Carnegie is intensely proud of this little tower—so much so that it was recently rebuilt and hoisted up to its perch looking brand new.
Watch that first step as you leave.
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Railroad Watchtower, Carnegie
Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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Husler Building, Carnegie
Samuel T. McClarren, a very successful Victorian architect and a resident of nearby Thornburg, designed this landmark building, which was put up in 1896.
A small alteration to the front gives us an example of how important the little details are to the appearance of a building. The arched windows in the top floor have been shortened, as we can see by the slightly different shade of brick where they have been filled in. The original design would have created a single broad stripe from the arches at the top to the storefront below. Interrupting that composition makes the building look awkward and top-heavy. The ground floor has also been altered in a way that obscures the vigor of the design. Once we have said that, however, we should acknowledge that the building is generally in a good state of preservation and praise the Historical Society of Carnegie for keeping it up.
This building has a very difficult lot to deal with, and the architect must have found it an interesting challenge. First, the lot is a triangle. A kind of turret blunts the odd angle on the Main Street end and turns it from a bug into a feature.
The second challenge is that one long side of the lot is smack up against Chartiers Creek, a minor river that is placid most of the time but can be a raging torrent when storms make it angry. The foundations would have had to take all the moods of the river into account, and the fact that the building has stood through disastrous floods suggests that Mr. McClarren knew what he was up to.
A view from across Chartiers Creek shows us the sharp point of the triangle in the rear.
Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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Masonic Hall, Carnegie
The Masonic Hall in Carnegie is a fine example of small-town Rundbogenstil, taking its details from Renaissance architecture and its rhythm from industrial Romanesque.
If Father Pitt owned this building and had to put up with those two modern blisters on top, he would have them painted to look like cat ears.
The goat ornaments were doubtless intended to reassure the Masons’ neighbors that Masonry has no satanic connotations at all.
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Commercial Building at Third & Third, Carnegie
Father Pitt took these pictures more than a year ago, but for some reason he never published them until now. This Rundbogenstil building at Third Street and Third Avenue takes full advantage of its corner site, and the details of the pediment and cornice have been lovingly picked out in tastefully balanced colors.
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Art Deco Telephone Exchange in Carnegie
Press C. Dowler was almost certainly the architect of this classic Art Deco telephone exchange, since he designed most of the buildings for Bell Telephone in our area during the Art Deco era.
The blankness of the first floor is probably original. As much of the switching equipment as possible was on the ground floor, because copper was expensive, and anything that shortened the distance that had to be cabled saved a lot of money.
The polychrome frieze is an unexpected flash of color on what is otherwise a monochrome building that makes its decorative statements with cleverly patterned brick, a few stone accents, and small terra-cotta ornaments.
It used to be usual for corner buildings to carry the names of the streets in lieu of street signs. It was already old-fashioned when this building went up, but who could resist those elegant Art Deco letters?
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Holy Virgin Russian Orthodox Church, Carnegie
These deep-blue onion domes are one of the distinctive features of the Carnegie skyline as motorists see it from the Parkway West. This Russian church, originally known in English as St. Mary’s (according to the cornerstone), sits right next to the Ukrainian Orthodox church by Titus de Bobula; it was built in 1920, about fourteen years after the Ukrainian church. Though Holy Virgin is not so extravagantly eccentric, it holds up well against its neighbor; and the two of them together form a memorable composition that makes us wonder for a moment what continent we landed on.
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St. Peter & St. Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Church and Hall, Carnegie
Originally Ukrainian Greek Catholic, this church, built in 1906, was designed by Titus de Bobula with an extravagantly broad range of materials that no sane architect would attempt to harmonize. We are tempted to say it was fortunate that De Bobula was no sane architect; at any rate, he has pulled the rabbit out of his hat and made harmony out of dissonance.
De Bobula did not sign the cornerstone, as he did at the First Hungarian Reformed Church and St. John the Baptist, but the lettering is certainly in his style.
Next door to the church is a parochial hall. If we interpret our sources correctly, the architect was Harry H. Lefkowitz, and the building was put up in 1928 or shortly after.1 It successfully matches the church by incorporating some of Titus de Bobula’s most distinctive quirks—the freakishly tall and narrow arches at the sides of the façade, the stonework at the top of the two-storey entrance arch, the horizontal scores in the brickwork around the entrance.
Father Pitt, who admits he does not speak Ukrainian, would translate “Ukrainska Parochiyalna Galya” as “Ukrainian Parochial Hall.”
- “SS. Peter and Paul Church Takes Bids,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, May 27, 1928, p. 45. “The SS. Peter and Paul Greek Catholic Church is taking bids for a school and auditorium in James street, Carnegie. H. H. Lefkowitz is the architect.” “James Street” must be a mistake for “Jane Street,” the old name of Mansfield Boulevard, though there is a James Street a block away. The two names would be indistinguishable over the telephone. ↩︎
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Carrick
Seen from a hilltop in Brookline. St. Basil’s is prominent on the skyline.
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St. Luke’s Church, Carnegie
Now St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church of St. Raphael Parish, because the history of parish consolidation in Carnegie is complicated even by Catholic Pittsburgh standards. Built in 1881, this church was out of commission for a while after the Hurricane Ivan floods in Carnegie, but it is now restored and expanded, and in fact is the only remaining Western Catholic church in Carnegie. (There’s a Byzantine-rite Ukrainian church, too.)
The parish school behind the church closed some years ago, but the building still belongs to the church and has been adapted to other uses, including Sunday school and offices.
Addendum: The architect of the school was Albert F. Link.1
- Source: The Construction Record, January 13, 1912: “Carnegie, Pa. — Architect A. L. Fink [sic], 407 North Craig street, Pittsburgh, is drawing plans for a two-story brick fireproof parochial school, to be constructed on Third avenue and Fourth street, for St. Luke’s Roman Catholic Congregation. Building will contain 12 school rooms and auditorium on first floor. Cost $45,000.” The magazine was sloppily edited, but every once in a while we wonder whether one of the misprints was deliberate. ↩︎
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Queen Anne House in Carnegie
This splendid house sits on the hill overlooking the part of Carnegie that was formerly the borough of Chartiers.
