Father Pitt

Category: North Side

Stone Maidens, Allegheny Center and Mount Washington

When the new Post Office and Federal Building was designed in 1889 (it opened in 1892), the sculptor Eugenio Pedon, who had the franchise for decorating federal buildings, contributed two identical groups of allegorical statues to go over the entrances: Navigation, Enlightenment, and Industry. When the building came down in 1966, the groups were rescued and split up. One set of Navigation and Enlightenment ended up here at Allegheny Center, where they’re known as the Stone Maidens.

The old Post Office and Federal Building. If you enlarge the picture, you can see the Pedon statues above the entrance at the fourth-floor level.

Navigation. If the faces and bodies seem disproportionately elongated, remember that we are meant to be looking up at them from far down in the street; the sculptor adjusted his perspective accordingly.

Enlightenment. The twin statue of Enlightenment ended up at the corner of a Rite Aid parking lot on Mount Washington. Below we see her trying to hold back the clouds of darkness, which goes as well for her as it always does.

Kodak EasyShare Z981; Nikon COOLPIX P100.

One of the statues of Industry ended up at Station Square, and old Pa Pitt will try to remember to get her picture soon and complete the set.

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May 21, 2025
Some Details of the Old Presbyterian Hospital, North Side

A few months ago Father Pitt published a view of the front of the old Presbyterian Hospital on the North Side, which is where Presby lived before it moved to Oakland to become the nucleus of the medical-industrial complex there. Since he was walking by the building again the other day, old Pa Pitt thought he would add a few more details.

Taken in January, 2025, with a Kodak EasyShare Z1285.

After Presby moved out, this site was used as Divine Providence Hospital for many years. The last we heard, the building was mostly vacant, but was being considered for conversion to “affordable” apartments.

We can just make out the ghosts of letters spelling out “DIVINE PROVIDENCE HOSPITAL.”

If we cannot find a use for a building, Mother Nature will.

Nikon COOLPIX P100.

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May 15, 2025
St. Peter’s Church, North Side

Andrew Peebles was the architect of St. Peter’s, which was dedicated in 1874. In 1876, it became the cathedral of the new Roman Catholic Diocese of Allegheny, carved out of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, which was left with all the debt while the new Diocese of Allegheny took all the rich churches. That went about as well as you might expect, and in 1877 the Diocese of Allegheny was suppressed and its territory reabsorbed by Pittsburgh. But a church never quite gets over being a cathedral.

In 1886, a fire ravaged the building and left nothing but the walls standing. Fortunately Peebles’ original plans were saved, and so the restoration, which took a year and a half, was done to the original design.

The rectory was built with a stone front to match the church, but the rest of the house is brick.

Nikon COOLPIX P100.

We also have a picture of the front of St. Peter’s at night.

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May 11, 2025
Allegheny High School

Allegheny High School, now the Allegheny Traditional Academy, has a complicated architectural history involving two notable architects at three very different times.

From Art work of Pittsburgh, part 3 (Chicago: W. H. Parish, 1893), with thanks to “Camerafiend” for making the picture available.

The original 1893 Allegheny High School on this site was designed by Frederick Osterling in his most florid Richardsonian Romanesque manner. This building no longer exists, but the photograph above gives us a good notion of the impression it made. The huge entrance arch is particularly striking, and particularly Osterling; compare it with the Third Avenue entrance of the Times Building, also by Osterling.

In 1904, the school needed a major addition. Again Osterling was called on, but by this time Richardsonian Romanesque had passed out of fashion, and Osterling’s own tastes had changed. The Allegheny High School Annex still stands, and Osterling pulled off a remarkable feat: he made a building in modified Georgian style that matched current classical tastes while still being a good fit with, and echoing the lines of, the original Romanesque school.

The carved ornaments on the original school were executed by Achille Giammartini, and we would guess that he was brought back for the work on the Annex as well.

A war memorial on the front of the Annex. Twenty-two names are inscribed. Everyone who went to Allegheny High in those years knew someone who was killed in the Great War.

By the 1930s, the school was too small again. The original school was torn down, and Marion Steen, house architect for Pittsburgh Public Schools (and son of the Pittsburgh titan James T. Steen) designed a new Art Deco palace nothing like the remaining Annex. The two buildings do not clash, however, because there are very few vantage points from which we can see both at once.

The auditorium has three exits, each one with one of the three traditional masks of Greek drama above it: Comedy, Meh, and Tragedy.

The pictures of the masks were taken in 2014 with a Kodak EasyShare Z1485.

