Father Pitt

Category: North Side

St. Peter’s Church, North Side

On a rainy evening not long ago, old Pa Pitt stopped to take a few pictures of the former cathedral of the former diocese of the former city of Allegheny.

He took a few pictures of a few details, and then the windows of heaven were opened and a drenching downpour sent him scurrying for shelter.

Andrew Peebles, one of our most important architects in the latter 1800s, designed this fine example of mid-Victorian Gothic, which was built in 1872–1874. It was a cathedral-sized church; so when, shortly after it was finished, Bishop Domenec threw Catholic Pittsburgh for a loop by coming back from Rome with the news that there was a new diocese of Allegheny, this church was ready to slip comfortably into its new role.

The new diocese, however, was a flop. Allegheny had all the rich churches; Pittsburgh had all the debt. Bickering followed, until the Pope, declaring that you kids should just settle down and let a body think for a while, suppressed the diocese of Allegheny in 1889, and Pittsburgh absorbed the territory again. In the secular world, the city of Pittsburgh would soon absorb the city of Allegheny itself.

But a diocese never really goes away in the Catholic Church, and there is still a titular bishop of Allegheny, who the last Father Pitt heard was an auxiliary bishop of Newark. And a church never forgets that it has been a cathedral.

This fine iron fence bears the mark of its makers: Cochran Bros. of Pittsburgh.

Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.

And then the rain came. But we have more pictures of St. Peter’s, as well as some pictures of St. Peter’s at night.

It’s worth noting that the cathedral was hit by a disastrous fire in 1886 that destroyed everything but the walls. But the original plans were followed in the reconstruction, and Peebles was still around to supervise, so the current church is essentially the one that was built in the 1870s.

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April 29, 2026
A. M. E. Brown Chapel, North Side
This historically Black congregation has met in this building for more than 120 years. Some of the stained glass is being restored, so old Pa Pitt will have to return for more pictures when the work is done. The architect was Frederick Sauer,¹ who specified his favorite buff Kittanning brick for the job. These streets in the central part of the North Side are tiny, and Sauer’s challenge was to cram as much church as he could into a minuscule lot. He employed the usual Pittsburgh expedient of putting the sanctuary upstairs, with Sunday-school rooms and offices on the ground floor. It seems, by the way, that old Pa Pitt succeeded in finding the architect where other local historians failed (or didn’t try), but the citation is no surprise. This buff Kittanning brick was almost Sauer’s signature, and the building looks like what would happen if you squished St. Mary of the Mount into an impossibly tiny lot.

Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
1. “Notes for the Afro-American,” Pittsburg Press, June 22, 1902, p. 7. “The plans and specifications of the new Brown chapel, Allegheny, are about completed, and in a few days Architect F. C. Sauer will advertise for bids and material.” ↩︎
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April 12, 2026
Colonel James Anderson Monument, Allegheny Center

Colonel James Anderson was the kind gentleman who opened his personal library to working boys on Saturday afternoons at his house in Manchester. One of those boys was Andrew Carnegie, who never forgot; and if you had mentioned Carnegie as the founder of free libraries in western Pennsylvania, Mr. Carnegie himself would have corrected you: “No, that was Colonel Anderson.”

Carnegie himself commissioned this monument to go with his library in Allegheny, because, as he said, “when fortune smiled upon me, one of my first duties was the erection of a monument to my benefactor.” For the sculptor he chose the best: Daniel Chester French, who was already famous for the Minute Man in Concord (Massachusetts), and would later contribute the colossus of Lincoln in the Lincoln memorial. The architectural parts of the monument were designed by Henry Bacon, who would later design the Lincoln Memorial itself. The monument we see today is a duplicate: the sculptures are original, but the original base was destroyed along with the rest of the center of old Allegheny when urban renewal came to Allegheny Center. The Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation succeeded in raising money to rebuild the base as Bacon designed it.

The monument shows the same approach to honoring a distinguished citizen that French would later take in the Westinghouse Memorial. Instead of an impressive statue of the subject, French represents his accomplishments in bronze. Here the bust of Colonel Anderson sits on top of the monument, but the main subject is a a young blacksmith’s apprentice who has paused in his work and is sitting on his anvil, absorbed in a book. That pause from manual labor to enter the realm of literature was what Colonel Anderson made possible.

Here is the artist’s mark in the bronze: “DANIEL C. FRENCH Sc.” (for “Sculpsit”) “1903.”

Fujifilm FonePix HS20EXR.

A bronze plaque duplicates the original inscription. Pedantic instincts force old Pa Pitt to point out that placing the whole inscription in quotation marks was unnecessary; but if it had to be done, the quotation marks around “working boys” should have been single.

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April 6, 2026
Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny

Smithmeyer & Pelz designed Andrew Carnegie’s first library donation—though, as the people of Braddock are proud to point out, it was the second Carnegie Library to open, since the smaller Braddock library took less time to build. The same architects had designed the Library of Congress, which turned into a quagmire from which they had a hard time extricating their careers intact. (The library part was a piece of cake; it was the Congress part that was impossible to manage.) Unlike the classical Washington library, though, this one was done in a Romanesque style, which architects seem to have instinctively hit on as more suitable for muscular industrial Pittsburgh.

