Father Pitt

Category: North Side

This category includes mostly articles about things in the central core of the North Side. Many other articles will be found under the names of individual neighborhoods.

  • Telephone Exchange, Allegheny Center

    “Bell Telephone” inscription
    Telephone exchange

    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.

    Street signs: East Diamond Street, East Montgomery Avenue

    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.

    Montgomery Avenue façade
    Telephone exchange
    Telephone exchange
    Doorway
    Doorway
    Bracket
    Telephone exchange from North Commons
    Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
    Comments

  • IBM Building, Allegheny Center

    IBM Building

    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.

    At twilight
    At twilight
    Four Allegheny Center
    Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
    Comments

  • Buhl Planetarium

    Buhl Planetarium at Twilight

    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.

    Buhl Planetarium entrance

    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.

    Buhl Planetarium
    Sony Alpha 3000.
    Comments

  • Carnegie Hall, North Side

    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.

    Entrance

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

    Entrance to the Carnegie Free Library

    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.

    Entrance
    Sony Alpha 3000.
    Comments

  • Twilight at Allegheny Center

    View of Allegheny Center with downtown Pittsburgh behind it
    ALlegheny Center at twilight
    Two Allegheny Center
    Nova Tower One
    Sony Alpha 3000.
    Comments

  • Garden Theater, North Side, at Night

    Garden marquee

    The restoration of the Garden Theater, built in 1914 from a design by Thomas Scott, is nearly complete. The storefronts on North Avenue will be filled again for the first time in decades. Old Pa Pitt will try to get back when the rubbish bin is gone from the front, but these pictures give a good impression of how carefully the external appearance has been maintained and refreshed.

    Garden Theatre
    Garden sign
    Garden Theatre, front elevation

    We also have pictures of the Garden Theater in the daylight.

    Garden Theatre
    Sony Alpha 3000.
    Comments

  • Old Allegheny Post Office

    Old Post Office

    The Allegheny Post Office was built in 1897 under the reign of William Martin Aiken as Supervising Architect of the United States Treasury. In 1967, the post office moved out, and the building was scheduled for demolition to complete the modernist paradise of Allegheny Center. However, the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation scraped up the money and rescued it, using it as a Landmarks Museum for a while. Later, when the PHLF moved to Station Square, the building became the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, which has since gradually expanded to take over all three of the historic buildings left from the old center of Allegheny—the Post Office, Buhl Planetarium, and the Carnegie Free Library.

    “Blue-hour” pictures are very fashionable these days. Old Pa Pitt can do them, too, but only a few at a time, because twilight refuses to stand still and have its picture taken for hours on end.

    Old Post Office
    Old post office and entrance to Children’s Museum
    Sony Alpha 3000.
    Comments

  • West Park at Twilight

    West Park at twilight with skyscrapers in background

    Twilight views of West Park on the North Side, with snow covering the frozen Lake Elizabeth.

    Civil War monument

    The Civil War monument.

    West Park at twilight
    Sony Alpha 3000.
    Comments

  • Allegheny City Electric Station, North Side

    Allegheny City Electric Station
    These pictures are very large composites; expect 24 megabytes of data if you enlarge the one above.

    Commercial electric light was only a few years old when this power station was built in 1889. It was built in a restrained Victorian classical style that seems meant to make electric power look tame and respectable. But just a few years later, a new building was added next door that conveys quite a different architectural message.

    Irwin Avenue Substation

    The Irwin Avenue Substation was built in 1895, but it has the look of something built shortly after the Norman Conquest. The architectural message here seems to be that electricity is such a mighty force that only a medieval fortress can keep it under control. This building still belongs to Duquesne Light, and it is still called the Irwin Avenue Substation, even though Irwin Avenue has been called Brighton Road for more than ninety years.

    Comments

  • Stone Maidens, Allegheny Center and Mount Washington

    Stone Maidens

    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.

    Old Post Office

    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

    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

    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.

    Enlightenment minus an arm
    Enlightenment on Mount Washington
    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.

    Comments