Father Pitt

Category: Beechview

  • Neeld House, Beechview

    Neeld House from the front

    Here is a slightly bedraggled house with an interesting history. Long before there was a Beechview, the Neelds owned considerable property on that hill—68⅔ acres in 1890, according to an old map. Neelds were here at least as early as 1862. They built a house here in the late 1800s, possibly as early as the 1870s. By 1915, the Neelds had sold off much of the property to the Beechwood Improvement Company (which had planned on calling the neighborhood Beechwood, but things happen), but they still kept the whole block bounded by Broadway, Neeld Avenue, Candace Street, and Shiras Avenue. In that year, C. W. Neeld commissioned William Snaman, a prolific architect of houses for the wealthy merchant classes, to remodel his house, and Snaman Tudorized it so effectively that we would hardly guess it had been older than 1915.

    Neeld house

    The orientation of that chimney on the left is a clue to the history of the house: it suggests that Snaman reoriented it, and the front was originally on the left side. We note that the address was given as “Candace avenue” in 1915, before Snaman got to work, whereas the front of the house now faces Neeld Avenue.

    Neeld House from uphill

    Neeld Avenue, by the way, is a good example of how confusing Beechview street names can be. It was Neeld Avenue in 1910. By 1923, it had become Narragansett Street. Today it is Neeld Avenue, though Father Pitt does not know exactly when the name reverted.

    Ranch house and Neeld House

    After the Second World War, the Neelds sold off most of the land in the block, retaining only enough for the house and garage. Ranch houses went up on Candace Street, and modernist apartment buildings went up on Broadway.

  • Triangular Apartment Building in Beechview

    Apartment building on Broadway, Beechview

    From Broadway this looks like an ordinary apartment building. But the architect, John A. Long,1 had an interestingly Pittsburghish problem to solve. The building is on a triangular lot with a very sharp angle—but that is only the two-dimensional aspect of the problem. In Beechview, there are always three dimensions.

    Corner of the triangle

    The third dimension is up.

    Oblique view

    The building was probably given green tiles on that projecting roofline, since Spanish Mission was a very popular style in Beechview and Dormont. The stonework is picked out in blue since a few years ago, which makes the building look cheerful. That long blue stripe on the ground floor probably marks the top of a storefront that was later converted to an apartment.

    Three buildings together

    Next door was a red-brick building that appears as “I. O. O. M.” on the 1923 map; perhaps it meant “L. O. O. M.,” and this was the original Beechview Moose lodge. The Moose now have their lodge a block down Broadway in a smaller building.

    At some time after 1923, the two buildings were connected by a very narrow filler building, which probably made three more rent-paying apartments possible:

    Filler building

    The arched doorway, with its abstract-Romanesque receding arches, adds interest to what is otherwise a plain building.

    Apartment buildings
    1. We take this information from the Construction Record, September 26, 1914. “Architect John A. Long, Machesney building, has plans for a three-story brick store and apartment building, for A. Gravaut, to be built on Baltimore and Realty avenue, at a cost of $12,000.” This would mean the building was put up in 1915 or so. Although the name doesn’t appear on any of the layers of the Pittsburgh Historic Maps site, there are enough references here and there to make it clear that Broadway was briefly called Baltimore Avenue before reverting to Broadway. The history of street names in Beechview is complicated by at least two wholesale changes just a few years apart. ↩︎

  • Trolleys at Fallowfield Station

    Two 4300-series CAF cars pass at Fallowfield station in Beechview.

  • Streetcar on Broadway, Beechview

    Red Line car on Broadway in Beechview

  • At the End of the Rainbow

    In Beechview, you always find a streetcar at the end of the rainbow.

  • Christmas Wreath on Broadway

    This is the time of year when neighborhood associations put up the Christmas decorations along the main business streets of every neighborhood. Here is one of the wreaths along Broadway in Beechview.

  • Beechview Firehouse on Top of an Old Church

    Beechview firehouse

    The firehouse in Beechview is a simple modernist box that seems to have nothing to recommend a second look. At least, nothing from the front; but take a closer look at the foundation.

    Foundation

    This does not look like a typical postwar modernist construction, and in fact it is something else entirely. The firehouse was built on top of an old Presbyterian church.

    The Beechview United Presbyterian Church divided early in its history. Some congregational argument caused part of the congregation to split off and build a church here in 1918. The foundation of the current firehouse is that church—by which we mean not that it was the foundation of the church, but that it was the church itself. Old Pa Pitt does not know what the intention was; he can only assume that a larger building would eventually have been built on top of it. But old pictures show that this foundation was simply roofed over, with a stubby absurd tower on the corner. Half a dozen steps led up to the entrance in this tower, and then there was nowhere to go but down.

    In 1938, twenty years after the breakup, the two Presbyterian churches in Beechview got back together again, and the combined congregation still uses the Beechview United Presbyterian Church on Broadway. But the old church remains as the basement of the firehouse, and we can still pick out the outlines of the Tudor Gothic windows in the stones if we look closely.

    Outlines of old windows

  • Beechview at Night

    Shiras streetcar stop in Beechview

    A streetcar stop in a quiet residential neighborhood of Pittsburgh after dark.

  • Fallowfield Station and Viaduct, Beechview

    Fallowfield Station

    The Fallowfield station on the Red Line in Beechview is a kind of parasite on the Fallowfield viaduct. The Fallowfield Avenue end is at street level; the other end of the station is about five storeys above street level. Stations on the Red Line are currently getting a little bit of renovation.

    Fallowfield viaduct

    The Fallowfield viaduct is one of three major viaducts, along with a bridge and a tunnel, that are necessary to bring the streetcars from downtown into central Beechview.

    Walkway

    The viaduct is as important to pedestrians as it is to streetcars—so important, in fact, that, when the walkway was closed for repairs for a while a few years ago, the Port Authority gave free rides between Fallowfield and Westfield at the other end of the viaduct.

    Other side of the viaduct

    Outbound streetcars approach the viaduct from a curve.

  • Lee School, Beechview

    Lee School

    A small school by a distinguished architect: Charles M. Bartberger, who gave us several fine schools. (He is often confused with his father, Charles F. Bartberger, who designed some prominent churches.) The Lee School is now a retirement home under the name Gualtieri Manor.

    Entrance

    The entrance is surrounded by tasteful terra-cotta ornamentation.

    Inscription
    Vitruvian wave

    This pattern is called a Vitruvian wave, named for Vitruvius, the ancient Roman author whose manual on architecture became the arbiter of everything that was proper in design during the Renaissance.

    Oblique view
    Arms of the city of Pittsburgh

    The arms of the city of Pittsburgh over the entrance.