams flow; overnight the temperatures plummeted, and today there is snow.

    Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS.

  • Church of the Assumption, Bellevue

    Camera: Samsung Digimax V4.

    This splendid church was designed by Bellevue’s own Leo A. McMullen, an architect and organist who is almost forgotten today, but whose works were highly regarded in his time. The American Institute of Architects counted him as one of “six architects who shaped Pittsburgh,” according to his obituary in 1963.

    The four evangelists—Mark, Matthew, John, and Luke, in that order—are lined up on the façade, each holding open a book that displays the first words of his Gospel.

    Church of the Assumption
    Camera: Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3.

    See the whole collection of the Church of the Assumption.

  • Phipps in the Winter

    Camera: Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3.

    One of the great challenges of landscape design is to find some way to make the landscape interesting in the winter, when deciduous leaves are gone and there are almost no flowers. Bright red berries certainly add a lot of winter interest, as we see above.

    In the picture below, the tree with the very interesting skeleton is a Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), a conifer that loses its leaves in winter.

     Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS.