Father Pitt

Category: Highland Park

  • Eaglemoor Apartments, Highland Park

    Eaglemoor Apartments

    These three attached units were originally named Howard, Delaware, and Norfolk, and you can still barely make out the ghosts of those names above the three entrances. They were built in 1901.

    Two of the three units have had their balconies filled in, apparently to make closets, judging by the floor plans on the Mozart Management page for the Eaglemoor. The third is almost certainly what all three originally looked like.

    Norfolk Apartments
    Eaglemoor

    Some paint is being touched up along the side.

    Update: A correspondent with inside information mentions that the new paint job is meant to return the apartments to something like their original appearance. (We’ll have to come back soon to see the results.) The balconies did indeed turn into closets many years ago.

    Mozart Management has two tours of this building on YouTube:

    And here is a map.

  • Highland Park Reservoir in 2001

    Highland Park Reservoir

    In 2002, the Water and Sewer Authority installed a microfiltration system to purify the water while keeping the Highland Park Reservoir open. This picture from 2001 shows the previous water-purification technology.

  • Elliott–Fownes House, Highland Park

    Mansion on Highland Avenue

    Flemish Renaissance is not the most common style in Pittsburgh; this is certainly one of our most splendid examples of it. It is one of the surviving millionaires’ mansions on Highland Avenue. Father Pitt’s identification of it as the Elliott–Fownes house is based on two sources. The application for the neighborhood’s historic-district designation in the National Register of Historic Places mentions it as the home of “machine politician Robert Elliott”; a 1912 book has Henry C. Fownes, founder of the Oakmont Country Club, at this address.

    Robert Elliott house
    Henry C. Fownes house

  • Belgian Block

    Belgian Block

    A surprising number of Pittsburgh streets are still paved with Belgian block, which Pittsburghers usually call “cobblestone.” (Real cobblestones are irregular round stones.) In some better neighborhoods, all the streets were paved with Belgian block. In other neighborhoods, more-or-less flat sections were paved with brick, which is much cheaper but very slippery when wet, and the more expensive Belgian block was reserved for steep slopes.

    This pavement is on Elgin Street in Highland Park.

  • Baywood

    Baywood

    Perhaps the grandest Second Empire mansion in Pittsburgh, Baywood was built in 1880 for Alexander King. The house is listed for about three million dollars, and thanks to the real-estate agents you can “experience Baywood” virtually. According to the site, the house sits on “an unprecedented 1.8 acre lot,” and readers are invited to speculate on what the word “unprecedented” means in that context.

    Baywood

  • East End Baptist Church

    East End Baptist Church

    This was built for the Second United Presbyterian Church, but the Baptists moved in in 1933 (according to the History of the Churches of the Pittsburgh Baptist Association). It is now the Union Project, an arts center and events hall.

  • St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Highland Park

    Completed in 1909, this typical Gothic church was designed by Philadelphia architects Carpenter & Crocker, who also designed Holy Cross Episcopal Church in Homewood and at least one of the Fifth Avenue mansions in Shadyside.

    Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS. The composite picture above is about 25 megapixels if you click on it.

  • Fountain and Gardens, Highland Park

    The fountain and formal gardens in Highland Park, seen from the stairs to the reservoir. Beyond is the grand entrance to the park, with Giuseppe Moretti’s “Welcome” group.

    Camera: Canon PowerShot S45.

  • Welcome Sculptures by Giuseppe Moretti at the Highland Avenue Entrance to Highland Park

     

    One of Pittsburgh’s two most famous and most prolific sculptors (the other being Frank Vittor), Giuseppe Moretti decorated the entrances to Highland Park with extraordinary bronzes. Note that these two opposite figures are matching but entirely different: Moretti sculpted them from two different models and posed them differently, thus making literally twice as much work for himself as an ordinary sculptor would.

  • The Parklane

    This 22-story International-style apartment block looms over Highland Park, a mostly residential neighborhood with no other tall buildings. It is a fine place to live, according to residents: it is well maintained, and it has glorious views unobstructed by the looming bulk of the Parklane, which dominates most other views in the area.

    Camera: Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3.