Preservationists fought a losing battle to save these buildings, not because any one of them was an architectural masterpiece, but because the 100 block of Market Street was one of the few remaining blocks downtown lined with mid-Victorian buildings on both sides. They predated not only the skyscraper age but also the age of six-storey commercial palaces that preceded the skyscrapers.
If there is any silver lining to the demolition, it is that the open space allows a full view of the buildings on the other side of the street, without resorting to too much photographic trickery.
Not that old Pa Pitt has ever been above photographic trickery, as he demonstrated a few months ago with a picture of the whole block of condemned buildings before they came down:
This building was put up in two stages. It was built in 1902 as a seven-story building; two years later six more floors were added. Originally it had a cornice and a Renaissance-style parapet at the top, without which it looks a little unfinished.
From The Builder, April 1904. The architect, as we see in the caption, was James T. Steen, who had a thriving practice designing all sorts of buildings, including many prominent commercial blocks downtown. This was probably his largest project.
This was built as the Pittsburgh Hilton, which opened in 1959. William Tabler, the house architect for Hilton Hotels, designed the main building, which is a box of square windows. Originally the parts between the windows were gold-colored aluminum, but that was painted over to remove the last trace of anything exciting about the building.
In 2014, after years of delays and a change of ownership, a new lobby addition opened on the front of the building, designed by Stephen Barry of Architectural Design, Inc. In old Pa Pitt’s opinion, the addition does not belong on this building. It belongs on a much more interesting building. Here it looks like some sort of parasite attacking the main structure. Nothing about it matches the original building in shape or color, and it is too interesting not to draw attention to itself as something that does not belong here.
At first glance this looks like a postmodernist building from the 1980s, and your first instinct is half right. It was originally an early ten-storey skyscraper built for the Shields Rubber Company in 1903. In 1989, it got a heavy postmodern makeover, with an extra floor at the top.
Left to right: the Benedum-Trees Building (built 1905 as the Machesney Building, architect Thomas Scott); the Investment Building (1927, John M. Donn); and the Arrott Building (1902, Frederick Osterling).
Most of us walk right by this building without giving it much thought, but it stands for a momentous transition in the history of the city. According to the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, it is probably the last building constructed as a single-family house in downtown Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh began in the small triangle that is downtown today, and through the first half of the 1800s, a large part of the population remained within those limits. The city was a warren of narrow streets and narrower alleys where little houses crowded with stores and workshops. After the Civil War, though, the land downtown simply became too valuable to build houses on. The family who built this Italianate house on Penn Avenue, where a number of well-to-do families still lived, could not have guessed that they would be the last to build a house in the Triangle, but they would certainly have been aware that the city was changing rapidly.
The Italianate details need a bit of polishing up, but they are still well preserved.
This short alley no longer has a street sign, but it still appears on maps as Charette Way, which seems like a peculiar name for an alley.
From OpenStreetMap, licensed under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) by the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF).
A “charette” is a term well known to architects: it’s a session of intense work to meet a deadline. Supposedly it comes from the charrette or cart that used to come around to collect the drawings at the French architectural schools, with the students frantically putting the final touches on their work as the cart rumbled along. The magazine of the Pittsburgh Architectural Club for many years was called The Charette.
In 1928, the Pittsburgh Architectural Club got itself club rooms with an entrance on the right-hand side of this tiny alley, and with the aid of some friends in government, Charles Stotz, the club president, managed to have the alley renamed “Charette Way.”
The passer-by will notice a new street sign marking the little alley leading off Cecil Place. To many the name will mean nothing more than another odd street name. To the few who recognize the French origin of the word it will seem to be quite appropriate with the store trucks constantly entering and leaving the picturesque little street, but for those interested in using the attractive doorway entering off the right side of the alley, the name “Charette Way” has considerable significance. It is a curious fact that the Architectural Club is not only in possession of an ideally central down-town location, but has also been able to christen the alley which it fronts. We direct the attention of the skeptics to the City Ordinance reproduced herewith. The prompt execution of this bit of business is due to the cooperation of Councilman W. Y. English, to whom the Club at its last meeting extended a unanimous vote of thanks.
AN ORDINANCE—Naming an Unnamed Way lying between Penn Avenue and Liberty Avenue and running from Fifth Avenue to The Rosenbaum property line, “Charette Way.”
SECTION 1. Be it ordained and enacted by the City of Pittsburgh, in Council assembled, and it is hereby ordained and enacted by the authority of the same. That an Unnamed Way lying between Penn Avenue and Liberty Avenue and running from Fifth Avenue to The Rosenbaum property line, be and the same is named “Charette Way.”
SECTION 2. That any Ordinance or part of Ordinance conflicting with the provisions of this ordinance be and the same is hereby repealed so are as the same affects this Ordinance.
