Father Pitt

Category: Ingram

  • Ingram Station on the West Busway

    Ingram station

    Like the Crafton station, the Ingram station on the West Busway is almost exactly where the old commuter-rail station used to be.

    West Busway from Ingram station

    The busways in Pittsburgh are extraordinary accomplishments that we seldom appreciate. They are true metro lines for buses, making it possible for commuters to rocket through crowded urban neighborhoods at expressway speeds. Father Pitt always thinks rail transit would be better, but Pittsburgh stands out both as the inventor of “bus rapid transit” and as one of the few cities where “bus rapid transit” was done right.

    Ingram station
    Olympus E-20N; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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  • Ingram Public School

    Ingram Public School

    Press C. Dowler, who designed several other schools and public buildings in the Chartiers Valley, was the architect of this school, which was built in 1914. It is no longer in use, but the building is in good shape.

    Ingram Public School
    Date stone with date 1914
    Ingram Public School
    Bricks in a woven pattern

    Throughout his long career, which went from Romanesque through classical through Art Deco to modernism, Dowler used simple materials to weave interesting geometric decorations.

    Ingram Public School
    Olympus E-20N; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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  • A Few Houses in Ingram

    25 Vancouver Avenue

    Ingram, a pleasant little borough in the Chartiers Valley, has a typically Pittsburgh assortment of house styles, from working-class frame houses to grand mansions. Here are just a few houses snapped at random while old Pa Pitt was taking a short stroll near the Ingram station. Above and below, a stately foursquare whose large lot makes room for a curved wraparound porch and sunroom.

    25 Vancouver Avenue
    83 Ingram Avenue

    A Dutch Colonial that preserves its wooden shingles.

    83 Ingram Avenue
    16 and 18 Vancouver Avenue

    What appears at first glance to be another foursquare is actually a duplex, although it might have been built as a single-family house.

    16 and 18 Vancouver Avenue
    91 Ingram Avenue

    A tidy cottage that probably dates from the 1920s. Note the fat tapered Craftsman-style columns in front.

    1 Wheeler Avenue
    Olympus E-20N; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    A huge, rambling center-hall house. Father Pitt suspects that the corner projection, which now has a flat roof, originally supported a square turret.

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  • First Presbyterian Church, Ingram

    First Presbyterian Church (now Ingram Masonic Hall), Ingram, Pennsylvania

    Built in about 1898, this church was designed by James N. Campbell,1 and it displays all the usual quirks of his style, including the corner tower with tall, narrow arches and the half-round auditorium made into the most prominent feature of the building: compare, for example, Beth-Eden Baptist Church in Manchester. It has been a Masonic hall for quite a while now. There are, however, still Presbyterians right across the street: the First United Presbyterian congregation was there, and the two denominations merged in 1959.

    First Presbyterian Church (now Ingram Masonic Hall), Ingram, Pennsylvania

    In this case the Masons have not blocked in most of the windows the way men’s clubs usually do when they take over a building. An old postcard from the Presbyterian Historical Society collection shows that the basement windows have been filled with glass block, and the open tower has been bricked in. But the stained glass is still intact through most of the church.

    Postcard view of the church
    First Presbyterian Church (now Ingram Masonic Hall), Ingram, Pennsylvania
    First Presbyterian Church (now Ingram Masonic Hall), Ingram, Pennsylvania
    First Presbyterian Church (now Ingram Masonic Hall), Ingram, Pennsylvania
    First Presbyterian Church (now Ingram Masonic Hall), Ingram, Pennsylvania
    Dormer
    First Presbyterian Church (now Ingram Masonic Hall), Ingram, Pennsylvania
    First Presbyterian Church (now Ingram Masonic Hall), Ingram, Pennsylvania
    First Presbyterian Church (now Ingram Masonic Hall), Ingram, Pennsylvania
    Olympus E-20N; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.
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  • Georgian Mansion in Ingram

    Georgian mansion in Ingram, Pennsylvania

    An exceptionally splendid instance of the turn-of-the-twentieth-century interpretation of Georgian architecture from the days when the Colonial Revival was beginning to gather steam.

    Georgian mansion in Ingram, Pennsylvania
    Georgian mansion in Ingram, Pennsylvania
    Georgian mansion in Ingram, Pennsylvania
    Olympus E-20N; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.