Nikon COOLPIX P100.

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May 8, 2025
International Harvester Building, North Side

International Harvester was a big maker of farm equipment, but also of trucks and sport utility vehicles before anyone knew that they were sport utility vehicles. This was the company’s facility in Pittsburgh, built right on the railroad near the North Side yards.

Fortunately the building was never abandoned—it later became the headquarters of the Harry Guckert Company—so that it was in good structural shape when it was converted to loft apartments about two years ago, as we read in this article at Next Pittsburgh. The building is now on the National Register of Historic Places. According to a draft of the nomination, the architect was August C. Wildmanns.

Kodak EasyShare Z981.

Map.

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April 17, 2025
Lake Elizabeth, Winter and Summer

Lake Elizabeth in West Park on the North Side. Above, just a few weeks ago. Below, in 1999.

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March 22, 2025
Presbyterian Hospital, Allegheny Center

Built in 1906, this was the main building of Presbyterian Hospital until it moved to vastly larger facilities in Oakland in the 1930s. The building was later part of Providence Hospital, and now is used for offices.

Kodak EasyShare Z1285.

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February 25, 2025
Arch Street, North Side

Arch Street, which is now included in the Mexican War Streets despite not bearing the name of a battle or a general, is a typical North Side combination of dense rowhouses, small apartment buildings, and backstreet stores. Here are just a few sights within one block of the street.

An exceptionally elaborate Queen Anne house whose owner has used bright but well-chosen colors to emphasize the wealth of detail on the front.

Two modest houses from before the Civil War; the brick house at left is dated 1842.

A small apartment building with a well-balanced classical front.

Some fine woodwork surrounds a front door.

The colorful dormer steals the show, but enlarge the picture to appreciate the terra-cotta grotesques on the cornice.

This little building looks as though it dates from the 1920s. Although it is quite different in style from its neighbors, it fits harmoniously by sharing the same setback and similar height.

A backstreet grocery that is currently functioning as a backstreet grocery—an unusual phenomenon in city neighborhoods these days. The apartment building above it has some interesting and attractive brickwork.

Sony Alpha 3000.

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February 24, 2025
Store and Apartments on North Charles Street, North Side

This section of North Charles Street has had at least four names. It began as Union Avenue; then it took on the name of Taggart Street, the continuation of the street to the south; then, when Allegheny was absorbed by Pittsburgh, Charles Street, the continuation of the street to the north and east, was renamed Taggart Street, to distinguish it from Charles Street on the Hill, which itself was soon renamed Elmore Street; and then for some reason the whole street was renamed Charles Street North, which has gradually turned into North Charles Street.

At any rate, under all its names, this used to be the central street of a narrow neighborhood in the valley or ravine leading up to Perry Hilltop. Whole streets crowded with little frame houses have disappeared, leaving occasional isolated survivors. This substantial brick building may go back as far as the 1870s, though if so it has been heavily altered; or it may have replaced another brick building of similar dimensions. Either way, it is an interesting building to look at, so we need no more excuse for publishing its picture.

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

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February 21, 2025
A Big Man’s Tiny House

Sony Alpha 3000.

This tiny house on Arch Street, which is now part of the Mexican War Streets Historic District, is one of the less distinguished houses from an architectural point of view. Crammed into a half-size lot beside a much larger house, it has nothing but a little plaque on the front to tell you that a great man once lived here. This was the home of George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., when he invented the Ferris wheel.

The great wheel was conceived as an answer to the Eiffel Tower. The Exposition Universelle in Paris had attracted the admiration of the world with the world’s tallest structure. Chicago was planning the World’s Columbian Exposition: what could possibly outdo the Eiffel Tower? George Ferris, until then a moderately successful engineer in Pittsburgh, designed the great wheel, and it was a success.

A few numbers will show what a colossal construction this was. It had 36 cars. Each car had 40 seats, with room for 20 more people standing. Altogether, more than two thousand people could ride the Ferris Wheel at once.

View from one gondola to the gondolas on the other side of the wheel. Note the relative size of the people in the cars. (From the collection of the Brooklyn Museum.)

The Lumiere Brothers, pioneer moviemakers, captured the wheel in motion in 1896.

George Ferris never made much money from his great wheel; in fact he believed that the fair promoters had cheated him out of his share of the profits. In November of 1896, just three and a half years after the fair opened, Ferris died of typhoid fever. He never got rich enough to move out of this tiny house on Arch Street.

February 18, 2025