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Stairway in Schenley Farms
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Hillside House in Schenley Farms, Cleaned
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.
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Schenley High School
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.
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Cathedral of Learning in the Rain
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.
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Central Catholic High School
A kind of cartoon castle, the main building of Central Catholic is technically in Squirrel Hill, though most Pittsburghers would probably say “Oakland.” The building was put up in 1927; the architect was Edward J. Weber.
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Hampton Hall
The Tudor style adapts itself to an apartment building with some success. Old Pa Pitt can’t keep himself from wondering whether there are actually apartments up there under those peaked roofs with the dormers. Most of the Tudor atmosphere is in the detailing of the stone, but we have a few cartoonish suggestions of half-timbering just so nobody mistakes the style for anything else.
Addendum: According to the city architectural inventory (PDF), Hampton Hall was built in 1928.
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D’Arlington Apartments, Oakland
Edward Keen was the architect of this intriguing apartment building on the edge of Oakland, just where it meets Shadyside. It was built in 1910, and the style seems to old Pa Pitt to be something like Italian Renaissance fading through Prairie Style to modernism. It has the simplicity and squareness of all three styles; the details are subtle but rich (especially the cornice); and the inset balconies, with much effort put into preventing them from breaking the lines of the rectangular walls, presage the simplicity-at-all-costs of the modernists.
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View Down Fifth Avenue in Oakland
Decades from now, some curious soul exploring the back corners of archived Internet content will come across this picture and spin an elaborate theory of exactly what it was we were going to get through together. Possibly Fifth Avenue traffic, which is unusually moderate in this picture, but minutes later was brought to a standstill by a truck that decided to stop diagonally across the entire boulevard and unload its cargo.
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Webster Hall
A full view of the Fifth Avenue façade of Webster Hall. The design is by Henry Hornbostel, who successfully created a conservative Art Deco classicism that harmonizes with the other grand monuments on Fifth Avenue.
The building was apparently put up as fancy bachelor apartments, but soon became a grand hotel (it is now apartments again). It was famous for the Webster Hall Cake, whose secret recipe is still treasured by little old ladies all over Pittsburgh. But old Pa Pitt is delighted to discover that the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle has a whole article on Webster Hall Cake, including two recipes that claim to be close approximations. Father Pitt suspects that there are still little old ladies out there who claim to have the real thing, but these recipes are a good start.
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Tower of Bellefield Presbyterian Church
The church was pulled down to make way for an office block, but the tower was left to preside over its old corner.
