Father Pitt

Category: Allentown

  • Fancy Front in Allentown

    740 East Warrington Avenue
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    If you’re stuck in a dumpy old wooden building and your business is prospering, but not prospering that much, you can make a good impression by putting a new front on the building and leaving the rest. That’s what happened here. This is actually a wood-frame building—except on the street face, where the owner added a spiffy new brick and stone front. Old maps reveal the secret: a thin line of brick appears on the front of the wooden building between 1910 and 1923. Mission accomplished: the building looked new and expensive, but the owner wasn’t deep in debt.

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  • Warrington Recreation Center, Allentown

    Entrance

    A typical FDR-era public building, put up in 1940 in the modernized hybrid of Art Deco and classical style that old Pa Pitt likes to call American Fascist.

    Warrington Recreation Center
    Inscription: City of Pittsburgh Warrington Recreation Center, 1940
    City arms

    The arms of the City of Pittsburgh.

    Art Deco relief
    Art Deco relief
    Warrington Recreation Center
    Kodak EasyShare Z981; Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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  • Eighteenth Ward War Memorials, Allentown

    Eighteenth Ward World War I memorial

    The Eighteenth Ward includes all of Allentown, Beltzhoover, and Bon Air, as well as part of Mount Washington. These memorials stand at the corner of Warrington and Estella Avenues. Above: the people who served in World War I, with hundreds of names. Below, the ones who served in World War II, with even more names. The pictures are very big, so if you enlarge them most of the names should be readable.

    Eighteenth Ward World War II memorial
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  • Second Empire Storefront on Warrington Avenue, Allentown

    804 East Warrington Avenue

    The Alla Famiglia restaurant was one of the pioneers in the ongoing revitalization of Allentown, and its owners have spiffed up this building beautifully. They have also expanded into the old movie theater next door.

    804 East Warrington Avenue
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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  • A Cubical House in Allentown

    114 Millbridge Street

    An unusually well-preserved small foursquare house that is charming and handsome in its way, in spite of being an architectural muddle. If you try to judge it by any standard of symmetry or proportion, you will quickly conclude that nothing is in the right place. But even after those thoughts have run through your mind, you are likely to think that somehow, in defiance of all correctness, it is a good-looking house.

    Front of the house
    114 Millbridge Street
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20 EXR.
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  • Pair of Victorian Commercial Buildings in Allentown

    Hilltop and Cartus Buildings, Allentown

    These two buildings probably date from the 1880s. Though they were identical, they seem always to have been under separate ownership. At Pittsburgh Historic Maps, they first appear on the 1890 layer as belonging to Elizabeth Fisher (the building on the left) and Mary A. Curtis. The ground floors have been altered a bit, but the upper floors retain much of their original detail.

    816 East Warrington Avenue
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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  • Modernistic Apartment Building in Allentown

    Modern apartment building on Warrington Avenue
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.

    An attractively modernistic little apartment building—Father Pitt would guess it dates from about 1940—in good shape, with not too many alterations. Small details like decorative brickwork elevate it from mundane to elegant. And note the corner windows, the badge of mid-century modernity.

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  • Bold Baking Corp., Allentown

    Ghost sign: “Bold Baking Corp.”

    While looking at old plat maps for information about some of the buildings he had photographed in Allentown, Father Pitt noticed a commercial bakery in the narrow back streets. In the satellite view, it was still there, so naturally old Pa Pitt had to see it the next time he was in Allentown. It is now inhabited by a real-estate company and a maker of hand-crafted candles.

    Bold Baking Corp. building
    Bold Baking Corp.
    Bold Baking Corp.
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Limbach Building, Allentown

    Limbach Building

    The Limbach Building is a good representative of what has been going on in Allentown over the past few years. Allentown was traditionally a German neighborhood, and the Limbach Building is a well-preserved example of the style old Pa Pitt calls German Victorian. Above we see it as it was just a few days ago; below in July of 2021. The building is in better shape now, and the downstairs tenant—a gym called “Death Comes Lifting,” whose slogan is “Fitness for the Misfits”—is weirder. Thus the whole progress of the Allentown business district is epitomized in one building: better and weirder.

    Limbach Building in 2021
    Dome

    It is especially cheering to see that someone is taking good care of the distinctive dome on the turret. The building would lose half its German flavor without that detail.

    Corner entrance
    Kodak EasyShare Z981; Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    Old Pa Pitt is also happy that the corner entrance has never been filled in.

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  • Streetcars in Allentown

    Two-car train on Warrington Avenue

    All summer long, all the rail routes have been detoured through Allentown. Stop and consider for a moment how thoroughly odd Pittsburgh transit is: do you know of any other subway system that keeps up an alternate route over the top for times when one of the tunnels has to be closed?

    Trolleys on Warrington at Beltzhoover

    The few riders who look up from their phone screens have a chance to notice that Allentown is changing. Over the past few years, the Warrington Avenue business district has been going through a rapid trendification. It’s full of weird little shops too low-budget for the high rents of Lawrenceville.

    Trolley and bus passing

    A bonus bus coming toward you, for the longtime fans.

    Trolley on Warrington at Allen

    While the trolleys are going over the top, they stop at Allen Street in the middle of the Allentown business district.

    “Nothing beats public transit” on a mural

    Many people in Allentown would like to have their Allentown Trolley back permanently. They have been enjoying their summer of streetcars.

    Two-car train
    Nikon COOLPIX P100; Kodak EasyShare Z981.
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