Category: Mount Lebanon

  • Southminster Presbyterian Church, Mount Lebanon

    Southminster Presbyterian Church

    Two grand Presbyterian churches stand at the two ends of Uptown Mount Lebanon. But they are different kinds of Presbyterians. The one to the north was the United Presbyterian church, but it has now become Evangelical Presbyterian. This one is now Presbyterian Church (USA).

    “In these days of mergers,” James Macqueen (himself one of our notable architects) wrote in the Charette in 1930, “one wonders why theological differences stood in the way of unity, and that these Presbyterians did not build one great building in this community instead of two with their attendant extra overhead involved. However, both of these two churches are worthy of a visit, as they show the great advance that has been made in Church work during the past few years…”

    Southminster was designed by Thomas Pringle and built in 1928.

    Southminster Presbyterian
    West front
    Front door
    West front
    Side entrance
    Quatrefoil tower ornaments

    These quatrefoil ornaments at the top of the tower can be properly appreciated with a very long lens.

    Southminster Presbyterian
    Office and education wing

    The office and education wing is done in a complementary Jacobean style. The arcade makes both a visual and a practical link to the main church.

    Office and education wing
    VDMA

    Appropriately for a building dedicated to Christian education, the Reformation slogan VDMA—Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum (“The word of God endureth for ever,” 1 Peter 1:25)—is engraved in an open book.

    We have more pictures of Southminster Presbyterian from a couple of years ago.

    Cameras: Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

  • Two Moderne Apartment Buildings in Mount Lebanon

    666 Florida Avenue

    On Florida Avenue, a street that runs behind the Uptown business district in Mount Lebanon, two apartment buildings in a toned-down version of Moderne streamlining face each other. The most striking feature of number 666 is the stairwell set into a tall groove with a two-floor window of glass blocks.

    666 Florida Avenue

    The decorative brickwork at the corners suggests quoins, but in a modernistic manner.

    Entrance to 666
    667 Florida Avenue

    Across the street is a pair of identical buildings with less streamlining and no abstract quoins.

    Entrance to 667

    Both buildings would probably have had windows with more character when they were new.

    667

    Cameras: Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Kodak EasyShare Z1285.

  • Apartment Buildings on Academy Avenue

    140 Academy Avenue

    Academy Avenue in Mount Lebanon has a mixture of single-family homes and small to medium-sized apartment buildings. We have seen some of the apartment buildings before; here are a few more.

    44 Academy Avenue

    We saw the building above once before; here it is in a different light at a different time of year. The architect was probably Charles Geisler, and buildings in variations of this same basic plan are all over Mount Lebanon and Dormont.

    36 and 34 Academy Avenue

    This is a tidy double duplex in very close to original condition. The little details make all the difference in its appearance: the tile roof overhangs, the proper windows for the era, and the little German-art-magazine ornaments in the brickwork.

    28 Academy Avenue

    Cameras: Nikon COOLPIX P100, Kodak EasyShare Z1285.

  • Cornell Gardens, Mount Lebanon

    Cornell Gardens

    Charles Geisler designed numerous apartment buildings in Mount Lebanon, Dormont, and Squirrel Hill, among other places. This one he also owned, at least when it first went up.

    The Cornell, or Cornell Gardens

    A picture of the building when it was new in 1929 (taken from a blurry microfilm copy of the Pittsburgh Press) shows us what has changed: the roof overhangs, some of which have been removed, were originally tile; the roof was flat (replaced now with a hipped roof, doubtless to solve persistent leaking problems); and the apartment windows matched the ones in the central stairwell.

    Perspective view
    Front of the building

    The entrance and stairwell are the least-changed parts of the building, and we can see how Geisler used tastefully simple arrangements of brick and tile to create apparent ornamental richness.

    Ornamental brickwork
    Entrance porch
    Porch pillar

    Cameras: Kodak EasyShare Z981; Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6.

  • The Royalton, Mount Lebanon

    Royalton
    Royalton plaque

    Le Corbusier introduced the world to the idea of the cruciform apartment building. He regarded the form as so perfect, in fact, that he proposed demolishing Paris and replacing it with a sea of cross-shaped towers.

    In Pittsburgh, cruciform buildings were a bit of a fad in the late 1940s and early 1950s, probably encouraged by the national attention lavished on Gateway Center. They do have certain advantages. A cross-shaped building can give every apartment cross-ventilation and a view of open spaces, while still putting quite a bit of building on a small lot.

    Tennyson and Van Wart were among the architects who picked up on the idea. Alfred Tennyson was a Mount Lebanon architect who would continue with a very prosperous career in the second half of the twentieth century. John Van Wart, as half of the partnership of Van Wart & Wein, had been responsible for some big projects in New York in the 1920s and early 1930s; in the middle 1930s, he moved to Pittsburgh to work for Westinghouse, and then formed a promising partnership with Tennyson. His unexpected death in 1950, probably while this building was under construction, put an end to the partnership, and Tennyson went on alone.

