Father Pitt

Category: Oakland

Some Details of Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall, Carnegie Mellon University

Of all the buildings on the Carnegie Mellon campus, Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall (named for Andrew Carnegie’s mother) probably makes the most jaw-dropping first impression. It was originally built in 1907 as a separate but related school, the Margaret Morrison Carnegie School for Women, where women would learn the skills women were fitted to learn. When it was discovered that women were fitted to learn everything, the school dissolved into the larger university.

Henry Hornbostel’s design makes its opening statement with a grand and stripey rotunda that is impressive and welcoming at the same time.

The polychrome ornament found throughout the campus is laid on lavishly here.

One of the sconces in the rotunda.

A side porch with some unusually intricate decoration that nevertheless does not look at all fussy.

December 10, 2023
Dithridge Towers, Oakland

Built in 1929, this eight-storey apartment tower has a newer ninth floor sheathed in what appears to be corrugated metal. Father Pitt has some advice for architects contemplating asymmetrical additions with cheap materials to symmetrical Renaissance palaces like this:

Like several other apartment buildings in the area, this one is festooned with grotesque whimsies.

The rear section has a bay rising the entire height of the building, with a corrugated-metal hat on top.

Addendum: A kind correspondent has found an advertisement for the Dithridge Apartments when they were new, which supplies us with a definite date (1929; they were to be ready for occupancy in April) and shows us the building as it looked before the top was altered.

From the Pittsburgh Press, March 17, 1929.

December 1, 2023
Nordenberg Hall, University of Pittsburgh

Mark A. Nordenberg Hall, built in 2011, is a perfect example of what old Pa Pitt calls the neoneoclasssical style: it uses the shapes and symmetry of classical architecture without the embarrassing ornamentation. In this building, some of the effect of that missing classical ornamentation is simulated by a pleasing variation in the materials. The architects were the St. Louis firm of Mackey Mitchell Architects, with our own MCF Architecture (the successors to Edward Stotz) coming along for the ride.

This building replaced the 1926 University Place Office Building by Edward B. Lee, a much smaller building that, in its sparse detailing, almost anticipated the neoneoclassical style.

November 30, 2023
St. Paul’s in Late Fall

November 20, 2023
St. Paul’s Cathedral School, Oakland

Built in 1907, this Jacobean palace was the work of John T. Comès. We happen to know that it was roofed with McClure’s Genuine Charcoal Iron Re-Dipped Roofing Tin, because in a 1910 advertisement that company proudly reproduced the architect’s perspective rendering of the building:

Notice in the rendering that Comès has drawn sections of tapestry brick, which is typical of his work—if he was going to use brick, he was going to use it to its full decorative potential. Either he was overruled by the client or he changed his mind, because the building as it stands is just ordinary red brick in Flemish stretcher bond, with stone trim for decoration.

The building is now the St. Joan of Arc Building of Oakland Catholic High School, and the Trib has a story from 2013 about the renovations to the St. Joan of Arc Building to bring it into the early twenty-first century.

November 14, 2023
Back Corner of Soldiers and Sailors Hall

Seen from the corner of O’Hara Street and University Place.

October 30, 2023
Henry Clay Frick Training School for Teachers

Ingham & Boyd designed a large number of school buildings in the city and suburbs, and they always gave the clients exactly the respectable school buildings they wanted. They were never embarrassingly out of date, nor were they embarrassingly modernistic. They were ornamented to exactly the right degree to say, “This is a building we spent money on.” The Ingham & Boyd brand of rectangular classicism is on full display in this building in Oakland, which is now the Pittsburgh Science & Technology Academy.

October 25, 2023
Two Views of the Cathedral of Learning

Above, from the grounds of Soldiers and Sailors Hall; below, from the steps of Bellefield Presbyterian Church.

October 20, 2023
Carved Ornaments on Bellefield Presbyterian Church

Originally the First United Presbyterian Church, this congregation merged with the Bellefield Presbyterian Church down the street, which sold its building (of which only the tower remains) and moved here, with the compensation that this church was renamed Bellefield Presbyterian. The building, designed by William Boyd and built in 1896, is festooned with a riot of carved Romanesque ornaments.

Each one of these cherubs has a different face and different ornamental carving surrounding it.

October 15, 2023
National Union Fire Insurance Company Building, Oakland

Now Thackeray Hall of the University of Pittsburgh. The architect was Abram Garfield, son of our martyred president. This section on University Place is the older part of the building; a larger addition was built on Thackeray Avenue in 1925.

Mr. Garfield would not have approved of those asymmetrical doors on his rigorously symmetrical Renaissance palace. Is Pitt really so strapped for cash that these are the best the university can do?

Here we see how the older building connects to the carefully matched 1925 addition (on the left), with a new entrance at the seam between the buildings.

October 14, 2023