The Bureau of Standards wanted to know what caused structural failures in bridges and how to prevent them. So…
A high-carbon steel column under test. Restrained lattice. Buckling of diagonals has begun
This picture comes from the front page of the Engineering News for July 13, 1916. The article explains some of the discoveries made possible by this huge apparatus, and would probably be very interesting to students of engineering.
From the Engineering News for July 6, 1916. Father Pitt knows of no such signs remaining in the city, but he would be delighted to have any remnants pointed out to him.
The use of concrete as material for constructing streetname signs is novel at the present time, but it has proved practicable. Two such signs are shown in Fig. 9. These were designed and installed recently by the Department of Public Works of Pittsburgh. Both post and signboard are of granite-finished concrete. The design shown at the left is modified as a Lincoln Highway marker. The signplates are separate from the post, being so constructed that they swing about a vertical axis and may be clamped at any desired angle. The letters, of a black cement composition of permanent color, are about ⅜ in. thick and dovetailed securely into the concrete of the background.
We’ve mentioned before that the Jones & Laughlin Headquarters Building was expanded upward by five floors almost a decade after it was built. It seems that the expansion was planned and provided for from the beginning, which explains how the architects, MacClure & Spahr, managed it so neatly. The Engineering News for January 18, 1917, gives us the technical details of how it was done, and includes a picture of the back of the building with the construction in progress.
An extension of five stories—planned at the time the structure was erected to its original height of eight stories—has just been added to the Jones & Laughlin Steel Co. office building in Pittsburgh. In the original construction the floorbeams of the ninth floor had been put in place and used to support a temporary roof, and the columns had been provided with splices to take the future extensions. When the addition was begun, holes were cut through the roof to enter the columns, and then these holes were housed around to keep out the rain. A stiffleg derrick hoisted the steel and then erected it.
To give access to the portion of the floor lying between the stifflegs, the loads were temporarily landed at the extreme swing of the boom. The boom was then passed back of a disconnected stiffleg and proceeded with the erection after the stiffleg had been replaced.
The old roof was wrecked as soon as the tenth-floor slabs and the new side walls of the ninth floor were in place. The floor was maintained in a fairly water-tight condition. It had originally been intended to require that the new roof be placed before the old was removed.
All materials other than steelwork, including concrete and débris from the old roof and cornice, were handled in the construction elevator at the rear of the building. Floors were built on the Witherow system, with removable steel centers on which were cast a beam-and-slab floor framing into the steel floorbeams.
McClure & Spahr were the architects, and James L. Stuart was the contractor.
So MacClure & Spahr had to design a building that would look finished at two different heights, which they managed with elegance and finesse. It is now the John P. Robin Civic Building, and the exterior is almost perfectly preserved.
Calvin Coolidge announced that he would not run for a third term in typically laconic Coolidge fashion: “I do not choose to run for President in 1928.” Pittsburgh’s great Cy Hungerford imagines why he might not want that third term. This cartoon came from a microfilm copy of the Post-Gazette; we have made some adjustments to make it look more like what Hungerford originally drew.
For some time now, old Pa Pitt has been gathering information about buildings and their architects in a spreadsheet, so that he doesn’t have to go looking for the information every time he takes another picture. It is still in its early stages, but it already has more than 200 entries. Since it might be useful to other people as well, Father Pitt has decided to publish it:
Father Pitt’s Great Big List of Buildings and Architects
You should be able to download the spreadsheet in Open Document, Excel, or any of several other formats, and you can play around with the spreadsheet without changing the original.
Henry Hornbostel imagined filling the University of Pittsburgh’s hillside site with classical temples, making a new Pittsburgh Acropolis that would be the envy of the intellectual world. The plan was never completed, because classical architecture went out of fashion too soon, and because it was supplanted by the even madder plan of putting a university in a skyscraper. But several of the classical buildings that remain on Pitt’s campus were meant to be part of this Pittsburgh Acropolis.
The image comes from an advertisement for Ruud water heaters, the amazing improvement in hot-water supplies that didn’t require servants to tend to a boiler.
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.
From Our Cities, Picturesque and Commercial, a souvenir book of Pittsburgh and Allegheny published in 1898, the year the Hotel Schenley was built. Except for the sensitively matched addition in the front and the loss of the cornice, the building looks much the same today.
Note the big expanse of nothing on the hill to the right. That was still open land belonging to Mary Schenley when the hotel was built.
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.
Here Father Pitt was right. A little while ago, we ran this picture of Cathedral Mansions as it looks today:
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.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 29, 1929, page 10. Note the exaggerated height; compare it to the proportions in old Pa Pitt’s pictures.
