A jumble of modernist buildings downtown, seen from Point State Park.
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Patterns in the Skyline
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Art Deco in Mount Lebanon
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A Skyscraper Rises
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.
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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.
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The Egyptian Style in Allegheny Cemetery
In Pittsburgh the Egyptian style of architecture was briefly popular in the early twentieth century, almost always in association with death. The mausoleums in Egyptian style seem usually to belong to Masons, who trace their lodge and rituals back to the days of the Pharaohs, implausible as that may seem to Egyptologists. Some integrate Christian, Masonic, and Egyptian symbols rather uncomfortably.
We begin with the Hartley-Given mausoleum (1913).
This is a simple and straightforward interpretation of an Egyptian tomb, and we can see the elements that, in the Allegheny Cemetery, almost invariably mark the Egyptianness of the style: the sloping sides and the lotus columns. Over the entrance we usually find a winged scarab entwined by serpents—which Father Pitt believes is a Masonic symbol; perhaps a Mason will correct him if he is wrong.
Next, the Lockhart mausoleum (1903):
Here is another typical Egyptian-tomb design, again with the requisite Egyptian signifiers; but in this one the porch projects from the structure instead of being inset.
The Sproal-Splane mausoleum (1917) is another variation on the same theme, with all the same elements and another inset porch:
Inside is a window that seems like a riot of symbols uneasily coexisting:
(The inscription around the cross and crown reads “IN HOC SIGNO VINCES.”)
All these are in reasonably good taste. But there is one Egyptian mausoleum that proudly flaunts its kitsch, one of the most extraordinary memorials in a cemetery full of extraordinary memorials:
All the same elements are there, but the Winter mausoleum (1930)—whose colossal scale is hard to convey in a photograph—adds its own unique accessories. John Russell Pope, the famous beaux-arts architect, designed this mausoleum for banker Emil Winter—but “designed” is not really the right word here. The Woolworth mausoleum in Woodlawn, the Bronx, is nearly identical; Winter apparently saw it and told Pope “I want that,” and Pope gave it to him.
Mr. Winter’s amazing sphinxes bear an expression that old Pa Pitt can only describe as “snooty.”
The bronze door depicts Mr. Winter himself, large as life and in full Pharaonic regalia, about to set off for his journey into the afterlife. Even this is identical to the bronze door of the Woolworth mausoleum, except for the substitution of Mr. Winter’s face.
Inside is a stained-glass window that reminds Father Pitt of cheap illustrated Sunday-school handouts, showing Mr. Winter properly enthroned. (It was devilishly hard to get a picture of this window, because the front doors are actually backed by a mesh screen. This was the best old Pa Pitt could do.)Finally, as a coda to our little Egyptian tour, the Huhn monument is actually a pyramid.
This is a pyramid of a curiously specific type: it is (if Father Pitt’s architectural history is correct, and he loves to be corrected when he is wrong) a Roman interpretation of the Egyptian pyramid, with proportions more like those of the Pyramid of Cestius along the Appian Way than like those of a true Egyptian pyramid. This also is a Mason’s tomb; if you enlarge the picture (by clicking on it), you can see the Masonic symbols at the base. -
Romanesque Details in Allegheny West
Architectural historians tend to call everything Romanesque revival “Richardsonian Romanesque,” and with especially good reason in Pittsburgh: Richardson’s Allegheny County Courthouse created a mania for everything Romanesque in Pittsburgh, and many private houses were built in that style for the wealthy merchant classes—especially in Allegheny West, which in the late nineteenth century may have been the richest neighborhood per capita in the country.
UPDATE: Note the very interesting comment from “Mark”: “Much of the local stone carving as well as work across the North Side, downtown, Carnegie Mellon University, etc was done by Achille Giammartini who built the house at 1410 Page St, near Page St & Manhattan St, in Manchester (beside Allegheny West). Although this was his personal residence he used the exterior as a ‘billboard’ for his considerable skills.” See our article on the Achille Gammartini House.
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Hall of Architecture, Carnegie Museum
This is the most breathtaking single room in the Western Hemisphere. That statement is likely to provoke some opposition, but Father Pitt is willing to defend it.
In the late nineteenth century, many museums collected plaster casts of the great monuments and sculptures of the past. The casting preserved the minutest details of the surface in three dimensions, so that a museum visitor can study every chisel mark on a famous Romanesque facade without having to hop on a steamer and travel to Europe.
In the twentieth century, the cult of originality persuaded most museum curators that these plaster casts were worthless. Almost all the great collections were broken up and thrown out. Only three of them remain in the world, and only one of them—this one—is still in the space that was built to house it, never having been shuffled from one wing to another or stored for years under a highway overpass.
Now, at last, some of the more enlightened art historians are beginning to understand the value of the casts. Here a Pittsburgher can study the whole history of Western architecture from Egypt to the Renaissance without so much as crossing the Monongahela. But even more important is the fact that these casts are more than a century old. The twentieth century, with its corrosive pollution and horrendous wars, was more destructive to ancient monuments than any other century. But here we can see exact replicas of these monuments as they were before all the corrosion and destruction. This collection is a unique cultural treasure, worth crossing a continent or an ocean to see.
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Hall of Sculpture, Carnegie Museum
The Hall of Sculpture was built in imitation of the interior of the Parthenon, with marble from the same quarry that supplied the marble for the famous Athenian temple. It was intended to house the Carnegie’s collection of plaster casts of famous sculptures, some of which still adorn the balcony, and some of which have been moved to the Hall of Architecture. On the floor below, staff are hanging transparencies from clotheslines. Why? We’ll find out when they’re done.
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American Fascist
A certain C. C. Ehrhardt, a name that seems familiar for some reason, writes:
Dear old Pa Pitt, please explain what you mean by American Fascist.
Father Pitt is glad to oblige.
The architecture of Hitler’s Germany is famous, or notorious, for its grandiose scale and imitation of Roman imperial ideals. But it was part of a wider worldwide style in governmental architecture. Adapting classical forms to twentieth-century needs, the style conveyed the idea that your government is all-powerful and benevolent—but all-powerful first, benevolent a distant second. We might call the style “fascist” in the root sense of the term, the fasces being an ancient Roman symbol of authority.
When this style appears in the United States, old Pa Pitt can think of no better term for it than “American Fascist.” The most prominent example in Pittsburgh is the Federal Building on Grant Street:
Not only does this massive building strongly echo the parallel developments that would grow up in Nazi Germany, but over each entrance it even carries the very symbol of Fascism, the fasces, a bundle of rods surrounding an axe:
This is the most nakedly Fascist building in Pittsburgh, but there’s more than a little of the style on some other government buildings of the same period. The County Office Building, for example, has a strong whiff of the Fascist about it, although uniquely its architectural inspiration is not classical Roman but medieval Romanesque:
The choice of Romanesque style might seem surprising, but the urban context makes the reason clear. H. H. Richardson’s gigantic courthouse and jail sits right across the street; “Richardsonian Romanesque” became the official architectural style of Allegheny County, and even the strong current of fascism in middle-twentieth-century government architecture would have to take Richardson’s influence into account.
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Federal Deco
