Father Pitt

Category: Oakland

  • A Dim Religious Light

    Interior of Heinz Chapel

    But let my due feet never fail
    To walk the studious cloister’s pale,
    And love the high embowed roof,
    With antique pillars massy proof,
    And storied windows richly dight,
    Casting a dim religious light.
    There let the pealing organ blow,
    To the full-voic’d quire below,
    In service high, and anthems clear,
    As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
    Dissolve me into ecstasies,
    And bring all Heav’n before mine eyes.

    ——Milton, Il Penseroso.

    It is difficult to convey in a photograph the impression we get from entering a glorious Gothic church like Heinz Chapel. In general photographs are too light, either because the photographers laudably attempted to capture the many artistic details of the Gothic interior, or because they used automatic exposure and let their cameras do the thinking. Old Pa Pitt has tried very hard in these pictures to give some impression of the relative lighting as we enter the chapel from the bright light outside. Most of the light is dim, but a pool of light shines in the distance, drawing us toward the altar.

    Toward the altar
    Toward the rear

    No matter how bright it may be outside, turning to leave the church is walking away from the light.

  • Young Men and Women’s Hebrew Association, Oakland

    Young Men and Women’s Hebrew Association

    If your club was prospering, you could have a clubhouse by Benno Janssen, Pittsburgh’s favorite club architect. Among the club buildings he designed that are still standing we may mention the Twentieth Century Club, the Keystone Athletic Club, the Pittsburgh Athletic Association, the Masonic Temple, and this one, a cultural and athletic center that was one of the ancestors of today’s Jewish Community Center. Like several of Janssen’s other club buildings, this one, built in 1924, takes the form of a Renaissance palace. The building now belongs to Pitt, of course, which calls it Bellefield Hall and still keeps up its splendid indoor swimming pool.

    Inscription

    The university has glassed in the huge arch that forms the main entrance; old Pa Pitt has ruthlessly manipulated this picture to bring the inscription out from behind the glass.

    Cartouche

    Father Pitt imagines the sculptor, having worked months to intertwine the letters Y, M, W, and H in this artistic cartouche, proudly presenting his work to Mr. Janssen and being told, “You left out the A.”

    With fountain in foreground

    A view of the building from Heinz Chapel’s new formal garden across the street.

  • Working on the Roof of Heinz Chapel

    Workers on the roof of Heinz Chapel

    It’s easy to forget how tall Heinz Chapel is until we see people working on the roof.

    Heinz Chapel with roof work

  • Entrance to St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1994

    Entrance to St. Paul’s

    This composition is no longer possible, because the building in the foreground was demolished to make way for the larger Rand Building that occupies the corner of Fifth and Craig today. At least old Pa Pitt is fairly sure he was standing in the old Mellon Bank building, although after almost three decades the memory clouds over a bit, and he had to rely on maps and angles to make that determination.

  • Craig Street Face of Bayard Manor

    Bayard Manor

    The western end of Bayard Manor faces Craig Street. This is the commercial front of the building, since Craig Street is a retail district. The building has a residential front on Bayard Street, which matches the style of this end but does not even hint at sordid commerce. Father Pitt also has perhaps the only picture on the Internet of the entire Bayard Street front of Bayard Manor.

  • Adamesque Apartment Building in Oakland

    The Adrian

    A good apartment-building design makes its residents feel better off than they are. Here you can imagine yourself walking into a stately English home by Robert Adam, even if your portion of it is only a studio apartment.

    Entrance

  • A Medieval Fantasy

    A little experiment in digital art. It began with a photograph of one of the Gothic gateposts outside the chancery behind St. Paul’s Cathedral in Oakland. That was made black and white, and then put through a multiple-layer “etching” filter, and then every detail that looked at all modern was scribbled over. This is the result. Was it worth the work? Probably not, but one can always learn something from these experiments.

  • Decorations on the King Edward Apartments

    Plaque and light fixture

    The King Edward Apartments are actually two buildings—a larger one at the corner of Craig and Bayard Streets, and a smaller one behind it on Bayard Street. Both of them have some interesting ornamental features.

  • King Edward Apartments, Oakland

    King Edward Apartments

    This is a huge composite picture, so don’t click on it unless you have the megabytes to spare. This elegant apartment building on Craig Street had a typically Pittsburgh problem to solve. The lot is irregularly shaped and (of course) not level. The architect’s answer was a façade that is varied enough to mask the fact that it does not quite line up with the street. At first glance, the front seems symmetrical; the second and third glances will reveal the curious staggering of the wall.

  • St. Peter

    Statue of St. Peter

    St. Peter, with his key, stands in his niche on St. Paul’s Cathedral in Oakland.