Father Pitt

Category: Chateau

  • National Casket Company, Chateau

    National Casket Company building

    Now known as the Cardello Building, this was one of several locations of the National Casket Company, a concern that, by combining the leading casket makers into one conglomerate, nearly cornered the market on death.

    National Casket Company building

    The lens on this old Ansco camera is a “normal” lens that sees the world about the way your eyes see it, so that acute angle is not a lens artifact. It really is an acute angle.

    National Casket Company building

    The building is actually a complex of connected buildings put up over the course of twenty years, from 1900 to 1920. The same architect was responsible for all of them: R. Maurice Trimble, who came from a family of contractors and fed work back to various Trimbles whenever he had a chance. (See the end of this article for the citations that mention Trimble as architect.)

    National Casket Company building
    National Casket Company
    Looking along the side of the building
    Light fixtures
    Light fixtures
    Looking along the front
    National Casket Company
    National Casket Company
    Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans f/1.4 35mm lens; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS; Ansco Memar with AristaEDU ISO 100 film.

    We found multiple listings mentioning Trimble as architect of various parts of the National Casket Company building. Here are three of them.

    Record & Guide, July 18, 1900, p. 463. “Maurice Trimble, Ferguson Buliding [sic], has made plans for a three-story brick warehouse to be erected on Chartiers street, Allegheny, for the National Casket & Coffin works. The owners are receiving bids for its construction.” Chartiers Street is now North Point Drive. By the time it was built, the warehouse had grown to four floors. The 1910 Sanborn map shows that this was the section between the five-storey section that faces Beaver Avenue and the five-storey section at the south end of the complex. Now known as the Cardello Building.

    Record & Guide, December 17, 1902, p. 835. “R. M. Trimble, Ferguson Building has awarded to John H. Trimble & Bro., 2022 Chartiers avenue, Allegheny, the contract for the erection of a five story brick and stone warehouse and office building for the National Casket Company at Seventh street and Duquesne way.” This probably refers to the five-story section at the south end of the National Casket Company warehouse on Chartiers Street; the downtown address would be the offices of the company. Other listings confirm, however, that John H. Trimble & Brother were located at 2022 Chartiers Avenue, right next to the National Casket Company which is very convenient. We note Maurice Trimble’s habit of keeping the construction in the family if he could manage it.

    “Casket Company to Build,” Post, August 31, 1920, p. 7. “The National Casket Company has given D. T. Riffle a contract for an addition to a building on Reedsdale street, Northside. R. M. Trimble is the architect.” This is the most recent section, filling out the building to Reedsdale (now part of Beaver Avenue).

    Since Trimble was the architect of the first section of the warehouse and the most recent section, and since everything matches the one or the other in style, we can be fairly confident that he designed all the stages of construction, however many there were.

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  • Rosenbaum’s Warehouse, Chateau

    Rosenbaum’s warehouse

    This was a warehouse and looks like a warehouse. It was built for Rosenbaum’s, one of the big department stores downtown; the architect was William E. Snaman, who had made a specialty of the department-store business.

    Rosenbaum’s warehouse

    As a building it is not a great work of art: it is one of those buildings that, as Philip Friedman said of his own works, “are admittedly far less esthetic achievements than economic realities.” But it is a bit of Pittsburgh history that will disappear at some point, as its neighbors have already done.

    Rubble of demolished warehouses

    These piles of rubble mark the graves of two warehouses—one of which belonged to Donahoe’s grocery, and therefore might also have been designed by Snaman, since he designed the Donahoe’s building downtown. They have been demolished to make way for the immense Esplanade development, which is scheduled to eat up this building as well.

    Rubble and warehouse
    Casement windows

    Some of the original casement windows, usually the first things to go when a building is renovated, are still in this building.

    Casement windows
    Rosenbaum warehouse
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS; Ansco Memar with AristaEDU ISO 100 film.

    It would be hard to make a case that the Esplanade development will not be a better use of this land than a plain old warehouse, or even that this would be a good building to restore for apartments or offices. It will not be much regretted when it is gone; but as one of the last relics of a once-mighty department store, it is worth remembering with these pictures.

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  • Rooftops of Chateau

    Rooftops of Chateau
    Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
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  • Preble Avenue, Chateau

    Preble Avenue
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

    An industrial streetscape in Chateau, which is still a busy industrial and warehouse district. A railroad spur formerly ran along the street and under the projecting roof of the Heyl & Patterson building in the foreground.

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  • Fort Pitt Bedding Company, Chateau

    Fort Pitt Bedding Company

    The Fort Pitt Bedding Company sold all manner of bedding, and it had the Sealy franchise for the Pittsburgh area. But the company’s specialty seems to have been institutional bunks: it held patents on clever designs that allowed bunks to be stored absolutely flat and set up without tools.

    Engineering News-Record, December 28, 1922, p. 108.
    Fort Pitt Bedding Company

    The complex was built in stages, of which the section with arched windows seems to be the oldest.

