Father Pitt

Category: North Side

  • Row of Houses on North Avenue

    Row of houses on North Avenue

    These are what old Pa Pitt calls Baltimore-style rowhouses: that is, rowhouses where the whole row is built as one subdivided building right against the sidewalk (as opposed to the typical Pittsburgh terrace, where the houses are set back with tiny front yards). Since North Avenue is the neighborhood boundary on city planning maps, these fall into the “Central Northside” for planning purposes; but socially they formed part of the wealthy section of Allegheny that includes Allegheny West across the street.

    Rowhouses on North Avenue

  • Sunset Reflected in Allegheny Center

  • The House That Death Built

    940 West North Avenue

    William D. Hamilton was in the coffin business, which he inherited from his father and built up into the National Casket Company, a titan in the death industry. North Avenue is the neighborhood line on city planning maps, so this house is in the Central Northside neighborhood by those standards; but socially it belongs to Allegheny West, and the Allegheny West site has a detailed history of 940 West North Avenue.

    Father Pitt does not know the architect. The style is best described as “eclectic,” but the Gothic windows upstairs give the house a slightly somber and funereal aspect. Since those two trees have been flourishing in front, it is impossible to get a view of the whole façade except in the winter.

    Front door
    William D. Hamilton house

  • Tree Conquers Sidewalk

    Sidewalk detouring around tree

    In the never-ending war between trees and sidewalks, this tree in the West Park arboretum has won and received the sidewalk’s abject surrender.

  • Allegheny General Hospital

    Allegheny General Hospital

    Allegheny General is one of the few classic skyscrapers in Pittsburgh outside downtown. It was built in 1926; the architects were York & Sawyer. These views were taken with a long lens from across the Allegheny River.

    Below, with bonus pigeons:

    Allegheny General Hospital with flying pigeons

    A change in the light makes quite a different picture:

    With sun

  • St. Peter’s Church, North Side

    St. Peter’s Church

    Built in 1872 from a design by Andrew Peebles, this cathedral-sized church did become a cathedral about three years later for the short-lived Catholic Diocese of Allegheny, which was formed by taking the rich half away from the diocese of Pittsburgh and leaving all the debt with the poor half. The diocese was suppressed in 1889, but old dioceses never die, and there is still a titular Bishop of Allegheny. The current holder of the title is a retired auxiliary bishop of Newark.

    Resurrection relief

    This relief of the Resurrection takes on added drama at night.

  • J. C. Pontefract House, Chateau

    On city planning maps, this house is in Chateau, but socially it was at the end of the Lincoln Avenue row of rich people’s houses in Allegheny West. Today it sits surrounded by robotics works and fast-food joints, but it is kept in beautifully original condition by its owners. The architects were Longfellow, Alden & Harlow (or some subset of those three), at the very beginning of their practice—just about the time they designed Sunnyledge, which is something like a stretched version of this house. Enlarge the picture and note the patterns in the brickwork.

  • Peoples Center and World War II Veterans Memorial, North Shore

    The Peoples Center is one of a number of buildings that have gone up on the North Shore in the past two decades in the style old Pa Pitt calls neoneoclassical, in which cheap modern materials are arranged in forms that echo classical architecture, but without any embarrassing artistic detail. The buildings look traditional and unobjectionable. They make decent citizens of the urban landscape. They have nothing to excite interest in themselves, but they have nothing to excite disgust or dismay, either.

    The lighted World War II memorial in front gives this night view a drama it would not have otherwise.

  • Western Penitentiary

    The Wall
    The Pen used to be known to frequent guests as “The Wall.”

    Closed since 2017, the Western Penitentiary (or, more recently, State Correctional Institution—Pittsburgh) will have a hard time finding a buyer. It would perhaps make a fine mansion for an eccentric supervillain, but most real-world supervillains are dreadfully prosaic in their tastes.

    Nevertheless, it is a masterpiece of prison architecture—aesthetically, at least. The architect was Edward M. Butz, and it was built between 1876 and 1882, with various later additions. It looks more like a prison than the Bastille did, and so we present it on Bastille Day, with the cheerful news that no inmates are imprisoned here, but the sad news that it may eventually have to be pulled down by a demolition contractor rather than a revolutionary mob.

    End wall
    Guardhouse
    With a guard tower
    Through the fence
    Through the trees

  • Old Woods Run Branch Library

    Woods Run Branch Library

    The city of Allegheny was conquered by Pittsburgh in 1907, but the Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny—the first municipally run public library—was an independent institution until 1956. The main library was in the center of Allegheny, where it still stands (though the library has moved out). It had one branch library, opened here in 1916; the first librarian was Helen R. Langfitt, a 1916 graduate of the Carnegie Library School. This little arts-and-crafts building cannot match the elegance of the Alden & Harlow branch libraries in Pittsburgh, but it was a pleasant ornament to the neighborhood.

    Oblique view

    In 1964, the library moved to a modern building around the corner on Woods Run Avenue—a building that itself became dated and was remodernized in 2006.