Father Pitt

Category: Oakland

  • College Club, Oakland

    College Club

    Lamont Button, who made a specialty of high-class houses for the higher classes, designed this club for university women, which opened in about 1932. “It is planned to provide rooms on the second and third floors for college girls working in the city,” the Press reported. “The first floor will have a large social hall and tearoom. In the basement will be a main dining room and several smaller dining rooms. An auditorium seating 470 will be included in the plans.”

    College Club

    Today the building belongs to Pitt, but on the outside it has hardly changed from Button’s elegant design—a simplified, modernized Georgian that could hardly look out of place anywhere, and fits perfectly in the wildly diverse Craig Street streetscape.

    College Club
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
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  • Pittsburgh Athletic Association Building, by Janssen & Abbott

    The architects’ rendering of the Pittsburgh Athletic Association Building. It was published as the frontispiece to the Catalogue of the Pittsburgh Architectural Club’s Fifth Exhibition, March, 1910.

    We have photographs of this building by day and by night.

  • Bellefield Bridge

    Bellefield Bridge and Carnegie Library
    From Greater Pittsburg, 1905.

    A view across the Bellefield Bridge toward the Carnegie Library in Oakland. The bridge is still there, but you can’t see it. The hollow was filled in with the bridge still in place, and the Mary Schenley Memorial Fountain sits on top of the buried bridge now.

    This view shows the library building before the enormous expansion in 1907. The two towers were victims of the expansion—but also perhaps victims of some negative criticism. The building in general—designed by Longfellow, Alden & Harlow—was highly praised, but some critics thought the towers a bit embarrassing. When Alden & Harlow (Longfellow had decided to stay in Boston) designed the new addition, the towers came down.

  • A November View of the Cathedral of Learning

    Cathedral of Learning through fall leaves
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.

  • The Fairfax, Oakland

    Entrance to the Fairfax

    Designed by Washington (D. C.) architect Philip Morison Jullien, the Fairfax was one of the grandest apartment houses in Pittsburgh when it opened in 1927. It certainly isn’t our biggest apartment building now, but it still makes a strong impression as you walk past on Fifth Avenue.

    The Fairfax
    Arms over the entrance
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
    Kodak Retinette with Kentmere Pan 100 film.

    More pictures of the Fairfax.

  • Neville House, Oakland, in Black and White

    Port cochere of the Neville House apartments

    We saw Neville House in color earlier. These three monochrome pictures were taken with a Kodak Retinette made in the middle 1950s. Above, the exit from the porte cochere under the building. Below, the main entrance, including the porte cochere and the patio in front of it.

    Entrance to Neville House
    Entrance to Neville House
    Kodak Retinette with Kentmere Pan 100 film.

    Thanks to Bodega Film Lab for developing the film and making it worth taking the Retinette out for a walk.

  • South Side Slopes and Oakland

    Rooftops of houses on the South Side Slopes, with the Oakland section of Pittsburgh in the background
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    Rooftops of houses on the South Side Slopes, with Oakland and its usual cranes in the background.

  • Craig Street Branch of the Pittsburgh National Bank, Oakland

    Pittsburgh National Bank, Craig Street Branch

    Built in 1961–1962, this branch bank conveys the impression of being low and flat. It seems much shorter than it is; our brains don’t process how huge those concrete beams are, but note the height of the people in front. The deliberate lowness is an interesting choice, because the firm that designed it was Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, whose other famous works include the Sears Tower, which was the tallest building in the world for two decades; One World Trade Center, the current tallest building in the Western Hemisphere; and the Burj Khalifa, which so far has not been surpassed.

    Pittsburgh National Bank
    Rear of the bank

    James D. Van Trump described the building in The Stones of Pittsburgh: “Two great concrete beams cantilevered from slender piers support a concrete roof of great span. A bold and stark essay in pure construction.” The roof extends dramatically from the building to shelter a small parking lot in the rear.

    Concrete beam
    PNC Bank

  • Henry Street, Oakland

    Henry Street, Oakland
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    Outsiders visiting Pittsburgh are often surprised to find that, when buildings are in the way, we just drive right through them. This is Henry Street, which goes through the Software Engineering Institute.

  • Neville House, Oakland

    Neville House

    Tasso Katselas designed this apartment building, which opened in 1959. James D. Van Trump described it a few years later: “Glass, brick and concrete cage raised into space on arched stilts in the manner of Le Corbusier and at the time it was built the most ‘advanced’ apartment house in Pittsburgh.”

    Entrance portal

    The drama of the building is in those arched stilts. They make approaching the building from the street an event. In typical Katselas fashion, they also solve a practical problem: they make room for a useful porte cochere while allowing the rest of the building to take up as much of its lot as possible.

    Front
    Entrance
    Neville House
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.