Father Pitt

Category: Oakland

  • The Back of Bellefield Presbyterian Church on a Rainy Day

    Rear of Bellefield Presbyterian Church

    Pedestrians and drivers often see the front of this magnificent Romanesque church, but few ever notice the back. It is plainer but still interesting in its masses, with the half-round auditorium characteristic of many Methodist and Presbyterian churches in the late 1800s.

    The front (seen below in a picture from last year) is also given a round bulge, so that the whole building seems to orbit around that polygonal central tower.

    Front of the church

    Old Pa Pitt will repeat what he said the last time he published pictures of Bellefield Presbyterian Church:

    The church was built in 1896 as the First United Presbyterian Church; the architect was William Boyd, who gave the congregation the most fashionably Richardsonian interpretation of Romanesque he could manage. It was more or less in competition with the original Bellefield Presbyterian, of which only the tower now remains. But in 1967 the two congregations merged. They kept this building, renamed it Bellefield Presbyterian, and abandoned the old Bellefield Presbyterian up the street, which was later demolished for an office block.

  • Decorative Relief on Soldiers and Sailors Hall

    Pediment

    Some of the carved ornaments on Soldiers and Sailors Hall.

    Corn, grapes, pineapples
    Scrollwork
    Seal of the City of Pittsburgh

    Seal of the City of Pittsburgh.

  • Twentieth Century Club, Oakland

    Ywentieth Century Club

    As you can see, it takes some effort to achieve this kind of symmetry in Pittsburgh, a city where the phrase “ground floor” is ambiguous at best. Pittsburgh’s premier women’s club hired Pittsburgh’s premier architect of clubs, Benno Janssen, to design this splendid Renaissance palace, built—according to the inscription—in 1930. The inscription also tells us that the club was founded in 1894. The rest (on the right) is the club motto: “Not for ourselves alone, but for the whole world.” The building now belongs to Pitt.

    Lintel
    Cartouche

    Janssen liked this kind of cartouche with monogram: compare his Young Men and Women’s Hebrew Association.

    Lower entrance

    The entrance on the Bigelow Boulevard side, at lower ground level.

    Relief: Non nobis solum, sed toti mundo

    A relief over the Bigelow Boulevard entrance bears the club motto again. For context, here is an older picture from the corner of Bigelow Boulevard and Bigelow Boulevard (no one said navigating Oakland was easy); the lower entrance is behind the elegant stone wall.

    Corner view

  • Decorations on the Central Turnverein

    Lintel

    Now the Gardner Steel Conference Center, the Central Turnverein was German Pittsburgh’s most elegant athletic club. The building is an extraordinary early-modern design by Kiehnel and Elliott, and they trimmed it with geometric decorations inspired by the latest Jugendstil architecture overseas.

    Central Turnverein
    Bracket
    Rectangle
    Window frames
    Another rectangle

  • Cathedral of Learning from Lytton Avenue

    Cathedral of Learning

  • Litchfield Towers on a Rainy Day

    Litchfield Towers

    Ajax, Bab-O, and Comet looking a bit wet.

    Entrance
    Wet

  • Soldiers and Sailors Hall, Oakland

    Corner view of Soldiers and Sailors Hall
    Long vista
    Closer view of the front
    Entrance to Soldiers and Sailors Hall

  • “Parade Rest” and “The Lookout”

    Parade Rest
    Face of Parade Rest

    The soldier and the sailor who guard the entrance to Soldiers and Sailors Hall, by sculptor Frederick Hibbard. They were installed in 1923, one hundred years ago.

    Face of the Lookout
    The Lookout

  • The Schenley, Newly Built

    From Our Cities, Picturesque and Commercial, a souvenir book of Pittsburgh and Allegheny published in 1898, the year the Hotel Schenley was built. Except for the sensitively matched addition in the front and the loss of the cornice, the building looks much the same today.

    Note the big expanse of nothing on the hill to the right. That was still open land belonging to Mary Schenley when the hotel was built.

  • Hotel Schenley Advertisement from 1929

    Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 29, 1929, page 10. Note the exaggerated height; compare it to the proportions in old Pa Pitt’s pictures.