From a distance, we can see how densely built Dormont is. It’s in the top 1% of municipalities by population density in the United States. Yet the streets never feel crowded or claustrophobic. That pleasant and efficient use of land is the reason why Father Pitt, without any irony, likes to talk about the Dormont Model of Sustainable Development.
Espy Avenue is perhaps the highest-toned street in Dormont, lined with fine houses by distinguished architects. We’ve seen a bunch of them before; here are four from the other side of the street.
The beautiful birches make it a little hard to photograph the house behind; old Pa Pitt did the best he could.
A giant standing skeleton was very amusing when it was the first one on your block. It tends to stand around forever, because otherwise you have to figure out where to put it.
We’ve seen this double before, with the sun behind it. Here it is again in cloudy weather, when the details may be a little easier to see.
The northeastern end of Glenmore Avenue has some of Dormont’s finest houses, most of them obviously designed by architects with taste, though so far old Pa Pitt has failed to find any of their names. Here is an album from one block of Glenmore Avenue. We have more pictures from the next block of the street here and here.
An attractive and well-maintained building that would have been even more attractive when that overhang had green or red tiles. The style seems to hover somewhere between Renaissance and Arts and Crafts.
After the originally tiled overhang and its showy wooden brackets, the most eye-catching feature is the balconies with their bulging iron railings.
After months of work, the Hollywood, Dormont’s century-old neighborhood movie palace, is open again as the Row House Hollywood, showing an eclectic mixture of classic movies, cult films, and independent productions. As a rare undivided big-screen theater, the Hollywood is big enough to accommodate special performances, like a showing of Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc with the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh.
Charles R. Geisler designed the original 1925 building (the Spanish Mission details are certainly his); Victor A. Rigaumont, Pittsburgh’s titan of Deco theaters, supervised a remodeling in 1948.
The Hollywood is an easy stroll from the Potomac station on the Red Line. There are also public parking lots nearby for the carbound, but isn’t half the fun of visiting a silent-era movie palace using a period-appropriate transit line to get there?
Built in about 1925 (which is when this address starts appearing in the company’s advertisements), this was a warehouse for a prosperous moving company. Like most buildings along this stretch of West Liberty Avenue, it was later adapted to the car-dealing business.
The letter W for White appears in four cartouches on the front of the building.
Even a warehouse entrance ought to impress your customers, and that is what terra cotta is for.
A car dealer (selling Studebakers) was attached to the left side of the building; it has been replaced by a parking lot.
An unusually well-preserved commercial building in an eclectic style from the early twentieth century. The glass block in the stairwell doubtless marks where some more attractive art glass, which probably became a maintenance headache, would have been; and the blank panels above the storefronts were probably art glass as well (compare, for example, this other storefront on the same street). But the ground floor was never fussed with very much, and it still retains its stonework and inscription. The grey paint is not old Pa Pitt’s favorite treatment, but paint can be painted over.
The corner of West Liberty Avenue and Potomac Avenue is the center of the Dormont commercial district, and it is framed by two buildings that are very well suited for such a prominent location. The ground floor of the one above has been remodeled more than once, including what must have been an eye-catching moderne remodeling that left it with some rounded windows. The corner is marked with a turret, which is always good on a corner building. We suspect that the turret may have had a witch’s cap on top, but even without it the turret makes a good corner marker, accented with terra-cotta foliage around the top.
This building has a storefront with a proper corner entrance that has not been filled in, though the ground floor also appears to have been remodeled in the mid-twentieth-century moderne era.
The Hollywood Theater in Dormont is one hundred years old this year, and it is near the end of a thorough refurbishment. It is now owned by the same people who own the successful Row House Theater in Lawrenceville, and it will open after the work with a similar mix of art films, cult films, and revivals. Comparing the picture above with one from 2019 shows how much can be accomplished with paint and some stucco work.
The original 1925 architect was Charles R. Geisler, who was prolific especially in the South Hills (he lived in Beechview within walking distance of this theater). His taste for Mission details is obvious in the roofline, with its very Geislery green-tiled overhangs. In 1948, Victor A. Rigaumont, Pittsburgh’s king of Deco movie houses, supervised a remodeling, and the spare and abstract ground floor is probably his work. This current remodeling uses dark green to link the ground floor with the roof and make the façade look more all of a piece.
There’s something pleasingly simple about this little apartment building just off the Potomac Avenue business district in Dormont. There are almost no decorative details, but the simple pilasters that frame the front give the building enough texture to carry itself with dignity. The stone lintels over the windows on the side of the building are a clue to its history: the front is probably a later addition, replacing open balconies with extra rooms. But the matching white brick makes the change hard to detect without some concentration.
The entrance (we are able to peer into the shadows by combining three different exposures in one picture) surprises us with classical woodwork and ornamental leaded glass—another clue that this building is older than we would have thought from a glance at the front.
