Father Pitt

Category: Larimer

  • Larimer School

    Larimer School

    For forty years this school stood abandoned and rotting. The main building, put up in 1896, was designed by Ulysses J. Lincoln Peoples, who also designed an addition in 1904 for the rapidly growing neighborhood. An auditorium-gymnasium addition was designed by George M. Rowland in 1931. The school closed in 1980, and then it just sat while the neighborhood crumbled around it.

    Photo by Lee Paxton, 2011
    Photo by Leepaxton at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

    This is how the school looked in 2011, when the indefatigable Lee Paxton, who photographed nearly every Pittsburgh landmark for Wikipedia, stopped to snap its picture. But look at that same Larimer Avenue façade today:

    Larimer Avenue façade

    Doesn’t that make you happy?

    Sign for Ora Lee Carroll House at Cornerstone Village

    The restoration was done as part of the huge Cornerstone Village housing development, a mixed-housing community that has brought attractive new housing to long-neglected Larimer. All the beautiful details that Mr. Peoples, Mr. Rowland, and dozens of nameless craftsmen left for us have been scrupulously preserved, cleaned, and made to look almost new.

    Larimer Avenue end

    This is the Larimer Avenue end of the building, which has a grand entrance—but not the grandest entrance.

    Larimer Avenue entrance
    Larimer Avenue entrance
    Larimer Avenue façade

    Around the corner on Winslow Street is the original main entrance to the 1896 building.

    Winslow Street entrance
    Winslow Street entrance

    But even this is not the grandest entrance.

    1904 addition

    In 1904, an addition was built to the southeast of the main building. A new entrance was built linking the main building to the addition, and this is the grandest entrance.

    Entrance
    Entrance
    Balcony above the entrance

    When he was heading for Larimer, old Pa Pitt somehow walked out of the house without any long lenses. He will have to return soon to pick out those very amusing bracket heads, which he suspects were done by the same sculptor who did the whimsical decorations for the Western Theological Seminary. But the picture above is 20 megapixels, so if you enlarge it you will see a fair amount of detail. You will also see raindrops, because it was raining by the time Father Pitt got to the school, but he was not going to let mere weather deter him.

    Tympanum

    The child on the right is regrettably not the first or last to have lost his head when he went to school.

    Auditorium

    In 1931, an auditorium and gymnasium addition was designed by George M. Rowland. By that time styles had changed considerably. Rowland stuck to the classical idiom, but chose the simpler Doric order rather than the more florid Ionic and Corinthian of the original school and addition, and flavored the front with a dash of Art Deco.

    Front of the auditorium
    Sony Alpha 3000, Sony Cyber-shot DSC-S9.
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  • Italianate House in Larimer

    Old house in Larimer

    This double house, probably built in the 1880s, has had multiple renovations, and some of the vinyl siding has flaked off to reveal the much worse siding that preceded it. Siding has swallowed details of the window and door frames, but the carved roof brackets were grandfathered in with cutouts.

    Old house in Larimer
    Old house in Larimer
    Sony Alpha 3000.
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  • Old Filling Station in Larimer

    Filling station
    Sony Alpha 3000.

    There was a time when even the humble gas station was expected to make an attempt at being an ornament to its neighborhood, and the little buildings were designed by real architects. This little service station right at the end of the Larimer Avenue bridge probably dates from the 1920s, and it has had very few alterations. On the one hand, it makes no attempt to disguise what it is; on the other hand, the polygonal office and shop in front creates an impression of welcoming domesticity that makes the business seem like a friendly neighbor.

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  • First Italian Presbyterian Church, Larimer

    First Italian Presbyterian Church

    Right now you could buy an interesting piece of Pittsburgh Italian history. This was built as the First Italian Presbyterian Church; later it was known as Trinity Presbyterian, and then the building was taken over by the Agape Christian Fellowship. But now the building is for sale. It seems to be in good shape externally, including a spire that does not look very bedraggled at all.

    The church as built in 1903
    “The Church Building Dedicated in 1903,” from The Miracle of Trinity, 1964. The source of the drawing is not mentioned; it may be the architect’s rendering.

    The architect of the church, built in 1902–1903, was D. E. Sheridan, who was based in East Liberty.1 In addition to the usual run of middle-class houses and small commercial buildings, he had a number of clients in the South and Southwest, according to a short biography of him published in 1907, which is backed up by listings in trade journals. The half-round protrusion probably tells us that the church was built on the Akron Plan.

    First Italian Presbyterian Church

    But Italian Presbyterians? Aren’t Italians all Roman Catholics? Let the retired pastor of the church explain it:

    The opinion held by most Americans is that the Italians are staunch Roman Catholics. The fact that Rome is the seat of the Roman Pontiff and that most of the Popes have been Italian, makes this widely held opinion sound very logical.

