Cy Hungerford was a Pittsburgh legend. He drew editorial cartoons for more than seventy years, fifty of those years for the Post-Gazette. In this cartoon from August 11, 1927, he depicts poor Uncle Sam walking a tightrope labeled “The Sacco-Vanzetti Case” over Niagara Falls. Old Pa Pitt took this cartoon from a microfilm archive and cleaned it up quite a bit, so that it looks more like Hungerford’s original drawing and less like a scratched and grubby microfilm. It is out of copyright in the United States, so anyone can use it. In countries where copyright depends on the life of the author, be aware that Hungerford lived till 1983. It is very unlikely that his estate will worry about someone using his cartoons in Luxembourg or Malaysia, but old Pa Pitt, who is based in the United States, is not responsible for foreign copyright laws.
Thanks to a kind correspondent, old Pa Pitt has an opportunity to prove himself right about one thing and wrong about something else. Being wrong is almost as good as being right, because it means learning something new.
Our correspondent sent two pictures that appeared in an advertisement that ran in the Post-Gazette in 1929. The ad was for Frigidaire refrigerating systems, as used in prominent buildings in the city.
First, the Cathedral Mansions apartments on Ellsworth Avenue.
At that time we mentioned that we suspected it had lost a cornice. Father Pitt was right about that, as you can see from the 1929 picture.
Now, here’s the one we were wrong about:
This building is now an apartment building called Hampshire Hall. As “Haddon Hall” it was a hotel with apartments. Here is what it looks like today:
The obvious change is that modernist growth on the front. When he published these pictures, Father Pitt wrote, “It appears to be a glass enclosure for what was once an elegant verandah.” That is wrong. It seems to have been a replacement for the original dining room or lounge of the hotel. It was probably put there in about 1961: a newspaper ad from December 22, 1961, promotes the Walt Harper Quintet’s appearance at the “newly remodeled Haddon Hall Lounge.”
Many thanks to our correspondent for the pictures, which give us new information about these two notable buildings. If anyone knows the architect of either one, but especially Haddon Hall/Hampshire Hall (which is in a distinctive modernist-Renaissance style), Father Pitt would be grateful for the information.
Since we were talking about T. C. McKee a couple of days ago, here is a work of his even earlier than the Shady Avenue Cumberland Presbyterian Church. It was built in 1888, according to Justin P. Greenawalt (PDF), and it was brand new (or possibly still a design on paper) when this advertisement was published in the Allegheny County Centennial Souvenir of 1888. McKee would have been about 21 when he designed this building. It stood on Third Avenue about where PPG Place is now.
An old postcard from Father Pitt’s accumulation of Pittsburgh miscellanea; we do not know the date, but it must be before 1952, since the back of the card specifies “PLACE ONE CENT STAMP HERE.”
No one knows exactly what the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus looked like when it was intact. It was one of the Seven Wonders of the World, but today all that is left is a bit of rubble. The rough outlines are generally known, however, and the speculative reconstructions of it have been productive of more monumental architecture in Pittsburgh than perhaps any other classical building. At least half a dozen buildings in Pittsburgh were inspired by it: Soldiers & Sailors Hall, the Hall of Architecture at the Carnegie, Presbyterian Hospital, Allegheny General Hospital, the Gulf Building, and the Wilkins mausoleum in the Homewood Cemetery. Above is James Fergusson’s version of how it must have looked, and Fergusson’s was one of the most influential reconstructions. See if you can spot the resemblance with the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial by Henry Hornbostel:
This article on the Daniel O’Neill monument appears at Father Pitt’s Pittsburgh Cemeteries, but he thought his regular readers here might also enjoy seeing the portrait of an important figure in Pittsburgh’s literary history.
An editor’s work is never done. Here is Daniel O’Neill, owner and editor of the Dispatch, still at work 145 years after his death in 1877. Though he died at the young age of 47, he had already built the Dispatch into Pittsburgh’s most respected newspaper, a position it held until the great newspaper massacre of the early 1920s, when paper shortages and rising costs forced hundreds or thousands of papers across the country out of business. Before that there had been at least a dozen English dailies in Pittsburgh, not to mention three in German and several in other languages.
