A compressed view of the northern half of the Washington Road business district in Mount Lebanon, one of our more affluent urban suburbs.
-
Uptown Mount Lebanon
-
St. Bernard’s from the Mt. Lebanon Cemetery
-
Carvings on the Mt. Lebanon Municipal Building
-
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.
-
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.
-
St. Bernard Church and School, Mount Lebanon
-
Uptown Mount Lebanon
The whole of Uptown, the central business district of Mount Lebanon, was included last year in a new Mount Lebanon Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places. The district was designated as an outstanding example of an early automobile suburb of the 1920s, but the automobile was only half the story. Until the middle 1980s, streetcars ran down the middle of Washington Road; now they run under part of Mount Lebanon in a subway tunnel, emerging behind the business district with stairway and elevator access to the middle of everything. The ideal automobile suburb is one in which an automobile is not a necessity.
Camera: Canon PowerShot S45. The streetscape above and the picture of the Rosalia building are composites.
-
Mt. Lebanon Municipal Building
Mount Lebanon is a township, technically speaking; but it feels more like a city of its own. Post-Gazette columnist Peter Leo always referred to it as “the Great State of Mount Lebanon,” which sums up how Pittsburghers think Mount Lebanese think of themselves. The central business district is “uptown”—a word that means an area outside downtown in most cities (even Pittsburgh itself), but in southwestern Pennsylvania usually means a downtown area that happens to be on a hilltop. Uptown and the surrounding area is now a national historic district, and this 1930 Art Deco building is one of its gems: it is the masterpiece of its architect, William Henry King, Jr.
A decade-old article from the Trib has quite a bit of good information about the building.
Camera: Canon PowerShot S45. The picture of the whole building above is a composite of four photographs.
-
Deer Tracks in the Snow
Late-afternoon sunshine highlights deer tracks through the snow in a little glen in Mount Lebanon.
