Father Pitt

Author: Father Pitt

  • A Stroll on Mill Street in Coraopolis

    Mill Street
    Kodak Pony 135 with Kentmere Pan 100 film (monobath developed).

    The main business streets of Coraopolis are Fifth Avenue, Fourth Avenue, and Mill Street, a very narrow street that crosses the other two. (There is also a Main Street in Coraopolis, but, in Pittsburghish fashion, it is not the main street.) Let’s take a stroll down Mill Street together. We’ll take two cameras with us, one digital and the other loaded with black-and-white film.

    Coraopolis Savings and Trust Company
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    We’ll start at the Coraopolis Savings and Trust Company building, a splendid bank designed by Press C. Dowler, who gave us a number of grand classical banks. Right across Fifth Avenue is…

    Ohio Valley Trust Company

    …another grand classical bank, the Ohio Valley Trust Company. This one is still in use as a bank.

    Ohio Valley Trust Company entrance
    Office entrance

    This plain but dignified doorway leads to the upstairs offices, which were a prestigious address for local businessmen. The architect W. E. Laughner had his office here.

    Building at 5th Avenue and Mill Street

    Across the street is a substantial commercial block with a corner entrance.

    Looking down Mill Street
    412 Mill Street

    Now we come to a building with tangled layers of history, but enough remains to show us the style of the original.

    412 Mill Street
    Bricked-in arch

    This bricked-in arch has a terra-cotta head for a keystone. Note that the original building was faced with Roman brick—the long, narrow bricks you see outside the arch—and not just Roman, but yellow Kittanning Roman brick.

    Ornamental head
    408 Mill Street

    This building next door used similar Kittanning Roman brick. The storefront has been altered, but long enough ago that it has an inset entrance to keep the door from hitting pedestrians in the face.

    Hotel Helm

    At the intersection with Fourth Avenue we meet the old Hotel Helm,1 with its distinctive shingled turret. It probably bore a cap when it was built.

    From here Mill Street leads past the train station and the Fingeret building, both of which we’ve seen before. At Second Avenue—as far as we’ll go for now—we come to…

    127 Mill Street

    …the Hotel Belvedere, which was probably a cheaper place to stay than the Hotel Helm. It still preserves its shingled gable, though the rest has been sheathed in three colors of fake siding.

    1. Some of our information comes from 1924 Sanborn Fire Insurance maps at the Library of Congress. ↩︎

  • Three Queen Anne Houses on Mellon Street, Highland Park

    Turret of 813 Mellon Street

    Three identical houses with all the signature quirks of the Queen Anne style: turrets, odd angles, curved surfaces, oriels, shingles, and every other effect that can be applied to a city house to make it more picturesque.

    813–817 Mellon Street
    817 Mellon Street
    Oriel
    813–817 Mellon Street
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Kodak EasyShare Z1285.

  • Castle Stanton, East Liberty

    Castle Stanton, front elevation

    Even though it has lost some decorative details over the years, Castle Stanton still drops jaws of passers-by who find themselves in unfamiliar territory here on the border of East Liberty and Highland Park. It looks like a 1920s Hollywood set: we expect Douglas Fairbanks dressed as Robin Hood to leap from an upstairs window and land on his feet after a series of spectacular acrobatics.

    Inscription: Castle Stanton

    This advertisement from the Pittsburgh Press, September 21, 1930, shows us some of the pointy bits that have since been removed.

    Castle Stanton

    This Hollywood front hides an unexpected secret, which will be revealed if we walk around to the side of the building.

    Castle Stanton
    Side of Castle Stanton

    Now we see the outlines of an older Queen Anne mansion, converted to an apartment house by the addition of a Hollywood-fantasy front facing Stanton Avenue.

    Balcony and half-timbering
    Front of the castle
    Front door
    Entrance and porch
    Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • Sunset

    Sunset with silhouetted trees

  • Penn Avenue in the Cultural District

    Penn Avenue looking northeastward
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • Unity Presbyterian Church, Green Tree

    Unity Presbyterian Church

    Originally the Wallace Memorial Presbyterian Church. In 2013, Dormont Presbyterian Church closed, and its congregation merged with this one; the two congregations together took the appropriate name Unity.

