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.

  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • Some Details of the Old Presbyterian Hospital, North Side

    Date stone with date MCMVI

    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.

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

    Addendum: The architect was C. C. Badgley of Fairmont, West Virginia, whose plans were chosen from among several submitted by local architects.1

    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.

    Entrance
    Entrance

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

    Window with tree

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

    Window
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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  • St. Peter’s Church, North Side

    St. Peter’s Church

    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 1889 the Diocese of Allegheny was suppressed and its territory reabsorbed by Pittsburgh. But a church never quite gets over being a cathedral.

    West front of St. Peter’s, North Side

    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.

    Perspective view
    St. Peter’s
    St. Peter’s
    Front of the rectory

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

    Rectory
    Rectory
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

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

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  • Allegheny High School

    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.

    Original Allegheny High School from 1893
    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.

    Allegheny High School Annex

    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.

    Entrance
    Ornament

    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.

    War memorial

    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.

    Allegheny High School Annex
    Allegheny High School Annex
    Side of the Annex
    1936 Allegheny High School

    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.

    Allegheny High School
    Inscription: AHS 1936
    Grilles and reliefs
    Wave pattern
    Decorative grilles
    Relief
    Auditorium exit

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

    Comedy
    Meh
    Tragedy
    The pictures of the masks were taken in 2014 with a Kodak EasyShare Z1485.
    Auditorium Exit
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
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