Father Pitt

Category: Mount Lebanon

  • Art Deco Details in Mount Lebanon

    Colorful Art Deco ornament on a building in the Washington Road business district, the Pittsburgh area’s most thoroughly Art Deco neighborhood.

    These splendid details are on a building that, at first glance, seems utterly undistinguished. A bit of sensitive restoration to the storefronts could emphasize the Art Deco character of the building and make it more of an ornament to its streetscape.

  • Washington Road at Alfred Street, Mount Lebanon

    Art Deco buildings line Washington Road at Alfred Street, which is about the center of the Uptown business district in Mount Lebanon. (“Uptown” in southwestern Pennsylvania is the common term for a downtown business district that happens to be on a hill.)

  • Mount Lebanon Cemetery Office

    This fine vernacular-Gothic house serves as the gatehouse and office for the Mount Lebanon Cemetery, which was founded in 1901. It’s charmingly out of place in its neighborhood, which is a later development where most of the houses date from after the First World War.

  • More Art Deco in Mount Lebanon

    Though it currently houses a real-estate agency, the terra-cotta reliefs tell us that this was built as a medical office. The splendid Art Deco eagle made it a very patriotic medical office.

  • Uptown Mount Lebanon

    A compressed view of the northern half of the Washington Road business district in Mount Lebanon, one of our more affluent urban suburbs.

  • St. Bernard’s from the Mt. Lebanon Cemetery

    Views of St. Bernard Church on a slightly snowy winter day.

  • Carvings on the Mt. Lebanon Municipal Building

    The Art Deco architecture of the Mount Lebanon Municipal Building demanded Art Deco ornamentation. Old Pa Pitt is not quite sure what the standing heads along the cornice are meant to be. He suspects either crusaders or golems.

  • Home Land Building, Mount Lebanon

    Uptown Mount Lebanon is one of the best Art Deco neighborhoods in the Pittsburgh area, and this building—otherwise a rather severe late-classical style—stands out for its bright Art Deco marquee.

    Addendum: The architect was Charles R. Geisler, according to a listing in a local architectural magazine. Source: The Charette, Vol. 7, No. 2 (February 1927): “185. Chas. R. Geisler, 205 Ferguson Building, Pittsburgh, Pa. Contract for Stephenson [sic] & Williams Apartment and Office Building was let to Fred K. Becker, Dormont. Approximately $80,000.00. Plans out on reserved plumbing, heating, tile and composition work.”

  • Deco Gothic in Mount Lebanon

    Though old Pa Pitt has not yet found any documentary evidence, he identifies this building with some confidence as an old neighborhood movie house. The marquee, the Hollywood Gothic fantasy terra-cotta front, and the shape of the building (it is fairly long from front to back) all suggest a movie theater of the silent era.


    Map

  • Tower of St. Bernard’s, Mount Lebanon

    The tower of St. Bernard’s peers over the trees in Mount Lebanon, brought to you in old-postcard colors thanks to the Two-Strip Technicolor plugin for the GIMP.