Father Pitt

Category: Downtown

  • Some Details of Horne’s Department Store

    Inscription: Joseph Horne Co., with dates 1849 and 1897

    The history of the Horne’s building is a complicated one. The original building was one of the last works of William S. Fraser, one of the most prominent Pittsburgh architects of the second half of the nineteenth century. Only a few years after it opened, a huge fire burned out much of the interior. Some of the original remained, but, since Fraser had died, Horne’s brought in Peabody & Stearns, a Boston firm that also had an office in Pittsburgh, to design the 1897 reconstruction. Another fire hit the building in 1900, but most of it was saved. You can see a thorough report on the fire, with pictures, at The Brickbuilder for May, 1900.

    Horne’s department store

    In 1922, a large expansion was added to the building along the Stanwix Street side, with the style carefully matched to the 1897 original. The new building was taller by one floor, but all the details were the same, including the ornate terra-cotta cornice.

    Cornice meets cornice
    Entrance to the 1922 section of Horne’s
    Inscription with dates 1849 and 1922
    Horne’s clock
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    The Horne’s clock, a later addition, is not as famous as the Kaufmann’s clock, but it served the same purpose as a meeting place for shoppers. It is once again keeping the correct time.

  • Gateway Station

    Entrance to Gateway station
    Entrance to Gateway station
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Gateway to Gateway Center

    Entrance to the grounds of Gateway Center, with fountain in distance
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Fifth Avenue Place

    Liberty Avenue entrance to Fifth Avenue Place
    Part of the shaft of Fifth Avenue Place

  • Centre City Tower

    Centre City Tower

    Built in 1971, this is now number 23 on the list of tallest buildings in Pittsburgh. The architects were the venerable Chicago firm of A. Epstein and Sons.

    To make a more realistic-looking rendition of the building than is optically possible, old Pa Pitt adjusted the perspective on two planes. This adjustment has comical effects on the background, but the main subject looks natural now.

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  • Faces on the Keenan Building

    Keenan Building

    The Keenan Building, designed by Thomas Hannah for the Colonel Keenan who had built the Press into the city’s leading newspaper, was elaborately decorated. Although the shaft was modernized somewhat half a century ago, most of the decorations remain, and among them we find portraits in terra cotta of people who were considered important to Pittsburgh when the building was erected in 1907.

    William Penn

    William Penn, the Proprietor, who gave Pennsylvania a republican form of government.

    William Pitt

    William Pitt, friend of the Colonies, for whom Pittsburgh was named.

    George Washington

    George Washington, Father of His Country.

    Stephen Foster

    Stephen Foster, at the time Pittsburgh’s most famous composer.

    Mary Schenley

    Mary Schenley, who owned half the city and donated Schenley Park.

    Andrew Carnegie

    Andrew Carnegie, who was a big deal.

    Theodore Roosevelt

    Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States.

    Edwin Stuart

    Edwin Stuart, Governor of Pennsylvania.

    George Guthrie

    George Guthrie, Mayor of Pittsburgh.

    Terra-cotta ornaments
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    There are faces on the second floor as well, but they are identical decorative faces.

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  • Duquesne Club

    Duquesne Club

    One of the first commissions for the new firm of Longfellow, Alden & Harlow in Pittsburgh was the Duquesne Club, which is still Pittsburgh’s most prestigious club. The brownstone Renaissance palace was put up in 1887–1889 and expanded later. Above, a composite picture made from six individual photographs.

    Duquesne Club from Trinity Churchyard

    The Duquesne Club seen from Trinity Churchyard.

    Duquesne Club from the front of Trinity Cathedral

    From the front of Trinity Cathedral.

    Duquesne Club from down Sixth Avenue
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • University Line Stations Downtown

    Market Square Station

    Yesterday we spoke of the busways as bus rapid transit done right. Here we see it done…the other way. The new University Line will be what counts as “bus rapid transit” in most other cities: there will be dedicated lanes for the buses most of the way, but they will have to deal with traffic lights and dozens of at-grade intersections to get from downtown to Oakland.

    Wood Street BRT station
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Nevertheless, this will be leagues better than what we have now to get from downtown to Oakland, which is stacks of buses tied up in rush-hour traffic. Instead of street corners with little signs sticking out of poles to mark them as bus stops, we’ll have these sharp-looking stations, which will provide some shelter from the rain and a few amenities like farecard vending machines and emergency telephones. (Can you get emergency cat videos on those emergency telephones?) Here are two of the nearly complete stations downtown: Market Square, which is a short block from the Diamond, and Wood Street, which is right across the street from the Wood Street subway station.

    Addendum: A correspondent pointed out what we neglected to mention: that traffic lights at intersections will be synchronized to let buses pass through expeditiously. This is an important detail, and it is certainly true that it will make the system considerably swifter than it would be if the buses had to wait for the usual cycles. We reiterate that this will be much better than what we have now. Father Pitt would prefer a subway, but he doesn’t always get what he wants, and he is grateful for what he does get.

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  • Allegheny County Courthouse

    Allegheny County Courthouse, Pittsburgh
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
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  • Woodwell Building

    Woodwell Building

    Rutan & Russell designed this building for a hardware company that had already been on this corner—Wood Street and Second Avenue (now the Boulevard of the Allies)—for sixty years when the new building opened in 1907.1 It belongs to Point Park University now, and it is so thoroughly integrated with the buildings around it that most people probably pass it by without noticing it. But it is a unique survivor, as we’ll learn in a moment.

    Joseph Woodwell Company in 1850

    The first Joseph Woodwell hardware store was opened in 1847, and it looked like the engraving above, which was published in Fahnestock’s Pittsburgh Directory for 1850.

    A larger building was put up only ten years after the first one, and then this small skyscraper in 1907. Obviously the company was prospering, and it would continue to prosper for quite a while. The frontispiece to a Joseph Woodwell catalogue from 1927 shows us the all the Woodwell buildings up to that date.

    On the same corner for 80 years

    You notice the main Woodwell Building in a picture from 1907, and then the same building surrounded by newer construction in 1927. But although it’s the same building, it’s not in the same place.

    Until 1920, Second Avenue was a narrow street like First Avenue or Third Avenue—streets that would count as alleys in most American cities. But in 1920, when the Boulevard of the Allies to Oakland was being planned, the city began widening Second Avenue by tearing down all the buildings on the north side of the street.

    All but one. The Woodwell Building was not demolished: instead it was moved, all eight floors of it, about forty feet to the right. That makes it the sole surviving complete building on the north side of the street from before the widening project. (The Americus Republican Club survived in a truncated form.) The building gained a four-floor addition (now replaced with a more modern building) to the right on Wood Street, and yet another new building went up for the prospering Woodwell firm behind the relocated building on the Boulevard of the Allies.

    New Woodwell building
    New Woodwell building
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    So the next time you walk down the Boulevard of the Allies, pause briefly to acknowledge the Woodwell Building. It’s a stubborn survivor as well as an attractive design by one of our top architectural firms, and it has earned some respect.

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