Category: Coraopolis

  • First Baptist Church, Coraopolis

    First Baptist Church, Coraopolis

    Though the renovations with modern materials—understandable for a congregation on a tight budget—have not always been sympathetic, this is still a valuable relic of the era of Victorian frame Gothic churches. As Pittsburgh and its suburbs prospered in the twentieth century, most of those churches were replaces with bigger and brickier structures, so although these churches were once all over western Pennsylvania, remnants like this are fairly rare. This one no longer serves the Baptist congregation (or the Anglican congregation that inhabited it more recently), but some maintenance work seems to be going on.

    Belfry

    The distinctive wooden belfry is still in good shape, though missing a few pieces of trim and wanting a bit of paint. The trim is simple and could be replicated in somebody’s garage woodshop.

    Belfry
    First Baptist Church
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
  • Second Presbyterian Church, Coraopolis

    Second Presbyterian Church

    Now the Church of God, this is a modest church in an abstract version of Perpendicular Gothic, with castle-like battlemented towers fore and aft. The stained glass has been removed, possibly because it was too decrepit to restore, or possibly to satisfy the iconoclastic tendencies of American Evangelicalism.

    Tower
    Front of the church
    Coraopolis Church of God
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
  • Coraopolis Junior High School

    Coraopolis Junior High School

    Edward Stotz, who also designed Fifth Avenue High School and Schenley High School (the country’s first million-dollar high school), was the architect of this staid and respectable school, now turned into apartments.

    “Ridgeview” Apt’s 1130

    The inscription over the door was hand-painted by someone with a distinctive idea of quotation marks.

    Entrance
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.
    Side of the school
    Coraopolis Junior High School
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
  • Coraopolis Savings and Trust Company

    Coraopolis Savings and Trust Company

    Press C. Dowler, prolific architect of schools, banks, and telephone exchanges, designed this solid-looking classical bank, and the Pittsburgh Daily Post tells us that the opening (October 10, 1021) was a gala occasion.

    Newspaper article about the opening of the bank
    Front of the bank

    The building no longer houses a bank, but almost nothing about the exterior has changed since that opening day, except that the big windows may not originally have been filled in with glass block.

    Side of the building

    A look down the Mill Street side of the bank, with the Ohio Valley Trust Company building in the background.

    Basement entrance

    Mill Street does not meet Fifth Avenue at exactly a right angle, which leaves room for this curious triangular pit with a basement entrance.

    Lantern

    A lantern on the front of the building.

    Bank in the sunshine

    A picture on a sunny day.

    Cameras: Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Kodak EasyShare Z1285.

  • T. Ed. Cornelius House, Coraopolis

    T. Ed. Cornelius house, Coraopolis

    T. Ed. (for Thomas Edward) Cornelius was a successful second-string architect who was born in Coraopolis and lived there all his life. He had more of an eye for current trends than many of his kind: we have seen his “modern” Craftsman-style rowhouses in Brighton Heights (and duplicated in Shadyside, Bloomfield, and elsewhere around the city), his Craftsman-Gothic Beechview Christian Church, and his splendidly Art Deco Coraopolis VFW Post. This was Mr. Cornelius’ own house, where he was was living at the end of his life; he died in 1950, probably at an advanced age. We may guess that he designed the house for himself.

    611 Ferree Street
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    The front door is a version of the rayed arch that was popular in domestic architecture in the late 1920s and into the 1930s.

    The house is on Ferree Street, named for one of the founding families of Coraopolis. T. Ed.’s wife was Lily Ferree Cornelius. Good connections never hurt an architect.

  • The Queen Anne Style in Coraopolis

    1230 State Avenue

    The “Queen Anne” style is the one people think of most often when they think of Victorian houses. It had very little to do with any queen named Anne. Its defining characteristic is a concern for variety and picturesqueness: there is always a surprise lurking around the corner of a Queen Anne house. Turrets and Dutch gables and curiously shaped dormers and fits of Renaissance detailing are favorite devices of Queen Anne architects, but there is no single thing that defines the style.

