Father Pitt

Author: Father Pitt

  • Moving a House Straight Up

    Raising a Full House

    Updated update: The link in the comment by “Zak” no longer works, but you can see a fine hand-colored version of this image here.

    Moving the Captain Samuel Brown House—The greatest house-moving feat ever accomplished

    This is the same photograph, but note how the debris at the bottom has been edited out. Yes, people could do that before Photoshop. There is also a photograph from the side.

    From the vanished page to which Zak referred we learned that this house burned in 1913; it would have been on the Pittsburgh side of the river opposite where the Waterfront is now. The contractors who moved the house, John Eichelay Jr. Co., specialized in moving buildings, though even they considered this one a remarkable feat. The same company, in 1945, got the contract for moving the first atom bomb.

    For historical reasons, we keep the original version of the article below.

    From the Booklovers Magazine in 1904. Can anyone identify this house or its exact location? The text below is all Father Pitt has to go on, which tells us that it is somewhere in the Mon Valley near Pittsburgh, but not exactly where. We do not know, for example, whether “about ten miles from Pittsburgh” means ten miles along the river or ten miles as the crow flies. Ten miles along the river would put the house in Homestead or thereabouts.

    Raising a Full House text

  • Doughboy Square

    Camera: Olympus E-20n.

    Doughboy Square (named, of course, for the splendid statue of a World War I soldier) has always had the potential to be an impressive space, the gateway to Lawrenceville. But it suffered decades of neglect; in fact, it never really recovered from the Great Depression. Now, at last, the triangle (no, of course it isn’t really a square; this is Pittsburgh) is seeing a revival, with old buildings refurbished and new and architecturally sympathetic buildings put up, joining the newly trendy Lower Lawrenceville district. A good bit of the credit for the revival goes to the Desmone architectural firm, which saw the potential in the long-abandoned Pennsylvania National Bank building and restored it while the rest of Doughboy Square was mostly vacant.

    Camera: Canon PowerShot S45.

  • Waterfalls in the Kane Woods

    Not all the waterfalls were frozen. These were moving, and we present them with sound—just two minutes of water burbling through the winter forest.

  • Frozen Waterfalls

    Camera: Olympus E-20n.

    Melting and freezing produced these frozen waterfalls in the Kane Woods Nature Area, Scott Township.

    Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS.
    Camera: Olympus E-20n.

  • Downtown from the Thirty-First Street Bridge

    A grey day, and the U. S. Steel Tower has its head in the clouds, as it often has. Below we see the frozen back channel of the Allegheny at Herr’s Island (or Washington’s Landing).

    Camera: Olympus E-20n.

  • Ice Cracking in a Stream

    CRW_1249_lzn-1

    CRW_1250_lzn-1

    CRW_1254_lzn

    Camera: Canon PowerShot S45.

  • Mount Washington Methodist Episcopal Church

    This church sits on one of those impossibly narrow Pittsburgh streets, and it would have been very difficult to get a picture of the whole front this way without the marvels of Hugin stitching technology. A little wide-angle distortion makes the pinnacles turn inward, but overall this is a very good representation of the front of the building. It is no longer a church; now it is an apartment building, but either an appreciation of the architecture or a limited budget has kept the current owners from making any significant changes to the exterior.

  • Snow Shovel

    Usually old Pa Pitt thinks of his photography as illustration rather than art. Here, however, is a composition motivated by art alone, although it is certainly appropriate for the current weather.

    Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS.

  • Washington’s Landing

    Camera: Canon PowerShot S45.

    Herr’s Island is the original name for this place (later Herrs Island, because of the rule against apostrophes in American geographical names); it was dirty and industrial until it was redeveloped into these pleasant and expensive townhouses.

    Camera: Olympus E-20n.

  • A March Thaw

    The weather was warm enough to melt a good bit of the snow and ice, and prolonged rain helped fill the streams. Now the weather is turning briefly colder again, and we expect some snow tonight.