Category: Downtown

  • Wildberg Building

    Wildberg Building

    “Penn avenue always has been and seems to continue to be the Mecca of furniture houses,” wrote George Esterhammer in the Pittsburg Press in 1905,1 and indeed Penn Avenue between Ninth and Tenth was lined with huge furniture dealers on both sides for more than a century. (See Spear and Company, for example.) Mr. Esterhammer was the architect of this building, which was designed to the latest fireproof standards, including a 10,000-gallon tank on the roof and sprinklers throughout.

    Architect’s drawing of the Wildberg building

    “The fireproof floors will be covered with narrow white maple,” Mr. Esterhammer continued, “thus allowing to display to better advantage the beauty of carpets and rugs. The front on Penn Avenue will be of plate glass, Cleveland sandstone, buff brick and ornamental fire flashed terra cotta. The main entrance and the stories above are a special feature, highly ornamented and will, in the opinion of the writer, be striking and attractive.”

    The architect’s elevation was published with the article, so we can compare the building as designed to the building as it stands now. The crest has been lost, but other alterations have been minimal. The ground floor has been sensitively updated for a restaurant and storefront, but overall the building makes very much the same impression it must have made when it was new. “Altogether,” said Mr. Esterhammer, “Mr. Wildberg’s new building will lift up its head proud among its neighbors,” and it still does.

    Entrance
    Perspective view
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
    1. “Penn Avenue Improvement,” Pittsburg Press, June 18, 1905. The name is spelled “Easterhammer” above the article, but “Esterhammer” in the illustration caption and in other construction listings we have seen. He was a member of the Deutsch-Amerikanischen Techniker-Verband, and in their membership listings his first name is spelled “Georg.” ↩︎

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  • B. F. Jones Building

    B. F. Jones Building

    Built in 1881, this is the only remaining downtown work of Joseph Stillburg—as far as old Pa Pitt knows, but he still hopes for surprises. Stillburg was a very big deal in Pittsburgh in the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, but most of his buildings have disappeared. They were prominent buildings in their time—the Pittsburgh Exposition buildings, for example, and the Bissell Block—but they were replaced by other even grander projects as the land they were built on became even more valuable (or, in the case of the Exposition buildings, they were taken down for Point Park).

    This building is a symphonic fugue of perfectly balanced themes and rhythms woven into a composition that must have been strikingly modern in 1881. It has been restored and renovated with good taste, and it is ready for another century and a half of use.

    B. F. Jones Building
    Crest of the building
    Ornament
    Ornament
    B. F. Jones Building from the west
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

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  • 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

  • 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

  • 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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