Built in 1921 for the Keystone Grocery and Tea Company, a grocery chain that did not live a long life (Father Pitt has not been able to find any reference to it after 1927), this is now Shannon Hall, student housing for the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. It is a fine example of how a utilitarian building can be made, if not beautiful, at least not ugly, by well-worked-out proportions and a tasteful choice of materials.
“Towers in a Park” was the ideal urban paradise of the International Style architects. It seldom worked well, and Father Pitt will tell you why: because the architects concentrated on the towers, and neglected the park. Gateway Center is one of the few really successful towers-in-a-park developments, and it is successful because the park is so attractive—benches everywhere, beautiful landscaping, and (of course) the vendors’ tents of the Three Rivers Arts Festival every June.
This building now houses the Wood Street station on the ground floor (and below, of course) and the Wood Street Galleries, a free museum of installation art, on the upper floors. It was put up for the Monongahela National Bank, and the architect was Edward Stotz, who also gave us Schenley High School—another triangular classical building. It makes one wonder whether Mr. Stotz printed “Specialist in Triangles” on his business cards.
The elevator towers at the corners are later additions. They make a mess of the carefully worked out proportions of the building—Father Pitt thinks they make the whole structure look a bit like a fat rabbit—but at least they are done with similar materials.
Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS.
A man silhouetted against the window in the palatial lobby of Heinz Hall.
Three of our greatest Art Deco buildings are lined up in a row on Grant Street: the Koppers Tower, the Gulf Tower, and this magnificent deco-fascist composition by the Cleveland architects Walker and Weeks. This image is put together from six separate photographs, so it is huge if you click on it; there are some small stitching errors, but overall it looks very much like the architects’ original rendering.
This rendering was published in 1916, before the building opened in 1917; but this is how the City-County Building still looks today. “Diamond Street” is now part of Forbes Avenue, except for the remnant of the outer end that veers off Forbes for one scraggly diagonal block to meet Fifth Avenue.
The Joseph Horne Department Store was Pittsburgh’s second-biggest (after Kaufmann’s, “The Big Store,” now Macy’s). The original 1897 building was designed by Boston architects Peabody & Stearns, also responsible for the Liberty Market (now Motor Square Garden) in East Liberty; additions over the next few decades greatly expanded the store. It was still going strong in the 1980s, when it was connected by a pedestrian bridge to the new Fifth Avenue Place shopping arcade; but the Horne’s chain was sold to Lazarus, which closed this store after it built a new store on Fifth Avenue, and then closed the new store down a few years later.
The building still stands, though, and you can see on the corner the brackets that hold the famous Horne’s Christmas tree, an enduring holiday tradition that has survived the demise of two department-store chains.
