Father Pitt

Category: Oakland

  • Concordia Club

    The Concordia Club was one of a number of fine clubs in Oakland; it lasted until 2009, when its building was sold to the University of Pittsburgh, which made it into the O’Hara Student Center. It was founded “to promote social and literary entertainment among its members,” and it seems always to have been a largely Jewish organization. Father Pitt does not know the details of the sale, but it took at least the club’s Web site by surprise. The site is frozen in 2009, with a calendar of events whose last entry is April 30, 2009: Annual Meeting and Dinner.

    The building itself was designed by the prolific Charles Bickel, who could always be relied on to make the client proud.

  • Police Patrol Station No. 4, Oakland

    Not that long ago, this interesting Romanesque building was the King’s Court movie theater; but, as the inscription shows, it was built as a police station. From cops to movies to noodles must have been a very interesting journey. The style is Romanesque, but with the overlapping round arches that some architectural historians regard as the origin of Gothic pointed arches.

  • Litchfield Towers, Oakland

    “Distinctive” is a good neutral term for these skyscraper dormitories that loom over the Oakland business district. The architect was Dahlen Ritchey, who designed three cylinders of unequal heights that he designated A, B, and C. Students quickly named them Ajax, Bab-O, and Comet.

  • Strand Theatre Building, Oakland

    [Update: We have more on the history of this building, which was the Natatorium Building before it became a theater.]

    This once-splendid movie house on Forbes Avenue was designed by Harry S. Bair, a specialist in neighborhood movie palaces who also designed the Regent in East Liberty. According to comments on Cinematreasures.org, it was built with the screen at the street end: you had to walk up a long hall to come in at the rear of the theater. Thus it took advantage of the hillside location to make a naturally sloped auditorium. The building ceased to be a theater about four decades ago; it is now retail stores and apartments.

    The picture above is a composite of four photographs.

  • Oakland

    A panoramic view of the Oakland medical-intellectual complex, as seen from Schenley Park just after sunset.

  • The Cathedral of Learning and the Carnegie

    Cathedral of Learning and Carnegie, Oakland, Pittsburgh, 2015-03-30 bw

    As seen from the lawn in front of Phipps Conservatory.

    Camera: Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3 (with a virtual red filter).

  • Hygeia

    Giuseppe Moretti’s sculpture of Hygeia stands in Schenley Park as a memorial to the physicians who served in the First World War.

  • Wide-Angle Views of St. Paul’s

    Camera: Canon PowerShot S45.

    An update: When Father Pitt first posted this article, the pictures were distorted. That was because old Pa Pitt had not figured out how to choose the proper projection in the Hugin panorama software. What a difference it makes!

    By stitching together multiple photographs, we get these impossibly wide-angled views of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Oakland. Since the street in front is busy, we also get some ghost figures on the sidewalk and ghost vehicles driving past.

    Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS.

  • Oakland

    Part of the medical and university district in Oakland.

    Camera: Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3.

  • Schenley Park Café and Visitor Center

    Schenley Park visitors’ center

    Father Pitt believes that buildings in public parks should all look like this: neat and attractive, with some suggestion that they might have been built by gnomes. It was built in 1910 from a design by Rutan and Russell. In the foreground we see one of the splendid dolphin drinking fountains designed for Pittsburgh’s parks by Frank Vittor.

    Update: In an earlier version of this article, the building was attributed to Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, the successors to H. H. Richardson. Father Pitt has long forgotten where he got that information, but it was wrong; Rutan had left that firm twenty years before this building went up, and partnered with Russell in 1896.

    Camera: Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3.