Old Pa Pitt is a transit extremist. He believes in a subway between downtown and Oakland, and nothing less. But the “bus rapid transit” now in progress will certainly be an enormous improvement over what we have now, which is herds of buses getting stuck in inbound Fifth Avenue traffic. Here we see them piled up in front of the fancy new Atwood Street station.
The Iroquois Building, which takes up a whole block of Forbes Avenue, was designed by Frederick Osterling, Pittsburgh’s most consistently flamboyant architect. Osterling designed in a variety of styles: he had his own ornate version of Richardsonian Romanesque, and his last large commission was the Flemish-Gothic Union Trust Building. Here, as in the Arrott Building downtown, he adapts Beaux-Arts classicism to his own flashier sensibilities. The building was finished in 1903.
This clock sits in front of the central light well—a typically ornate Osterling detail.
A naked brick front would never do for Osterling; it must be constantly varied in shape and texture. These grotesque reliefs help.
UPDATED UPDATE: The building is now demolished, but the terra-cotta façade will supposedly be re-erected on the new building.
This sadly abandoned building, which has its own Wikipedia article, has been sitting empty in what has become a valuable part of Oakland for at least three years. It has come into the hands of the University of Pittsburgh, as everything in Oakland does sooner or later, and Pitt wants to demolish it. Preservationists want to keep it, because it is an important part of Croatian-American history. Pitt usually wins.
The architect was Pierre A. Liesch, a disciple of the great Frederick Osterling. Liesch is credited with some of the detail on the Union Trust Building downtown: “Liesch was a native of Luxembourg and later used a similar Flemish Gothic style for his design of the Croatian Fraternal Union Building,” says Wikipedia. “Similar” is generous. The Union Trust Building is, in Old Pa Pitt’s opinion, a work of colossal genius. This building is interesting and, again in Father Pitt’s opinion, not in the best taste. (His opinion might be different if the building still had the “highly ornate overhanging cornice and a pointed-arch apex topped with a sculptural element” mentioned in the Wikipedia article.) Of course it may well be that the Croatian clients had no budget for colossal genius, and Mr. Liesch gave them what they could afford.
Why shouldn’t a water-pumping station look like a Roman basilica? It’s what the Romans would have done. This substantial building was designed by William Smith Fraser, and it has its own appropriately substantial Wikipedia article. Unfortunately the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority has thought it necessary to brick up the windows, so that what used to be an airy temple of technology must be like a tomb inside now.
There is still at least one architect in Pittsburgh who can work in the Gothic idiom with modern materials. His name is David J. Vater, and he designed this building on Dithridge Street (which opened in 2007) and the Ryan Catholic Newman Center around the corner on Bayard Avenue. His listing on Porch.com has this to say about his firm: “Based in Pittsburgh, David J Vater Ra is an architectural firm that provides bathroom design, site planning, and master planning as well as other services.” The fact that bathroom design is mentioned first suggests that the demand for grand Gothic institutional buildings is low.
This house in Schenley Farms has had a thorough cleaning and looks just built. It has also lost a large and perhaps obstructive tree. Compare the picture above to the one below, which Father Pitt took in 2014:
Addendum: This house, known as “Ledge House,” was designed by Henry Hornbostel. It was the home of Arthur Hamerschlag, for whom Hamerschlag Hall was named.
This is the most magnificent work of an architect who specialized in magnificent schools: Edward Stotz, whose son was the noted preservationist Charles Stotz. The building occupies a triangular sloping plot, which certainly challenged the architect. Mr. Stotz responded with a triangular building that looks inevitable on its site.
When it opened in 1916, Schenley High was a shrine of culture and art, an idealized version of what high-school education could be in an enlightened city. It closed as a school in 2008, and it has now, like every other substantial building in a desirable neighborhood, been refurbished as luxury apartments.
Curiously, Edward Stotz was also responsible for another famously triangular building: the Monongahela Bank Building, which is now the Wood Street subway station and the Wood Street Galleries.
It started to rain while Father Pitt was out for a walk today, which gave us this atmospheric picture of the Cathedral of Learning looming through the mist like a heavenly palace behind the pleasant houses of Schenley Farms. This is why old Pa Pitt’s cameras live in a waterproof bag. Father Pitt himself is not waterproof, but he does dry fairly quickly.
If you like black and white and all the greys in between, you might enjoy Father Pitt’s Monochrome World, a very simple site that collects his favorite black-and-white pictures from Pittsburgh and elsewhere.
