“Transit-Oriented Development” is a favorite catch phrase among urban planners. In the early twentieth century, it was just the way development happened. Most people used streetcars to get to work, to shopping, and to all their amusements, so of course development and transit had to go together. Here we see a typical pattern: a main spine street—in this case, Broadway Avenue in Dormont—divided in two parts, with a broad median for trolleys. Many neighborhood main streets were built this way. Red Line trolleys still run here in Dormont, and Silver Line trolleys on a similar plan in Bethel Park.
Built in 1920 in an angular modern-Gothic style, this church served its original congregation until 2013, the year of the great collapse of Dormont mainline churches, when the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and the Baptists all threw in the towel. The building became a Buddhist temple for a while (the Buddhists gave it the current paint scheme), but it seems not to be active right now. It is, however, kept up well.
Thanks to the Gazette Times of September 13, 1920, we have a picture of Bishop McConnell of the M. E. Church laying laying “a copy of the Gazette Times containing announcement of the corner stone laying, coins of the present day, a list of trustees and a list of members of the Dormont and Banksville churches, recently combined” in the cornerstone.
This cornerstone is a top contender for the coveted title of Most Awkward Word Break on a Stone Inscription Outside a Country Graveyard.
It seems that another capsule was laid in 2009, four years before the church dissolved.
None of the news stories we found mentioned an architect, but we hope to find a name eventually.
Built in the 1920s in a strikingly modernistic style, the Dormont Recreation Center still serves the citizens of the borough who come every summer for one of the area’s most popular swimming pools, which first opened in 1920.
A few pictures from a very brief walk after a day of rain. Glenmore Avenue may not be quite as tony as Espy Avenue a block away, but it has its share of elegant homes. As in many other streets in Dormont, the elegant homes are mixed in with pleasant little apartment houses and duplexes—a core principle of what old Pa Pitt calls the Dormont Model of Sustainable Development.
We start with a house that, although it is addressed to Glenmore, actually faces the cross street, Lasalle Avenue.
This Tudor seems to present a modest front to LaSalle Avenue, but turning the corner to Glenmore Avenue reveals a long side of dimensions that would almost qualify it for mansion status.
Next to the Tudor mansion, a symmetrical double house arranged as two Dutch Colonial houses back to back.
A typical Pittsburgh duplex—except that the typical Pittsburgh slope of the lot gives it the opportunity for a third apartment in the basement, with a ground-level entrance on the side street, Key Avenue.
An apartment building that looks like many other small apartment buildings in Dormont. They probably all share the same architect: Charles Geisler, who lived nearby in Beechview and designed dozens of buildings in Dormont and Mount Lebanon.
Even though he has walked on Glenmore Avenue many times before, old Pa Pitt never made this association before now. This is a smaller cottage, but it was clearly designed by the same hand that drew this overgrown bungalow on Mattern Avenue:
This is what you get if you tell your architect, “I want a bungalow, but with three floors.” The house on Glenmore may originally have had stucco and half-timbering like this: there’s no telling what’s under that aluminum siding.
This striking house in a subdued version of Prairie Style has been rescued from decay, with tiny plastic paste-on shutters as a signifier of a high-class renovation. Here they are installed behind downspouts, which makes them even more conceptually absurd.
Potomac gives Red Line riders easy access to the Dormont business district, which is full of odd little shops and restaurants that make it well worth a visit. Some of the houses in streets nearby are architecturally significant, and a walk through the back streets of Dormont is always pleasant.
The northwest side of Broadway Avenue in Dormont is lined with small to medium-sized apartment buildings and duplexes. There’s a variety of styles, but we suspect more than one of them came from the pencil of Charles Geisler, who designed many apartment buildings in Dormont and Mount Lebanon, and who lived not far away in Beechview.
These two are exceptionally convenient to transit: their front doors open right across from the Stevenson stop on the Red Line.
A beautiful storefront with veiny marble and a large panel of stained glass spanning the whole width. Note the properly inset entrance, so that the door does not fly open into passing pedestrians’ faces—a requirement we have forgotten.
