Father Pitt

Author: Father Pitt

  • Clark High School, Scott Township

    Clark High School

    Just outside Carnegie on Washington Avenue, this school opened in the fall of 1935. It was designed in a bracingly modern style by Mount Lebanon architect J. Lawrence Hopp, who designed a number of other schools in nearby suburbs. It has been an office building for quite a while now, but the alterations to the exterior have not been severe, as we can see from a 1950 photograph of students trying their hands at rescue techniques.

    Rescue drills at Clark High School, Scott Township
    Photo by Post-Gazette photographer Paul Slantis, from Historic Pittsburgh (go there to see it in full resolution).

    A certain number of students were probably lost every time these drills were performed, but that is the price we pay for preparedness.

    Entrance

    Some history of the building and all the yearbooks are at the Chartiers Valley Historical Society page on Clark High School.

    1100 Washington Avenue
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Engine Company No. 8 and East End Police Station, East Liberty

    Firehouse and police station

    City architect Richard Neff designed this palace of public safety in the style old Pa Pitt likes to call American Fascist, which combines classical detailing with an Art Deco sensibility. It is currently getting a thorough renovation.

    Engine Company No. 8 and East End Police Station
    Truck Co. No. 8; Engine Co. No. 8

    It’s Construction Safety Week! But don’t worry. You still have fifty-one weeks in the year to be careless.

    East End Police Station
    Engine Company No. 8 and East End Police Station
    Fire and police station under renovation
    Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans 35mm f/1.4 lens; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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  • Cast-Iron Front on Wood Street

    101 Wood Street

    A well-preserved cast-iron front, though the building has lost its hat. Father Pitt would probably paint it a different color.

    101 Wood Street
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Telephone Exchange, East Liberty

    Telephone exchange

    Inside the building was a mass of wires and electrical equipment and operators’ switchboards. But the Bell Telephone Company insisted that the outside of every telephone exchange must be an ornament to the neighborhood. They were all Renaissance palaces like this until the 1930s, and it is likely that they all came from the same architectural office—namely, the office of James Windrim, who also designed the 1923 Bell Telephone Building downtown. After Windrim, Press C. Dowler took over as the Bell company’s court architect, and the style changed to refined Art Deco.

    Bell Telephone exchange entrance
    Spiral ornament
    Cornice
    Telephone exchange, East Liberty
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans 35mm f/1.4 lens.
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  • St. Mary’s Church and Lyceum, Lawrenceville

    St. Mary’s Church

    Dedicated in 1873, this church for an Irish parish was designed by James Sylvester Devlin, about whom old Pa Pitt knows only that he designed this church. It has closed as a parish, and when Pittsburgh Catholics leave a church they take everything distinctive and valuable with them, so that, for example, all the stained glass is gone. But the building is still in good shape.

    West Front of the church

    A good summary of the history of the church is in James Wudarczyk’s Faith of Our Fathers: Religion in Lawrenceville.

    Historic Landmark plaque
    Clear window with organ pipes behind it

    Clear glass reveals that there is still at least part of an organ in the building.

    Clear windows
    Side entrance
    Side entrance
    Door pull

    For hardware connoisseurs, a door pull on one of the side entrances.

    Door handle
    The altar end of the church

    The altar end of the church.

    Rear of St. Mary’s Church
    St. Mary’s Church and Lyceum

    Behind the church is the Lyceum, built in 1914.

    St. Mary’s Lyceum
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  • Dormont Methodist Episcopal Church

    Dormont Methodist Episcopal Church

    Built in 1920 in an angular modern-Gothic style, this church served its original congregation until 2013, the year of the great collapse of Dormont mainline churches, when the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and the Baptists all threw in the towel. The building became a Buddhist temple for a while (the Buddhists gave it the current paint scheme), but it seems not to be active right now. It is, however, kept up well.

    Thanks to the Gazette Times of September 13, 1920, we have a picture of Bishop McConnell of the M. E. Church laying laying “a copy of the Gazette Times containing announcement of the corner stone laying, coins of the present day, a list of trustees and a list of members of the Dormont and Banksville churches, recently combined” in the cornerstone.

    Bishop McConnell laying documents in the cornerstone
    Cornerstone

    This cornerstone is a top contender for the coveted title of Most Awkward Word Break on a Stone Inscription Outside a Country Graveyard.

    Capsule Enclosed

    It seems that another capsule was laid in 2009, four years before the church dissolved.

    Dormont United Methodist Church

    None of the news stories we found mentioned an architect, but we hope to find a name eventually.

    Dormont Methodist Church
    Side entrance
    Tower
    Dormont Methodist Episcopal Church
    Dormont M. E. Church
    Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6; Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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  • Passenger Jet Overhead

    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Marine Bank Building

    Marine Bank

    Built in 1890, this rich feast of stonework was designed by Frederick Osterling in his Richardsonian Romanesque phase.

    Romanesque capital

    The carved ornaments are by Achille Giammartini, including old Pa Pitt’s favorite gargoyle in the city.

    Dragon gargoyle
    Foliage ornament
    Marine Bank Building
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Detective Building, East Liberty

    Detective Building

    Built in 1972 for the Bureau of Police Investigations, this building sat vacant for a long while. It was restored in 2019 with a very sensitive eye for its original modernist style.

    Those steps in the front were part of the restoration. They make a very attractive composition. To old Pa Pitt’s eyes, they look like a liability lawyer’s every architectural fantasy come true.

    Irregular steps
    Sign: The Detective Building
    Cornerstone with date 1972
    Detective Building
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans 35mm f/1.4 lens.
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  • Steel Plaza

    Steel Plaza from the mezzanine

    Some pictures of Steel Plaza taken on a weekend when it was momentarily almost empty. The largest and most complex of our subway stations, Steel Plaza was built as a transfer station between the main line and a short spur to Penn Station—which, although it is not in regular service, is still kept up for special events and emergency detours. In the picture above, the Penn Station spur is in the foreground.

    Steel Plaza

    Here we see the two lines converging toward their junction in the tunnel beyond the station.

    Steel Plaza
    Lower-level platforms

    To add to the complexity, the station was designed to take the old PCC cars as well, which had only street-level doors. These lower-level platforms have been out of use since 1999, when the last PCC cars were retired, but the space isn’t useful for anything else, so the platforms are still there.

    Lower-level platforms
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