Father Pitt

Category: Downtown

  • Mellon Bank Building

    Mellon Bank Building

    Also known as the Mellon–U. S. Steel Building (it was the headquarters of U. S. Steel before the bigger U. S. Steel Building was put up) and now by its street address, 525 William Penn Place.

    Harrison & Abramovitz, who did more than any other single firm to shape the skyline of downtown Pittsburgh, were the architects of this slab of metal and glass. It was their first project here; construction started in 1949, and the building opened in 1951. In “The Stones of Pittsburgh,” James D. Van Trump describes it with effective economy: “Large cage-slab with stainless steel sheathing. Envelope characterized by a kind of elegant monotony.”

    There is a little blurring in the middle of this composite picture, which old Pa Pitt was not patient enough to try to correct when it came out of the automatic stitcher that way.

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  • Keech Block

    Keech Block
    This picture has been manipulated on two planes to match the perspective of the 1889 image below. It is no longer possible to stand in exactly the same place, because other buildings have sprouted in inconvenient places.

    W. H. Keech was a dealer in furniture and carpets. In the 1880s he built this towering six-floor commercial palace on Penn Avenue at Garrison Place in the furniture district. The main part of the building has hardly changed since the photograph below was published in Pittsburgh Illustrated in 1889:

    Keech Block

    Probably in the 1890s, an addition was put on the right-hand side of the building, matching the original as well as possible.

    Keech Block with addition

    This building is festooned with decorative details in just the right places, including some Romanesque carved stone above the entrance. (Addendum: The architect of the original building and additions, including one to the right later destroyed by fire and another one after that, was James T. Steen, according to a plaque on the Conover Building three doors down, which was originally part of the expanded Keech Block.)

    Detail of the Keech Block
    Romanesque capital
    Romanesque foliage
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Magnolias in Mellon Square

    Magnolias in Mellon Square
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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  • Spring Comes to Liberty Center

    Flowering trees at Liberty Center

    Flowering trees at Liberty Center, and views of other landmarks through the flowers.

    Liberty Center with flowering trees
    Flowers on the trees
    Penn Station

    Penn Station.

    Grant Street

    Looking up Grant Street.

    Federal Courthouse

    The federal courthouse.

    Federal Courthouse
    Liberty Avenue
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Looking down Liberty Avenue.

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  • Hoffstot Building

    Hoffstot Building at 811 Liberty Avenue
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    Originally a building with five floors, built in 1886; a sixth floor was added in 1892 with considerable skill. We have more pictures of the building from two years ago; the picture above is a composite of six different photographs, so it is very big if you enlarge it.

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  • Gateway Station

    Gateway Station above the ground
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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  • Let Spear Feather Your Nest

    Spear & Company

    For a century, this section of Penn Avenue was the furniture district, and Spear and Company had one of the largest stores. The building was designed by Charles Bickel, who festooned it with terra cotta in blue and white.

    The picture above comes from 1915. The original is at Historic Pittsburgh; Father Pitt has brightened the shadows a little to bring out more detail.

    Terra Cotta
    Terra cotta
    Blue and white terra cotta
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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  • Exchange Way

    Exchange Way

    Exchange Way is an ancient alley that has served the backs of buildings on Liberty Avenue and Penn Avenue for two centuries or more. It has never been completely continuous, and a two-block interruption caused the name of the stub of the alley that branched off Cecil Way to be forgotten, so that it was renamed Charette Way when the Pittsburgh Architectural Club opened a clubhouse with its entrance on the alley. But originally that alley was part of Exchange Way, too.

    A good alley is a symphony of textures, and some of Father Pitt’s favorite pictures are black-and-white photographs of alleys.

    Exchange Way
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  • Dimling’s Ghost Sign on Exchange Way

    Dimling’s Candy Shops sign

    Old Pa Pitt recommends wandering in back alleys as a hobby. You never know what you might find, from antique sculpture to ghost signs. Dimling’s hasn’t had a candy shop here for more than fifty years, but this sign still sits on the back of the building the shop once occupied, facing Exchange Way at the intersection with Tito Way.

    When it was prospering, Dimling’s Liberty Avenue shop occupied two buildings and covered them with tiles that made the entire Liberty Avenue façade a giant billboard. The picture above is a detail of a much larger photograph taken by the Pittsburgh City Photographer in 1965: it may still be encumbered by copyright (although probably not, unless the copyright was renewed), but if the city of Pittsburgh wants a fee for using it Father Pitt can probably afford a quarter or so.

    By the 1970s, the buildings were still a billboard for Dimling’s, but a photo from 1973 shows that the tenants were Arthur Treacher’s, an adult theater, and a massage parlor.

    The wheel of history kept turning, however, and the restoration of Liberty Avenue brought these buildings back to respectable use. Peeling away the tiles revealed the old Victorian fronts, which have been lovingly restored and now make up part of the extraordinary Victorian streetscape of Liberty Avenue in the Cultural District.

    800 block of Liberty Avenue
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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  • Fulton Bell Foundry

    120 Boulevard of the Allies

    This building seems to date from before the Civil War, possibly the 1850s. It was designed in the very free interpretation of Italian Renaissance that was popular at the time; later architects would have studied their historical precedents more closely, and later architects than those would have repudiated historical precedent altogether.

    The building originally belonged to the Fulton Bell Foundry, which made bells for decades in downtown Pittsburgh. It’s a remnant of Victorian Second Avenue. All the remnants of Second Avenue downtown are on the south side of the Boulevard of the Allies; the street was widened in the 1920s by tearing out the buildings on the north side.

    Lintels

    The well-preserved carved stone lintels have been lovingly cleaned.

    Fulton Foundry
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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