The painted signs identifying this as the Hotel Hall are still clearly legible. It’s a fairly large version of the typical Pittsburgh hotel: bar on the ground floor, rooms upstairs.
The most interesting feature of the hotel is its corner entrance with iron brackets.
Chartiers Avenue is the main business street of downtown McKees Rocks; and although it has lost some important buildings, enough remains to form the basis of a revival that seems to be in its early stages already. Above, a typically Pittsburgh commercial interpretation of the Italian Renaissance.
This little building has an interesting combination of details. The upper windows have round arches, but the lintels above them are fattened into incipient Gothic arches. The multiple decorative patterns in the brick add a rug-like texture to the front.
This building is marked “HALL” on old maps, suggesting that it belonged to a lodge of some sort. It has been altered so much that it is hard to see what it originally looked like. Nevertheless, it presents a neat front, if not a well-proportioned one. The vast expanse of side wall, exposed when a more interesting neighboring building was demolished about ten years ago, cries out for a huge mural of Cubist guitars.
“Cute” is a word old Pa Pitt seldom employs, but it is hard to think of a better term for the Gothic front on this little building. It appears to be a later addition to an older building. The Gothic peak is a thin false front with nothing behind it, and it was made a little too insubstantial: it is leaning backward slightly and will probably have to be stabilized by the next owner.
The ground floor has been altered, but the original character of this corner building is otherwise well preserved. Until very recently, its neighbor was one of the finest buildings in McKees Rocks, the McKees Rocks Trust Company, a sumptuously Ionic bank that loomed paternally over the whole block. As you can see, Father Pitt was just a little too late.
Finally, this union hall is a fascinating example of contemporary architecture. The building was an undistinguished little storefront from the 1950s or so, altered so much that it was impossible to guess its original character. In 2016, however, this impressive classical front was put on, which changed the look not only of the building but even of the whole street around it. Father Pitt has seen many examples of “New Classical” architecture that make him want to hide under an Edwardian sofa, but this one does exactly what it set out to do. It has classical dignity and a little ostentatiousness without lapsing into parody. The exposed girder above the column is a wry wink at modernist architecture, but the metal canopy makes the girder seem appropriate.
In the 1880s, the old Lorenz Hufnagle property was sold off in lots and built over with little frame houses like this.
Later, when Island Avenue became a commercial district, the little frame houses were replaced by storefronts and apartment buildings—except this one, which survived almost unaltered. At some point it was sheathed in diamond asbestos-cement shingles, which are nearly perfectly preserved. It would probably cost a fortune to remove them because of the asbestos, but in this stable state they pose no danger.
One of the most cheering indicators of new vitality in McKees Rocks is the Roxian, beautifully restored and adapted as a concert venue. Its glorious terra-cotta façade looks as fresh as when the building was put up.
In its prime, this Renaissance palace on Island Avenue had four storefronts on the ground floor and three floors of apartments above. The storefronts have also been turned into apartments, but in a cheap way that could probably be reversed when McKees Rocks is prosperous again. The building is still in pretty good shape, and the details are worth appreciating, for which reason we give you a very large picture above. Old Pa Pitt especially likes the round and oval windows in the stairwells.
Across the street is a smaller building whose storefronts have also been turned into apartments, but with even less alteration. The big display windows are still there. It’s easy to imagine the ground floor becoming trendy little shops again in that rosy future when Island Avenue is a busy commercial street once more.
Most Pittsburghers know that there were once many more inclines than the two we have now; perhaps as many as seventeen running at once. Some of the vanished ones have left visible remains, like the power house for the Mount Oliver Incline. Here is another piece of an incline that most of us have probably never heard of: the Norwood Incline, which as far as old Pa Pitt knows was the only suburban incline. This little structure was a shelter for passengers waiting at the base of the incline.
The Norwood Incline was built to connect the newly developed hilltop suburb of Norwood to the streetcar line at the base of the hill in McKees Rocks. (The connect-the-dots lines on the map represent the streetcars going both ways on Island Avenue.) It was initially free to ride; later a fare of a penny was introduced, giving it the popular name “Penny Incline.”
Near the upper end of the incline was Norwood Hall, where the book of Pittsburgh’s Inclines tells us that “many sports events were held.” We presume that hall is the large frame structure marked “PAVILION” on this map.
“The two little yellow cars ran on only three rails,” we read in an unsourced quotation in Pittsburgh’s Inclines, “causing strangers to fear a mid-hillside collision; but by a deftly devised curve, the cars would suddenly switch out and pass.”
The incline closed in 1923 and was replaced by steps; the steps have since disappeared as well. But this little shelter remains, with its monograms to remind us of its history.
Unlike the adjacent church, St. Francis de Sales School found a new use when it closed, and it is still maintained. The alterations were heavy and unsympathetic, but we can still see enough of the original design to imagine the rest. The original part of the school was built in 1909; it appears to have been expanded later. This is the Margaret Street end, with the original inscription.
This end of the school appears to be a later expansion.
The open belfry in this entrance tower, and the entrance below it, suggest some Art Nouveau influence.
The dome is the star of this extraordinary building, which was put up in 1904 and is now slowly crumbling. The school behind it, heavily altered, is in use as a personal-care home; the church would be hard to find a use for even in a prosperous neighborhood. It ought to be preserved, but its most likely fate is to continue to crumble until it finally becomes too dangerous to leave standing.
Old Pa Pitt was on his way out of West Park and already late for an appointment, but when he passed this house on the McKees Rocks side of the neighborhood, he had to stop and take pictures. It is not quite like any other house he has ever seen, and the original trim is well preserved.
Now Christ Community Church, this is a typical smaller Gothic church with a corner tower. The stone has not been cleaned of its decades of soot, making this one of our dwindling number of remaining black-stone churches.
A matching Sunday-school wing includes a round-backed auditorium.