After the library was damaged by a lightning strike, the Carnegie Library moved out and built a smaller branch library northward on Federal Street. This building now is the Museum Lab of the Children’s Museum.

Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.

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April 3, 2026
A Walk on Boyle Street, North Side
A short evening stroll on two blocks’ worth of Boyle Street, one of those narrow rowhouse-lined streets on the North Side near Allegheny General Hospital. The street sign above is on a corner house; the sign probably dates from the late 1800s, and the house, though altered with new windows and other adaptations, may date from before the Civil War.

The basement door makes us think of Alice in Wonderland.

This Second Empire row was probably put up in the 1870s or 1880s, replacing earlier smaller houses. Thirty years ago this was a poor neighborhood, but now much restoration is being done, without wholesale displacement of the older residents.

You have a blank wall facing an alley? We can do something about that. The mural is by Jeremy Raymer, who has beautified many spots around the city, especially in Lawrenceville and on the North Side.

An Italianate house, again altered with new windows, but preserving a splendid doorframe and some original carved wooden brackets.

An unusually attractive small apartment building whose details are well preserved. Addendum: It was built in about 1910, and the architects were Allison & Allison.¹

Fujifilm FinePix HS20EXR.
1. Philadelphia Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide, October 27, 1909, p. 684: “Architects Allison & Allison, Westinghouse Building, have prepared plans for a brick and cement apartment house, to be erected at Boyle and Hemlock streets, North Side, for W. B. Nelson. It will be of brick, with stone trimmings, hardwood finish, steam heat and electric lights.” Thanks to David Schwing. ↩︎
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March 31, 2026
Allegheny General Hospital, North Side

The main tower of Allegheny General is one of the few classic skyscrapers outside downtown, and a landmark of Art Deco in Pittsburgh, as well as a landmark of the style Father Pitt calls Mausoleum-on-a-Stick, where the top of the tower is modeled after the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. It was designed by York & Sawyer, who made a specialty of hospitals, and built in 1930. Today we’re going to pay particular attention to the grand entrance on North Avenue, which is covered with extravagant terra-cotta decorations, so we have more than thirty pictures to show you.

Many more pictures…

March 25, 2026
Telephone Exchange, Allegheny Center

Not only is this elegant palace of switching one of the few buildings left in Allegheny Center from before the great urban renewal of the 1960s, but it also preserves a memory of the extinct street layout of old Allegheny.

The architect was probably James Windrim of Philadelphia, who did most of the work for Bell of Pennsylvania in the first quarter of the twentieth century. His mission was to make these necessary industrial buildings ornaments to their neighborhoods, so that the telephone company would not face too much opposition. In the nineteenth century, it had been usual to put street signs on the corners of buildings; it was already a bit old-fashioned by the time this exchange was built, but several of the old Bell Telephone exchanges have them, and we suppose it was another way of making them seem like good neighborhood citizens. These streets no longer exist; the quarter-loop drive that turns around this corner is known as Montgomery Place.

Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

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March 18, 2026
IBM Building, Allegheny Center

This very Miesian building was designed in Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s firm after Mr. Mies had died, which, as old Pa Pitt has said before, explains how the architect, Bruno P. Conterato, got away with making it a white box on stilts instead of a black box on stilts. Since IBM left, it has been known as Four Allegheny Center.

Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.

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March 14, 2026
Buhl Planetarium

The Buhl Planetarium and Institute of Popular Science was the big science museum on the North Side before it merged with the Carnegie and moved into the Science Center.

For a while the Art Deco classical building, designed by Ingham & Boyd (or Ingham, Boyd & Pratt; Father Pitt is not sure when Pratt came into the partnership) was sparsely used for classes and other activities, but after the Carnegie moved everything into the Science Center, the Children’s Museum took over the building for a huge expansion.

Sony Alpha 3000.

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February 28, 2026
Carnegie Hall, North Side

The Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny, Andrew Carnegie’s first donation (and the second one to open, after Braddock), set the pattern for many of the larger libraries to come: it included not only a library but also a music hall, so that the building gave the people of the city a palace of culture. This is the first Carnegie Hall ever: the one in Braddock was a later addition to the library. The architects of this building were Smithmeyer & Pelz, who had earned their library-drawing credentials by winning the competition to design the Library of Congress. First Smithmeyer and then Pelz would later be thrown off the Library of Congress job, because it’s hard to work on a huge government project that’s eagerly watched by every newspaper in the nation and supervised by the entire United States Congress. They probably found it much easier to deal with Mr. Carnegie. Nevertheless, all Mr. Carnegie’s other libraries in Pittsburgh were designed by Longfellow, Alden & Harlow, or just Alden & Harlow, who became his preferred firm and knew exactly what he wanted.

The music hall is now in use as the Hazlett Theater.

The main library was damaged years ago by a lightning strike, which provoked the library to move out to a new building on Federal Street; but the Children‘s Museum has taken over and restored this historic building and uses it as the Museum Lab.

Sony Alpha 3000.

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February 21, 2026