This charming little church was built in 1912; and, having said that, old Pa Pitt has exhausted his knowledge on the subject. It now belongs to the Christ Missionary Baptist Church, which has kept it in beautiful and nearly original condition, as we can see from this photograph taken just before the dedication in December of 1912.
This little church was designed by the Hunting-Davis Company, a firm usually associated with warehouses and industrial buildings, for an Italian mission of the United Presbyterian Church.1 It is kept standing as a community center.
We last saw Meado’cots, the unique terrace designed by Frederick Scheibler and built in 1914, about a year and a half ago. Here it is again, with no other excuse than that we happened to be in the neighborhood when the sun was shining on the front.
A little modernistic apartment building whose details have been marred somewhat—the stock “picture windows” do it no favors. But enough remains that we can imagine the clean late-moderne look the architect was going for.
Edwin V. Denick was the architect of this neat little corner-tower church, which was built in 1905.1 The current congregation, the Baptist Temple Church, keeps it scrupulously tidy. “We do what we can,” one member modestly told old Pa Pitt—modestly because the man had just spent hours cleaning inside.
Old maps show that the attached parsonage was built later than the church, but it was matched very well to the style and material of the main building.
For some reason prewar service stations fascinate old Pa Pitt, so he will continue to collect them even if no one else is interested. This one was probably built in the late 1920s or early 1930s. It is a sturdy little building with well-preserved details, and you could buy it right now.
We file this under “Homewood” because city planning maps do not recognize Brushton as a separate neighborhood.
As you walk or drive down Frankstown Avenue, you might wonder what this oddly imposing building that walls in one side of the street was in its prime. The answer is that it was part of an enormous Pittsburgh Railways car barn, where streetcars went home to rest after a hard day at work. In the heyday of streetcars there were four long blocks of car barn and yard here, but this is what’s left. Since the streetcars left, it has been many things, including a bowling alley, and the otherwise forbidding wall has been festooned with colorful murals by local artists.
Homewood is showing considerable signs of revitalization, but there are still long stretches of what used to be the commercial district that are nearly deserted. Here is a block of Frankstown Avenue that seems typical of the area: about a third of the buildings demolished, a third abandoned, and a third still inhabited and straggling along. We begin with an apartment building with two storefronts that has been kept standing by low-budget renovations.
The private club “WEMCO” seems to be thriving, and the small apartment building that goes with it is not only well maintained but also kept scrupulously tidy.
Two abandoned buildings that will probably be taken down sooner or later. Because they have been abandoned, they preserve details that might otherwise have been replaced by cheap renovations.
Here is an interesting answer to the question of how to make attractive dwellings over a storefront. The grand arched entrance to the apartments sets them apart from the business downstairs and makes them feel like a real home, not a temporary way station.
This duplex with inset balconies looked a lot better before the lower balcony or porch was filled in, but we can see what it was aiming for.
Thomas Hannah designed this unusual church, which was built in about 1917.1 We find many churches in Pittsburgh where the sanctuary is upstairs, with Sunday-school rooms and social halls on the ground floor; this appears to be one of the very few where there are rooms above the sanctuary. It is still Presbyterian, but in 1961 came into the hands of the Bethesda United Presbyterian congregation.
When you look at this church, it looks back.
These houses were built in 1910, and nothing like their brisk modernity had been seen in Pittsburgh. Frederick Scheibler was our most adventurous modernist in those days, and these would have been approved by the Bauhaus ten or twenty years later.
The two houses on the upper end of the upper row have been kept in near-original condition, though they are in less than perfect shape.
In the rest of the row, different ownerships have sent the houses careening off in various directions.
Like many architects of terraces like these, Scheibler repeated this design in multiple locations. Apparently both Scheibler and his clients considered the design a success. We’ll be seeing more of these little houses.
