Father Pitt

Category: Crafton

Crafton Borough Building

Built in 1938, the Crafton Borough Building was designed by Vincent L. Schoeneman and H. L. Carter.

This is about the peak of Art Deco modernity in Pittsburgh, and it impressed its neighbors enough that Munhall’s borough building (which old Pa Pitt really needs to visit soon) is very obviously influenced by it. Nor do we have to rely on the evidence of our own senses: it turns out that the Munhall council sent its architect over to inspect the Crafton Borough Building, telling him, “We want something like that.” The story about it in the Press was headed “Crafton Serves as ‘Model.’ ” “Munhall’s proposed new municipal building, to be erected at West Field, will be constructed along the lines of the one at Crafton. Adam G. Wickerham has been retained as architect.”

So here is the building that hit late-1930s suburbanites as the ideal of a borough building, and old Pa Pitt can see why.

“God is in the details,” as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe famously said, and here the details are perfectly harmonized, and we might add scrupulously kept by the borough. The windows have been replaced, which was probably necessary, but they were replaced with windows of the right size (which is regrettably unusual around here), and all the other trimmings are still there and mostly in good shape.

The clock is not keeping time right now. Does anyone in the borough want to take up a collection for a new movement?

Olympus E-20N; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

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May 28, 2025
Crafton Station on the West Busway

With St. Philip’s Church in the background.

Most Pittsburghers probably don’t think of the busways as very interesting phenomena, so give old Pa Pitt a few moments of your time and he will try to make even a busway interesting.

First of all, Pittsburgh is one of the very few cities that did “bus rapid transit” routes as real metro lines for buses. The three busways—South, East, and West—don’t mix with street traffic or even have at-grade intersections.

Second, although the busways as busways are products of the late twentieth century, they all have roots much earlier. We started building the West Busway in 1851. It is a curious fact of our busways that they are almost one-to-one replacements for the old commuter-rail routes that started working in the middle 1800s. Even the stations are mostly in the same places; the Crafton busway station is just a few yards from where the railroad station used to be.

Part of the West Busway is a subway tunnel between Sheraden and Ingram. Construction on the Cork Run Tunnel began in 1851; after many interruptions; it was finally finished in 1865.

So if you ride the West Busway today, you are riding 174 years of history. Take time to think about that the next time you have to get somewhere, and you may conclude that even busways can be interesting as well as useful.

The West Busway crossing Crennell Avenue at the Crafton station. Camera: Olympus E-20N.

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May 21, 2025
St. Philip’s Church, Crafton

Designed by the Akron architect William P. Ginther, St. Philip’s presides over a prominent spot in the middle of Crafton, and its lofty spire can be seen from all over the borough.

Mr. Ginther’s other works in our area are Immaculate Heart of Mary, Polish Hill, and St. Mary’s in McKees Rocks. His churches are concentrated in eastern Ohio, but he designed several others in Pennsylvania and New York and even as far away as California. On one of his other sites, Father Pitt has pictures of St. Bernard’s Church in downtown Akron and St. Joseph’s Church in St. Joseph, Ohio.

Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

The rectory, with its stone below and brick above, makes a good transition between the church and the school next door, and we would not be surprised if A. F. Link, architect of the school, designed it for exactly that purpose.

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January 5, 2025
St. Philip’s School, Crafton
Designed by Albert F. Link, the original part of St. Philip’s School was built in 1914–1915¹ to look like a fairy-tale castle. The steep hillside site was probably an inspiration: anything built here would look a bit like a medieval fortress, so why not go all the way?

Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
1. Source: The Construction Record, December 19, 1914. “Architect A. F. Link, N. Craig street, has plans for the superstructure of a two-story brick parochial school building for St. Phillips [sic] Roman Catholic Congregation to be built at a cost of $60,000. Foundation work has been completed.” ↩︎
December 26, 2024
Crafton High School

Still in use, with modern additions, as Crafton Elementary School, this Jacobean palace was built in 1913. The architect was Press C. Dowler, already well into a career that would last another half-century. His assignment here seems to have been to make up in spectacle for what the little borough’s high school lacked in size, and he came through with the goods, festooning the building with crenellations and terra-cotta ornamentation. But although the decoration may be a bit extravagant, it is done with good taste, making a balanced composition outlined by the sharp contrast between the red brick and the white trim.

The original school had two identical entrances—probably, as was common in those days, one for boys and one for girls.

Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

December 10, 2024