The West Side Belt Railroad came through Castle Shannon aerially on this long viaduct. Here we see it crossing the Blue and Silver Line trolley tracks. The line is still active as part of the Pittsburgh & West Virginia Railroad.
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Railroad Viaduct in Castle Shannon
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First National Bank, Castle Shannon
You might pass this little building by without a second glance as you walked along Poplar Street, if you ever did walk along Poplar Street (a very pleasant street) in Castle Shannon. But if you did pause, you might notice the tall Corinthian columns and sturdy-looking quoins (those patterns in the bricks that are meant to look like cut stone) and think, “I wonder whether that used to be a bank.”
Then you would look up at the pediment, and all doubt would be removed.
The electric vault alarm still sits prominently in the pediment where a richer bank might have had an allegorical figure of Commerce.
To judge by old maps, this bank was built between 1890 and 1906.
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Castle Shannon
The center of Castle Shannon is the intersection of Castle Shannon Boulevard and Willow Avenue, which carries the trolley line. The only way to get a good visual impression of this oddly shaped business district is with a series of broad panoramas.
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Silver Line Trolley in Castle Shannon
The only active street trackage left in the Pittsburgh streetcar system is on Broadway in Beechview, and on Warrington and Arlington Avenues when the cars are detoured over the top of the hill instead of through the Transit Tunnel. But there are several sections of what we might call semi-street trackage, where the trolleys run in a separate right-of-way either beside or in the middle of the street. Willow Avenue in Castle Shannon is one of them: half the street is reserved for trolleys. Here a Silver Line car crosses Castle Shannon Boulevard.
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Pittsburgh Myanmar Christian Church, Castle Shannon
Here is another wooden Gothic church whose details have been obscured by modern siding, and old Pa Pitt suspects the job was done by the same contractor who pasted siding over the First Presbyterian Church in Castle Shannon. The tower has been obscured beyond recognition—but note the railing on top, which suggests that it may be a fine place for a bird’s-eye view of the borough. This was the Castle Shannon United Methodist Church, but now it belongs to a lively congregation of immigrants from Myanmar.
A more than usually lush growth of utility cables is also prominent in this picture.
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First Presbyterian Church, Castle Shannon
A wood-frame country church whose most identifiable feature is its big square belfry. Artificial siding has eaten up some of the trim and made the walls a little monotonous, but the shapes of the various masses still make an interesting composition.
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Emmanuel’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, Castle Shannon
This is the old church, which apparently now hosts a congregation called Providence Church. Next door the Lutherans have a newer building, now called Emmanuel Lutheran, since the possessive was banned from church names in the late twentieth century. This building is not a work of high architecture, but it is a pleasant village church in the Gothic style, and the substantial square corner tower makes it look like an anchor of the neighborhood.
