This annex to the Demmler Brothers warehouse was put up at some time in the 1920s. In every way it is different from its neighbor, but the two have to make do with one address between them—100 Ross Street.
The main structure is reinforced concrete, with brick filling in the walls.
Doubtless built for very pedestrian commercial uses—with huge windows that provided bright light from the south all day—these two buildings nevertheless could not be seen in public until they were dressed in the proper Beaux-Arts fashion. Other more recent buildings grew up around them and then were torn down, but these have survived, and seemed to be getting some work when Father Pitt walked past them recently.
Both buildings pull from the same repertory of classical ornaments in terra cotta, but mix them up in different ways.
No. 819 is more heavily ornamented—both in the sense of the abundance of ornaments and in the sense that the individual ornaments seem weightier:
No. 821, on the other hand, is decorated with a lighter and more Baroque touch:
Urban legend says that these structures are chapels where the privileged can repent of their sins, but in fact they house the elevator mechanics and other rooftop necessities.
Of all the hundreds of lions on buildings downtown, the Romanesque lions that guard the county courthouse are the most distinctive. They used to be at street level, but the lowering of the Hump, the awkward hill that used to make navigating downtown even more difficult than it is now, left them stranded far above pedestrians’ heads.
MacClure & Spahr designed the headquarters for Jones & Laughlin, which is now the John P. Robin Civic Building. The entrance is lavishly decorated. The angle below shows off two of the most impressive lanterns in the city.
More pictures of the Jones & Laughlin Headquarters Building: front of the building, from the southeast, and the construction of the second stage of the building.
The Diamond or Market Square is our most fussed-with public space. Here we see it being completely reconfigured fifteen years ago, and that reconfiguration is now being completely reconfigured. This view of Pittsburgh has changed more than most in the past decade and a half; two landmark skyscrapers, the Tower at PNC Plaza and Tower Two-Sixty, have risen on spots once occupied by low buildings in the background.
Stanley Roush, the county’s official architect, designed this building to hold the offices that were spilling out of the Courthouse and the City-County Building as Pittsburgh and its neighbors grew rapidly. It was built in 1929–1931, and it is an interesting stylistic bridge between eras. Roush’s taste was very much in the modernistic Art Deco line, but the Romanesque Allegheny County Courthouse, designed by the sainted Henry Hobson Richardson, was a looming presence that still dictated what Allegheny County thought of its own architectural style. Roush’s compromise is almost unique: Art Deco Romanesque. We have many buildings where classical details are given a Deco spin—a style that, when applied to public buildings, old Pa Pitt likes to call American Fascist. But here the details are streamlined versions of medieval Romanesque, right down to gargoyles on the corners. Above, the Ross Street side of the building; below, the Forbes Avenue side.
One of the entrances on Forbes Avenue.
Moses with the tablets of the Law. His beard obscures the Tenth Commandment, so go ahead and covet anything you like, except—if you are Lutheran—your neighbor’s house, or—if you are Catholic—your neighbor’s wife or house. Counting up to ten is harder than it looks when it comes to Commandments, and you may need to refer to Wikipedia’s handy chart to find how the numbering works in your religious tradition.
The bridge in this medallion looks a lot like the Tenth Street Bridge, which by pure coincidence was designed by Stanley Roush.
Decorative grate with an Allegheny County monogram.
Some very expensive columns, smooth and classically proportioned but with elaborate Deco Romanesque capitals.
We have more pictures of the decorations on the County Office Building, including those gargoyles we mentioned.
October is the month when major corporations pink up the night in honor of breast-cancer awareness.