    Coraopolis has an exceptionally fine collection of Queen Anne houses, and some of them preserve exquisite details usually lost to the ravages of time. Enlarge the picture above, for example, and admire the original windows.

    1310 State Avenue

    This one has had many revisions over the years, but the irregular shape of a Queen Anne house, and the dominant turret, are still there to mark the style.

    1324 Ridge Avenue

    Here is a house that has kept many elegant details, including its slate roof and wood trim. And note the windows in the turret:

    Turret

    The glass curves to match the curve of the wall.

    Dormer

    A curious dormer with remarkable tracery in the window.

    1324 Ridge Avenue
    1324 Ridge Avenue
    1302 State Avenue

    Another house with some alterations, but they do not disguise the turret and the big rounded bay in front.

    1303 Ridge Avenue
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    This house has also been through some alterations: the porch might have wrapped all the way around to include both doors, and the vertical siding on the second-floor oriel doubtless replaced wood shingles. The shingles are still there on the third-floor gables, however.

  • W. E. Laughner House, Coraopolis

    W. E. Laughner house

    Old Pa Pitt knows exactly two things about the architect W. E. Laughner: first, that he had his office in the Ohio Valley Trust Building; second, that he designed this house for his own home. Both facts come from one small listing in the American Contractor for July 14, 1923: “Coraopolis, Pa.—Res. 2½ sty. & bas. Ridge av. Archt. W. E. Laughner, Ohio Valley Trust bldg. Owner W. E. Laughner, Ridge & Chestnut sts. Brk. veneer. Drawing plans.”

    Corner view of the house

    At any rate, this is an interesting variant on the Dutch Colonial style, with Arts-and-Crafts details that make it stand out from its neighbors. It was a good advertisement for Mr. Laughner’s architectural practice, and we suspect there are many Laughner houses lurking here and there waiting for us to discover.

    End of the house with porch and sunroom
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
  • Old Coraopolis Municipal Building

    Inscription: Municipal Building

    Shoved against the hillside in Coraopolis, the old borough municipal building gains a floor’s worth of height from back to front. It had all the borough government services under one roof, including the police and fire departments. It now belongs to “Fabricator’s Forge,” a hobby and gaming emporium.

    Old Coraopolis Municipal Building
    Entrance
    Scallop frieze
    Roof ornament
    Entrance decorations from the side
    Perspective view
    Ghost sign: “Police Dept.”
    Fire-department end
    Coraopolis Fire Department
    Fire lantern
    Coraopolis Fire Department
    Fire tower on the old Coraopolis Municipal Building

    The Art Deco tiles on the fire tower make us suspect it was built or rebuilt later than the rest of the building.

    Fire tower

    Cameras: Kodak EasyShare Z981; Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Fujifilm PinePix HS10.

  • First Presbyterian Church of Coraopolis

    First Presbyterian Church

    This grand Gothic complex was one of two Presbyterian churches that stood on opposite corners of the same intersection. The other one was the First United Presbyterian (old Pa Pitt will probably never tire of that joke, which the Presbyterians hand to him on a silver platter). Eventually the United Presbyterian congregation united with this one, which is now known as the Presbyterian Church of Coraopolis, though it seems to have used the name Coraopolis Presbyterian relatively recently, when it picked the domain name for its Web site.

    The current lavish building was put up in 1929, as we learn from a postcard on the church’s history page, at a cost of $315,000 including furnishings.

    Cornerstone: First Presbyterian Church
    First Presbyterian Church
    First Presbyterian Church of Coraopolis
    Entrance
    Dransom
    Ornament
    Lantern
    Lantern
    First Presbyterian Church
    Now called Presbyterian Church of Coraopolis
    Tower
    Tower through branches
    Tower and tower entrance
    Tower and tower entrance
    School and office wing
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
  • Fun with Bricks in Coraopolis

    Commercial building in Coraopolis

    A commercial block where someone had a lot of fun with bricks. The storefronts appear to have been updated at some point in the Moderne era.

    1126–1134 Fourth Avenue
    Side of the building
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.