Father Pitt

Category: Bloomfield

  • Bloomfield Trust Company

    Bloomfield Trust Company

    This fine new building opened in 1926, and the bank got to enjoy it for five years before it was liquidated in the dark days of the Depression. After that, it sat vacant for a while. Just after Prohibition ended, the Liquor Control Board picked it for a liquor store, but bids for the conversion came in too high, and the board went looking for another location. Later, at some point, it became a bank again. Now the bank has moved out, and it’s ready for its next life.

    As you can see from the picture above, the streets do not intersect at a right angle at this corner, so the building is a trapezoid. The upper floors were built as apartments to gain some extra income to pay for the building.

    Clock and inscription
    Bloomfield Trust Company
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.
    Comments

  • Three Buildings on Liberty Avenue, Bloomfield

    Three buildings on Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Three different buildings, three different styles: polyphony makes harmony in the streetscape.

  • The Pleasure Bar, Bloomfield

    4729 Liberty Avenue

    Old Pa Pitt does not know what was here before the Pleasure Bar, but whatever it was had only a seventeen-year life—the building was put up in 1924, and the Pleasure Bar has been here since 1941. It’s an elaborate building for its size, with a curious mixture of classical and Art Nouveau detailing, and the inset balconies are unusual.

    Balcony and date stone reading 1924
    Pleasure Bar
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • Bookstore After Dark

    White Whale bookstore

    The White Whale bookstore in Bloomfield. This is Father Pitt’s attempt at applying the principles of De Stijl to photography.

  • Building at Pearl Street and Liberty Avenue, Bloomfield

    4701 Liberty Avenue

    This building was put up between 1903 and 1910, and that is all old Pa Pitt knows about it. The extra-tall third floor looks like a lodge meeting hall, but it does not appear on maps as a lodge. The ground floor was a bank for many years. The building is going through a thorough renovation now, including new windows all around, fortunately the right size for the window openings.

    Pearl Street is not quite perpendicular to Liberty Avenue, so this building has the common Pittsburgh problem of an obtuse angle to solve. You might not notice the solution unless you look closely.

    Odd angle at cornice level
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • St. Joseph’s Church, Bloomfield

    St. Joseph’s

    For about a century and a third, this church was one of the main centers of life in Bloomfield. Now that all the Catholic churches in Bloomfield are closed, incredible as it may seem in our most Italian neighborhood, an Italian Catholic who lives in Bloomfield cannot walk to Mass without making a serious expedition of it.

    Front entrance

    The church was built in 1886; the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks foundation attributes it to Adolf or Adolphus Druiding, who also designed Ss. Peter and Paul in Larimer/East Liberty. However, an expert in the works of E. G. W. Dietrich (see the comment below) was kind enough to correct that attribution. The church was designed by the partnership of Bartberger & Dietrich, as we learn both from an article at the laying of the cornerstone and an illustration of the church in the Builder and Wood-Worker for June, 1889, where it is attributed to Bartberger alone. Charles M. Bartberger and E. G. W. Dietrich were partners for about three years, from 1883 to 1886, before Dietrich moved to New York, which he seems to have done while this church was under construction. Father Pitt has updated his attribution based on this evidence, with many thanks to our correspondent.

    Front elevation
    St. Joseph’s Church
    Statue
    Window
    Side entrance
    Tower
    Rectory
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    The rectory next to the church has been damaged by the installation of windows in the wrong size and style, but otherwise is in good shape.

    St. Joseph’s at night
    Samsung A15 5G.

  • Old Storefronts in Bloomfield

    Storefronts on Liberty Avenue
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    These little stores with living quarters above were built in the 1880s, but the buildings are not much different from thousands that went up throughout the nineteenth century, and indeed they have their stylistic roots in the eighteenth century. They all preserve their properly inset shop entrances, so that doors do not hit passing pedestrians in the face.

  • Milgate Street, Bloomfield

    Houses on Milgate Street in the Bloomfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh
    Kodak EasyShare Z1285.

    These frame houses were built in the 1880s and 1890s. They are detached houses—detached by just enough room for an average person to walk between them. As a group, they form a good document of the things ambitious salesmen could sell to middle-class homeowners in the twentieth century. Not a single one retains its original details: they have all had their siding replaced, and most have smaller windows than the originals. And, of course, several have sprouted aluminum awnings.

  • Apartment Building in Bloomfield/Garfield

    Apartment building on Gross Street

    Father Pitt was so much taken with this apartment building when he glimpsed it from Penn Avenue in Garfield that he walked a quarter of a block or so out of his way to get pictures of it. The inset balconies are delightful, and the irregular side uses space efficiently while still flooding the rooms inside with light from multiple angles. But old Pa Pitt’s favorite thing was the oversized arch with orbiting leaded glass at the entrance.

    Entrance
    Front of the building
    Perspective view

  • Building on Penn Avenue at Winebiddle Street, Garfield

    Building at Penn and Winebiddle

    If we read our old maps correctly, this building on Penn Avenue at Winebiddle Street, probably built in the 1890s, housed the Garfield Bank. But since the name “Garfield Bank” does not appear before the 1923 layer, it may not originally have been built for that institution. It is a curiously eclectic building, hard to assign to a particular style, and the architect (or probably builder-with-a-pencil) seems not to have known quite how to deal with the front, leaving a disturbingly asymmetrical arrangement of windows. But it is an interesting construction, and it has been preserved in very good shape.

    Penn at Winebiddle

    On city planning maps, Penn Avenue is a neighborhood border, and the south side of Penn Avenue is in Bloomfield; but both sides of the Penn Avenue business district have always been called “Garfield” by Pittsburghers, as we see from the fact that a Garfield Bank occupied this building in 1923.

    From the west