    Cornerstone: Erected 1952

    The current church building was put up in 1952 in the fashionable New England Colonial style; it’s a good example of that type.

    Wallace Memorial Presbyterian Church
    Front elevation of the church
    Old Wallace Memorial Presbyterian Church

    The smaller Gothic church replaced by the 1952 church is still standing next to it, now in use as a music school.

    Old church
    Kodak EasyShare Z981; Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

  • Shingly Victorian in Coraopolis

    941 2nd Avenue, front elevation

    This frame house across from the train station is a feast of Victorian woodwork, lovingly picked out in a tasteful polychrome paint scheme.

    Gable
    Porch woodwork
    Perspective view
    From down the street
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • Hillman House, Shadyside

    Hillman House

    Here is another architectural mystery solved by recognizing a Second Empire mansion under a radical exterior alteration. We saw such a house made into an apartment building in Highland Park; here, the transformation has been managed with much more elegance. “Pittsburgh House Histories” on Facebook explains that this was originally the home of James Rees, a builder of riverboats and steam-powered industrial engines, built in the fashionable Second Empire style with a central tower much like the one at Baywood. In 1919, the house was bought by John H. Hillman, Jr., and by that time the Second Empire style was already a mortal embarrassment. Mr. Hillman hired the architect Edward P. Mellon, who prospered through his connections to rich Mellon relatives, to remodel the house. Mellon’s taste was staidly classical, but within that taste he could manage some very attractive effects. He amputated the top of the tower and refaced the house with stone, adding Renaissance trimmings. The result was a house that looked almost new and quite up to date for 1919.

    Hillman House plaque on gatepost
    Hillman House
    Hillman House
    Hillman House
    Hillman House
    Hillman House
    Hillman House
    Kodak EasyShare Z981; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

  • Ordale Boulevard in Seminole Hills, Mount Lebanon

    215 Ordale Boulevard

    Once again old Pa Pitt turned himself loose with a camera in Seminole Hills—this time mostly in the older and more expensive end. The variety of styles makes the neighborhood a constant delight. For this session, let’s visit Ordale Boulevard.

    This is a collection specifically for those readers who like scrolling through house designs of the 1920s and 1930s. The rest can just whiz right past the “more” link and go on to something else.

    (more…)

  • Second Empire, Meet Spanish Mission

    5721 Stanton Avenue

    This odd-looking apartment building on Stanton Avenue in Highland Park makes some sense once we peel apart its history. At first old Pa Pitt didn’t know what to make of it, but looking on old plat maps made him realize that the central section was a grand house in the Second Empire style, probably built in the 1870s.

    Original house

    In your imagination, take away those sunrooms on the first and second floors. Add a front porch the width of the house. You might put a Second Empire mansard cupola on the central tower. The result would be a lot like this:

    Baywood

    This is Baywood, the Alexander King mansion at the other end of Highland Park (pictures here and here). The house at the core of this apartment building probably looked much like Baywood when it was new. It seems to appear first on the 1882 layer at Pittsburgh Historic Maps, where the property owner is not identified. In 1890 it is shown as belonging to A. Dempster, and it still belonged to A. Dempster in 1910, with its original outlines. In 1923 it has its current shape, and the owner is shown as G. West.

    At some time around World War I, then, when several of the houses on Stanton Avenue were being converted to apartments, someone bought the Dempster mansion and decided to expand it into an apartment building. But the Second Empire style was embarrassingly passé. The new wings were done in an up-to-the-minute Spanish Mission style, and the original house was coated with stucco and modified as much as practical to go with the new style. Nothing, however, could disguise the outline of a Second Empire mansion. Thus today we have a clash of styles that is probably more interesting, visually speaking, that a new apartment house in pure Mission style would have been.

    Central tower
    Entrance
    5721 Stanton Avenue
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.