    Royalton apartments

    The style is typical postwar modernism, but not pure modernism. A few little decorative details, like the subtle quoins, give the modernism a slight Georgian flavor.

    Entrance
    Entrance
    200

    The scalloped woodwork, if it is not a later addition, must have been one of those details added to persuade prospective tenants that this building was, after all, respectably Colonial enough not to embarrass them.

    Royalton apartments
    Entrance
    From the garage end

    As with many Pittsburgh buildings, the question of how many floors this one has is a complicated one. The answer varies between three and six, depending on how you look at it.

    From the lower end

    Cameras: Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6; Canon PowerShot SX150.

  • 633 Washington Road, Mount Lebanon

    633 Washington Road

    This is a building you walk right past without even noticing it. One of old Pa Pitt’s favorite things to do is to show people how interesting the things they walk right past can be. This building was the subject of an article in the Charette, the magazine of the Pittsburgh Architectural Club, so we know quite a bit about it, including that it looked like this when it was just finished in 1952:

    The architect was Vincent Schoeneman, known as “Shooey,” who had a flourishing practice in the middle of the twentieth century. He was “given carte blanche” on the design, the article tells us, but put some effort into making the building fit with its prewar neighbors. Thus the curious combination of modernist and Colonial elements.

    Perspective view

    Some things have changed. The windows have been replaced, trading the twelve horizontal panes on each side for three vertical sheets of glass, which is not an improvement. The signboard that once displayed the address in letters that managed to be both modest and large has been covered with aluminum (with a dark stripe that would be perfect for the words “633 WASHINGTON ROAD” spelled out in white letters). The wooden planters are no longer there, but they have been replaced by stone benches or shelves that match the side walls. The Colonial doors have been replaced with more ordinary stock doors. Still, a good bit of the original detail remains.

    Entrance

    Cameras: Kodak EasyShare Z981; Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    The whole text of the Charette article follows, reproduced here under the assumption that the copyright was not renewed.

    (more…)
  • The Berkshire, Mount Lebanon

    The Berkshire

    We have seen the Berkshire before, but those pictures weren’t very good, so old Pa Pitt went back and got better ones. It’s a courtyard apartment building in the Mount Lebanon Historic District; as Father Pitt said the first time he visited, this building is in a simple but attractive Jacobean style, where a few effective details carry all the thematic weight.

    Gate and entrance
    Front door
    Lantern and gatepost

    Cameras: Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Nikon COOLPIX P100.

  • Mount Lebanon Station

    Mt. Lebanon Station

    A two-car train enters Mount Lebanon station from the subway tunnel that goes under part of Dormont and Uptown Mount Lebanon. Part of the platform is under reconstruction at the moment, so only the front car will open its doors.

    The Red Line is partly closed for the next two months as Pittsburgh Regional Transit sorts out an accumulated backlog of construction projects. The section from Potomac south to Overbrook Junction is still open.

    Two-car train at Mount Lebanon
    Outbound train, with stairway
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.
  • Mt. Lebanon Professional Building

    Inscription: Mt. Lebanon Professional Building

    First of all, old Pa Pitt hopes these aluminum letters are insured at replacement value, because it would be a crime against design to lose their cool perfection.

    Arthur Tennyson, a Mt. Lebanon native, was an architect who flourished in postwar Pittsburgh, when “modern” was the buzzword and simplicity was in demand. This building was designed in 1956 for medical offices. It opened in 1958, and although its population has diversified a little and a few minor alterations have been made, it remains, sixty-six years later, mostly unaltered and mostly in use for its original purpose.

    Mt. Lebanon Professional Building, front elevation

    From his preliminary sketch, we can see that the building grew a bit from Mr. Tennyson’s original conception. Because of the sloping lot, it would be hard to say exactly how much it grew; it would be safest to say that roughly a floor was added.

    Pittsburgh Press, September 23, 1956.

    The most eye-catching feature is the facing of mint-green glazed brick laid in a stack bond (that is, gridwise) rather than the usual running bond. The stack bond adds to the impression of horizontality and stability on a site where the lot plummets diagonally two floors.

    Mt. Lebanon Professional Building, perspective view from the east
    Lower end of the building

    The building was a bit unusual in that the doctors who originally had their offices here were shareholders in the building as well as tenants. “The idea of constructing the building,” said the Press article, “originated with the doctors themselves, who are share owners in Mt. Lebanon Professional Building, Inc., the backer of the project.”

    Entrance

    Mt. Lebanon Professional Building from Florida Avenue
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
  • Beverly Heights Presbyterian Church, Mount Lebanon

    Beverly Heights Presbyterian Church

    Built in about 1930, this rich stone Perpendicular Gothic church was designed by J. L. Beatty.

    Front of the church
    Left-hand entrance
    It was not old Pa Pitt who left that tripod sitting around by the entrance.
    Lantern
    Entrance from the side
    Oblique view of the front of the church
    Front of the church
    Transept
    Transept
    Transept window
    Rear of the church
    Beverly Heights Presbyterian Church

    Cameras: Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6; Canon PowerShot SX150IS.