    Six-storey factory building
    Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

    Today the buildings are handsomely restored and filled with various businesses.

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  • Two Department-Store Warehouses by William E. Snaman

    Frank & Seder Warehouse
    These pictures are from a year and a half ago, but old Pa Pitt just ran across them. You never know what you’ll find if you look behind the sofa.

    Frank & Seder was never our biggest department store, but it was a pretty big store. Like all the other department stores downtown, it needed a big warehouse to hold the merchandise until it was ready to delight downtown shoppers. This colossus on the Bluff was designed in 1923 by William E. Snaman,1 an architect who had already had a long and prosperous career and by this time in his life was specializing in large warehouses and other industrial buildings. The Boulevard of the Allies runs past on a course that is not perpendicular to the side streets, so that the front of the building is at an odd angle to the rest of the building.

    A different angle
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.

    Just a little later, Snaman was designing another warehouse on the North Side for Rosenbaum’s, another big downtown department store.2 This is a slightly blurred picture from the window of a car stopped in traffic on the approach to the West End Bridge, but it will have to do for now.

    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
    1. Source: The American Contractor, February 3, 1923: “Warehouse & Garage: $200,000. 7 sty. & bas. 88×200. 1819–23 Bluff st. Archt. & Engr. W. E. Snaman, Empire bldg. Owner The Frank & Weder [sic] Co., Isaac Sedar [sic], pres., Fifth av. & Smithfield st. Brk. Drawing prelim. Plans.” The building as it stands is five storeys. ↩︎
    2. Source: The American Contractor, November 10, 1923: “Warehouse (add.): $500,000. 4 sty. & bas. 159×291. Brk. Beaver av. & Fayette st. Archt. & Bldr. W. E. Snaman, Empire bldg. Owner The Rosenbaum Co., Max Rothschild, pres., 6th & Penn avs. Revising plans.” The “addition” in this listing is most of the building, except for the three-storey section in front. It seems likely that Snaman was responsible for that, too. ↩︎
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  • McKinney Manufacturing Company Warehouse, Chateau

    View of the warehouse from the corner of Preble Avenue and Liverpool Street

    The Hunting-Davis Company was a versatile firm, but its specialty was industrial architecture. The McKinney Manufacturing Company warehouse was noted as an innovation in reinforced-concrete construction when it went up in 1914, and it still stands in very close to its original form, giving us a good look at the ultra-modern industrial architecture of the early twentieth century. We note that even such a utilitarian structure as a warehouse was not allowed to go up without some elegant Art Nouveau ornamentation:

    Ornamentation on the corner of the warehouse

    Here is the architects’ Liverpool Street elevation as it appeared in an article in the Construction Record for February 7, 1914:

    And here is the same building today:

    McKinney Manufacturing Co. warehouse, Preble Avenue side

    This is the Preble Avenue side, which is shorter by one bay but otherwise similar. Old Pa Pitt would have preferred to duplicate the architects’ drawing as closely as possible, but Liverpool Street no longer exists in that block: it has been filled in with lower buildings.

    Here is the text of the article, which will be of interest to students of architecture and construction:

    Last week the contract for building the warehouse for the McKinney Manufacturing Company, Northside, Pittsburgh, was placed with the Henry Shenk Company, Pittsburgh. The building as designed by the Hunting-Davis Company, Century building, Pittsburgh, will be approximately 105×120 feet, six stories high with basement. It will be of reinforced concrete throughout. There will be no steel beams or girders used in the construction work except those for the outside lintels and elevator framing.

    In order that the reinforced concrete work may be properly constructed, thus eliminating any possibility of poor workmanship and accidents, it is agreed that superintendent of five years experience on reinforced concrete building must remain on the work at all times. The mixture of the concrete will be one part cement, two parts sand and four parts gravel. All columns will have a one to two cement and sand mortar placed to a depth of three inches before the concrete is placed. The columns will be cast a day ahead of the beams and slabs. Care is to be exercised in removing the forms so that no board marks or imperfections on the exterior of the building are noticeable.

    The building will be one of the heaviest loaded flat slab buildings ever designed in the country. A four-way diagonal reinforcement will be used in the slab construction. The columns will have hoop-reinforced concrete. All ceilings will be flat. The floor loads per square foot will be as follows: First floor, 800 pounds; second floor, 1,200 pounds; third floor, 650 pounds; fourth floor, 450 pounds; fifth and sixth floors, 300 pounds. The basement floor and walls will be reinforced to take care of flood water pressure with flood gates on basement windows.

    The design carries with the proposed work the building of a tunnel to connect with the present plant and the construction of a bridge to connect up with the second floor. Solid steel sash will be used on all windows. A sprinkler system will be installed. All floors in the basement tunnel and pent houses will have a granolithic finish.

    For the connecting bridge the walls and roof will be constructed of self-centering material plastered with cement mortar. The walls will be two inches thick and finished smooth on both sides. The roof will be two and one-half inches thick and finished with a smooth under coat. Composition roofing will be used throughout all the work.