    But the historical and religious background of the Italian Immigrants lead us to an entirely different conclusion. To understand their religious attitude, we must remember that the struggle for the unification of Italy alienated from the Roman Church practically all the Italian Patriots. The Italians knew that the Vatican had opposed the noble dreams of Mazzini and Garibaldi, and that it had gone so far as to excommunicate them. They remembered that on September 20, 1870, when the Italian troops entered the Eternal City and proclaimed it to be the capital of the United Kingdom of Italy, the Pope issued a scathing protest against the Italian Government and locked himself in the Vatican. This anti-Italian stand of the Vatican, coupled with the corruption of the clergy, alienated most of the intelligent, patriotic Italians from the Roman Catholic Church. They retained a sentimental attachment to the church, but had no respect for the Clergy. This understandable politico-religious attitude became known as “anticlericalismo.”

    Many of the Italian immigrants who settled in East Liberty were avowed anti-clerical. This attitude did not necessarily lead them to seek the purity of the Gospel of Salvation in Jesus Christ, but it kept them free from the oppressive domination of the priests.2

    Thus, when Presbyterian missionaries came to the neighborhood, they found a number of Italians ready to hear their message of a Christianity with no popes. The majority of Italians in Pittsburgh remained Catholic, however, and this was never a very large congregation.

    First Italian Presbyterian Church
    First Italian Presbyterian Church
    Steeple
    First Italian Presbyterian Church
    First Italian Presbyterian Church
    Sony Alpha 3000.

    It would hardly seem like Pittsburgh if we didn’t include a good batch of utility cables in at least one picture.

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  • Pittsburgh Charity Hospital, Larimer

    Pittsburgh Hospital

    Originally a Catholic hospital, later known as just Pittsburgh Hospital. Now it is the Champion City Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The main building was put up in about 1902; the architects were Schickel & Ditmars of New York,1 who were most famous for Catholic churches, including the immense Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, but also designed a number of hospitals.

    Frankstown Avenue front
    Frankstown Avenue end

    The addition on the Frankstown Avenue end has not weathered well.

    Pittsburgh Hospital
    Pittsburgh Hospital
    Pittsburgh Hospital
    Row of dormers
    Pittsburgh hospital with postwar additions
    Sony Alpha 3000.

    Postwar additions might have been designed by Press C. Dowler, who we know designed the School of Nursing behind the hospital in 1946 (which we’ll see soon).

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  • The Last Italian Shop in Larimer

    Henry Grasso Co. Inc.

    Larimer, like Bloomfield, was a German neighborhood that turned into an Italian neighborhood. The German residents mostly left as the Italian residents moved in; then, later, the Italian residents mostly left as the Black residents moved in. “White flight” is the usual term for the latter migration; Father Pitt has coined the term “Nordic flight” to describe the earlier evacuation of Northern European residents as “undesirable” Southern and Eastern Europeans moved in. If we look at a 1923 plat map of a block near this building, the names tell the story: Giordano, Romano, Bastone, Labriola, Ross, Boccella, Giaccia, Ferrara, Costa, Neff, Junker, Barni, Dettrich, Terenzio… Mostly Italian, with a few German stragglers; and it would not be surprising to find that those houses were being rented by Italian families.

    Henry Grasso Company, fromt elevation
    Sony Alpha 3000.

    This one Italian business remained in Larimer until just a few years ago. It had a convenient location at the end of the Larimer Avenue bridge, and as a restaurant supplier it did not depend on the walk-in trade, so there was no reason to move. Like many another shop in down-on-their-luck neighborhoods, it simply locked its door one day and pickled the shop as a gradually fading time capsule.

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  • Saints Peter and Paul: Our Most Endangered Landmark?

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    There are still too many endangered landmarks in Pittsburgh, in spite of a strong local preservation movement. This one is probably doomed. All that has saved it so far is that it would cost a good deal of money to tear down, and the revival of central East Liberty has not reached this part of the neighborhood yet. As much as it would cost to tear down, it would at this point cost much more to restore, and for what? No church would spend that kind of money, and it is really suitable for no other use.

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    KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

    KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

    The cornerstone is dated 1857, but that comes from the older and smaller church that preceded this building. The Rev. A. A. Lambing in 1880 described that building thus: “The church, situated on Larimer Avenue, is of brick, about 75 feet in length by 40 in width, and has a tower rising from the centre in front to the height of about 100 feet…. The church, though neatly finished, lacks the leading characteristics of any particular style of architecture.” The plaque below has the data for this building:

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