Father Pitt

Category: Architecture

  • Gulf and Koppers Towers

    Gulf Tower and Koppers Tower
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    Two grand Art Deco skyscrapers face each other across Seventh Avenue: the Gulf Tower (1932) and the Koppers Tower (1929).

    The Gulf Tower (in front in these pictures) is a good example of the style Father Pitt calls “Mausoleum-on-a-Stick”: the top is modeled after the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. This was Pittsburgh’s tallest building for decades, until it was surpassed by the U. S. Steel Tower; after the building boom of the 1980s, it now stands at number 6. The architects, Trowbridge & Livingston, were the originators of the Mausoleum-on-a-Stick style: twenty years earlier, they had created it with the Bankers Trust Company Building in New York, which looks very much like a primitive, pre-Deco version of the Gulf Tower.

    The Koppers Tower was designed by the prolific firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, whose buildings litter the skyline in Chicago, and who also designed the Terminal Tower in Cleveland. This is the most splendid Art Deco building in Pittsburgh, and it was very briefly the city’s tallest building, until the Grant Building surpassed it a few months later.

    Bigelow Boulevard leading to downtown Pittsburgh
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    Gulf Tower and Koppers Tower
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  • Allegheny General Hospital

    Allegheny General Hospital

    The only really elegant skyscraper on the North Side is this hospital, designed by York & Sawyer in 1926. The style is what old Pa Pitt likes to call “Mausoleum-on-a-Stick”: the central tower is topped by an Art Deco interpretation of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. This is one of three Mausoleum-on-a-Stick towers in Pittsburgh, and two of them are hospitals (the other being Presbyterian Hospital in Oakland). The third is the Gulf Building,which was designed by the originators of the style.

    Below, we see the hospital with the narrow streets of Dutchtown in front of it.

    Dutchtown with Allegheny General Hospital

    York & Sawyer built two skyscrapers in 1926 with notably similar designs. The other is the Royal Bank Tower in Montreal, which was the tallest building in the British Empire at the time (though it did not compare with the tall buildings of New York, Chicago, and Pittsburgh). The picture at left, by “Thomas1313,” was made available on Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.

  • Art Deco in Mount Lebanon

    Mount Lebanon municipal building

    “Uptown” Mount Lebanon is a fine example of a 1920s streetcar suburb. (In southwestern Pennsylvania, the central business district of a town is often called “Uptown” if it’s on a hill.) There is more Art Deco here than anywhere else in the Pittsburgh area, except perhaps East Liberty.

    Mount Lebanon municipal building
    Art Deco buildings on Washington Road
    Art Deco buildings on Washington Road
    Art Deco buildings on Washington Road
    Art Deco buildings on Washington Road

  • A Skyscraper Rises

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    The new Tower at PNC Plaza will be our tallest skyscraper since the boom of the 1980s, when four of our five tallest buildings went up. The new building will be our seventh-tallest when it is completed, bumping the Cathedral of Learning down to eighth-tallest. It’s supposed to be “the world’s greenest skyscraper,” and it will be full of the latest green tech. But it all starts with the same steel cage that has formed the basis of almost every tall building since the 1890s.

  • Telamones on the Park Building

    Telamones on the Park Building

    The Park Building, designed by George B. Post and built in 1896, is a feast of classical detailing, and probably our oldest existing skyscraper, depending on our definition of “skyscraper.” (The Conestoga Building, built in 1892, is our earliest steel-cage building, but it is only seven storeys high.)

    No one knows for sure who sculpted the row of telamones that hold up the roof, but it is certainly one of Pittsburgh’s most memorable and yet most neglected sights—neglected because few pedestrians ever look up to see the figures glowering down at them.

    The Park Building is at Fifth Avenue and Smithfield Street, a short walk from either Steel Plaza or Wood Street subway station.

    Telamones on the Park Building

  • Entrance to Bayard Manor

    Gothic doorway to Bayard Manor

    North Oakland is one of the few areas of Pittsburgh where large apartment blocks took root, and some of them are worth a look. Bayard Manor gives us a sort of deco interpretation of Gothic that fits well with the Cathedral of Learning a few blocks away.

  • Cathedral of Learning from Three Viewpoints

    The Cathedral of Learning from three different angles. Pittsburgh is a bit unusual in having one of its tallest skyscrapers outside the main skyscraper district. Currently this is our seventh-tallest building (at 535 feet), but it will be bumped down to eighth-tallest when the new Tower at PNC Plaza (554 feet tall) is finished.

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  • Soldiers and Sailors Hall

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    Henry Hornbostel designed this memorial, which originally honored Civil War veterans from Allegheny County. It now honors veterans of all wars. This is one of at least half a dozen buildings in Pittsburgh inspired by the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, and of all of them this one is the closest in scale to the original.

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    America, by Charles Keck, keeps watch over the main entrance.

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    A soldier: Parade Rest by Frederick Hibbard.

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    A sailor: Lookout, also by Frederick Hibbard.

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    Supposedly Mr. Hornbostel very much wanted the front of the building to face a long vista from Fifth Avenue, but the clients were very insistent that the front must face Bigelow Boulevard. Hornbostel finally had to agree. It was not until construction was considerably advanced on the building, which is quite square, that the clients discovered Hornbostel had built the thing his way after all.

    Among the building’s many treasures is a large auditorium that seats 2500—about the same capacity as Heinz Hall. The Pittsburgh Symphony made some early ultra-hi-fi recordings in here, because William Steinberg thought the acoustics were far superior to what he heard in Syria Mosque across the street, which at that time was the usual home of the Pittsburgh Symphony.

  • Cathedral of Learning

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    Looking up at the masterpiece of Charles Z. Klauder, still the most convincing Gothic skyscraper in the world.

  • Heinz Chapel

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    The Heinz Memorial Chapel at the University of Pittsburgh, designed in fantasy-Gothic style by Charles Z. Klauder, who designed a whole complex of fantasy-Gothic buildings for Pitt with the Cathedral of Learning at its center.