Father Pitt

Category: Architecture

  • Cathedral of Learning in the Rain

    Cathedral of Learning from Schenley Farms

    It started to rain while Father Pitt was out for a walk today, which gave us this atmospheric picture of the Cathedral of Learning looming through the mist like a heavenly palace behind the pleasant houses of Schenley Farms. This is why old Pa Pitt’s cameras live in a waterproof bag. Father Pitt himself is not waterproof, but he does dry fairly quickly.

    If you like black and white and all the greys in between, you might enjoy Father Pitt’s Monochrome World, a very simple site that collects his favorite black-and-white pictures from Pittsburgh and elsewhere.

  • Webster Hall

    Webster Hall

    A full view of the Fifth Avenue façade of Webster Hall. The design is by Henry Hornbostel, who successfully created a conservative Art Deco classicism that harmonizes with the other grand monuments on Fifth Avenue.

    The building was apparently put up as fancy bachelor apartments, but soon became a grand hotel (it is now apartments again). It was famous for the Webster Hall Cake, whose secret recipe is still treasured by little old ladies all over Pittsburgh. But old Pa Pitt is delighted to discover that the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle has a whole article on Webster Hall Cake, including two recipes that claim to be close approximations. Father Pitt suspects that there are still little old ladies out there who claim to have the real thing, but these recipes are a good start.

  • Reflections in 650 Washington Road

    Clouds reflected in the windows of a modernist office building (built in 1965) in uptown Mount Lebanon.

  • World’s Largest Monolithic Columns

    Mellon Institute columns

    These huge Ionic columns on the Mellon Institute building in Oakland are actually the largest monolithic columns in the world. Classical columns are usually made by stacking up cylinders of stone, but each one of these columns is a single piece of rock. Benno Janssen, the architect, was showing off what you can do if you have a Mellon budget.

  • Hartley Rose Building

    Built for the Hartley-Rose Belting Company (so old Pa Pitt has no idea why the name on the awning lacks a hyphen, but he has no control over that), this is in effect a miniature Beaux-Arts skyscraper, with the regulation base–shaft–cap design. The architect was Edward Stotz, many of whose most famous commissions were schools—notably Schenley High School and Fifth Avenue High School.

  • Grand Staircase in the Carnegie

  • 418 First Avenue

    Update: The massive survey of historic buildings adopted by the city in 1994 tentatively identifies this building as a work of Titus de Bobula. That would certainly explain its eccentric style: Pittsburgh never had another architect like him. It would also date the building between 1903 and 1910. If we read the map correctly, it first appears on the map layer dated 1903–1906 at the Pittsburgh Historic Maps site, so this might have been one of de Bobula’s early commissions here. Our original remarks appear below.

    It has not been possible to find any information about the age or architect of this curious building in the limited time old Pa Pitt was willing to devote to the task. The researchers who compiled information for the Firstside Historic District also threw up their hands. It is a mostly utilitarian small warehouse, but with angular decorations that suggest a prickly version of Art Deco. Right now you can buy it if you like, and then you might find more clues to its origin among the debris of the decades.

  • Hamerschlag Hall

    Hamerschlag Hall, Carnegie Mellon University, seen from the Carnegie Museum parking garage.

  • People’s Savings Bank Building

    People’s Savings Bank Building

    The Bank Tower, as it is now called, has a brand-new painted sign on the back side. The building, finished in 1902, was designed by the prolific firm of Alden & Harlow, Andrew Carnegie’s favorite architects.

    [A correction: An earlier version of this article identified Alden & Harlow as a Boston firm, but they had moved to Pittsburgh by this time, leaving their former partner Longfellow behind.]

  • Burnham Reflected

    300 Sixth Avenue, the former Wood Street Building, was designed by Daniel Burnham. The lower floors were given an Art Deco makeover in 1939, but here we see the more original upper floors in the funhouse mirror of Two PNC Plaza.