Although it’s technically in Shadyside, Rodef Shalom stands at the east end of the Oakland monumental district, the long row of dazzling architecture along Fifth Avenue. Much of the dazzle was contributed by Henry Hornbostel, and few of his buildings are more dazzling than this. It was built in 1907, and it is far and away the finest synagogue building in Pittsburgh.
Central Oakland seen in the last rays of evening sun.
From the Pittsburgh and Allegheny Blue Book, 1899-1900. This building is now the William Pitt Student Union, having been absorbed, like much of the rest of Oakland, into the University of Pittsburgh.
This building from 1894, right next to Schenley Farms in Oakland, was designed by George L. Orth, and still houses the school he designed it for.
Stuck in a corner of the university district in Oakland, Schenley Farms is a delightful surprise. The institutional buildings of the University of Pittsburgh come to a sudden halt, and all at once there are tree-lined streets with century-old houses in a broad but harmonious variety of styles—everything from Italian Renaissance palaces to Tudor mansions to rustic stone cottages.
The streets are named after what the projectors of the neighborhood considered the greatest writers of the modern age. We can still see two of their names in brass in the sidewalk at the intersection of Parkman and Lytton—that’s Francis Parkman, the great American historian, and Lord Lytton, or Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the inspiration for the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.
Seen from in front of Phipps Conservatory.
Looking up Bellefield Avenue during this afternoon’s snowstorm.
The Grand Staircase is meant to be the main focal point of the museum, but the unsympathetic addition of the Scaife Galleries, with a new main entrance, makes the staircase something of a backwater. It’s still grand, however, even when overrun by the International. The murals are by John White Alexander.
Webster Hall, built in 1926, was designed by Henry Hornbostel to be the grandest apartment block in the city of Pittsburgh. It still holds a prominent place in the Oakland monumental district, where Hornbostel contributed more buildings than any other architect.