The monument itself is a harmoniously eclectic mix of styles in the Victorian manner: classical elements dominate, but Mr. O’Neill’s desk rests on an Egyptian pedestal.
Why is there a narrow strip of forest between these two streets on Mount Washington? And, for that matter, why was the neighborhood laid out with two streets so absurdly close together, so that nothing fits between them but a narrow strip of forest?
You already know the answer, of course, because you read the title of this article. It used to be an incline.
Several inclines, of which two are still going, went up Mount Washington from the South Side. Only one went down the back slope of Mount Washington: Castle Shannon Incline No. 2, which began at the upper station of the Castle Shannon Incline on Bailey Avenue and ran down along Haberman Avenue to Washington Avenue (now Warrington Avenue) in Beltzhoover. This was more or less a cable-car line, like the ones that still run in San Francisco and ran all over Pittsburgh for a brief period before electric streetcars took over. It ran for a little more than twenty years; it opened in 1892 and was closed in 1914.
This picture of abandoned freight cars along the incline, taken in 1916, shows the cable in the middle of the track.
About seven years ago old Pa Pitt published this big composite picture of the old Strand Theatre on Forbes Avenue across from Oakland. A little while ago Father Pitt came across this item in The Moving Picture World for August 14, 1915.
New House in Oakland, Pa.
Natatorium Building Being Remodeled—Will Be Made Into Up-to-Date Picture Theater—Located Between Atwood and Meyran Avenues—Designed to Seat 750 People—Those Who Are Interested in the New Project.
Special to Moving Picture World from Pittsburgh News Service.
OAKLAND is to have a new moving picture theater in the Natatorium building. The lower floors, being remodeled, show careful attention to details and give promise of a thoroughly up-to-date and practical theater. The building, between Atwood and Meyran avenues, runs to a paved alley way in the rear, and with this private alley complies fully with the city laws on the subject of exits. The plans call for the abandonment of the present swimming pool and the lowering of the auditorium floor to the Forbes street level. The present stone steps leading to the entrance will be done away with. The auditorium ceiling will be 24 feet high. The floors above the auditorium will not be disturbed by the alterations, although the stairs will be moved to the left of the entrance, and a new elevator lobby constructed. It will seat 750 persons.
The owners of the Oakland Natatorium building are the Oakland Amusement Company; George H. Schwan is the architect; C. H. Keer Construction Company are the contractors, and the lessee is James B. Clark. The operation company will be the Rowland and Clark theaters, which also operates the Regent, in East Liberty, the Belmar in Homewood, the Arsenal in Lawrenceville, the Bellevue and the Oakland and the Schenley Photo play in Oakland, which latter house will be discontinued on the completion of the new house. Construction starts July 26, and the date set for the opening is November 1.
Was this the building? None of Father Pitt’s sources had mentioned that it was a converted bathhouse, but once he had the name “Natatorium” it took only a short time to find this picture:
This is from the Historic Pittsburgh site, which has an incredible collection of treasures. Unfortunately they are served up by a fiendishly complicated system that builds each picture from a mosaic of tiny pieces, so the high-resolution versions are impossible to get with any reasonable amount of work. Librarians often restrict access to public-domain works, either out of proprietary feeling or, more likely, out of a hope that it will make them less likely to get sued if they make a mistake about the copyright status. It is also true that “There may be a fee to acquire hi-res files,” according to the site FAQ, which adds a profit motive.
At any rate, here’s our building, with a sign out front advertising “Turkish Bath—Swimming Pool,” and a huge painted sign on the side probably advertising the same (we can see only the bottom of the sign in this picture). We can also see the Iroquois Building across the street, and the Schenley Hotel in the distance. So, yes, the Strand Theatre was originally a high-class bathhouse.
There is a slight mystery about the architect. The article above mentions George H. Schwan, a Pittsburgh architect more famous for his work in Akron. Other sources listed Harry S. Bair, the architect of the same company’s Regent Theater in East Liberty. Perhaps one was the architect of the original building, and the other of the renovations.
