Perched on the side of a steep hill, this tiny schoolhouse was built in 1874.1 After Allegheny was conquered by Pittsburgh, this was known as the Milroy School (after Milroy Street, which passes on the right side of the school). After it closed as a school in 1938, it was used as community center called Milroy House, and then a preschool; and now it is abandoned and waiting for its next life.
The school appears to have had three classrooms: left, right, and rear.
A picture taken in 1923, when the building was already half a century old, shows how the school looked with its belfry and its real windows.
Designed by Allison & Allison, this stony Romanesque church was renamed Riverview Presbyterian in 1977, when, we suppose, no one remembered Watson anymore. After sitting vacant for a while, it now has a nondenominational congregation called Pittsburgh Higher Ground, and we wish them long life and prosperity in this beautiful building.
Old Pa Pitt thinks writers on architecture tend to throw the name “Richardsonian” in front of the term “Romanesque” far too thoughtlessly, but there is no question about this church. It is very Richardsonian, right down to the little triangular dormers on the roof. Compare them to the ones on Richardson’s famous Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Allegheny West:
This is the architectural equivalent of a direct quotation.
This stone mansion on Acorn Hill, with its eye-catching combination of Gothic and modernist details, was designed by William C. Young and built in 1937.
Pittsburgh Press, February 21, 1937, p. 50.
“The above drawing by William C. Young, architect and builder, is of the model home being erected at the intersection of Watsonia Blvd. [now Marshall Road] and Norwood Ave., North Side, for Mr. and Mrs. John H. Phillips by the Young firm. The home is a combination of all that is modern in electrical equipment and labor saving devices with all that is charming and quaint from the old Norman English Architecture.” Old Pa Pitt thinks of “Norman” as implying the English branch of Romanesque rather than Gothic, but he will not argue about the charm.
The steps leading up to the house from Marshall Road are a masterpiece of romanticism in landscape design.
Acorn Hill is a little enclave in the larger neighborhood known to residents as Observatory Hill, and on city planning maps as Perry North. It has some unusually fine houses in a wide variety of styles, built up over a period of about half a century.
In any neighborhood this one would be an extraordinary house. It would not be out of place in the Darmstadt Artists’ Colony. The porch has been glassed in and the windows in the dormers have been replaced, but the house retains most of its architectural integrity. Father Pitt does not know the architect yet, but among the local architects known to have been influenced by those German and Austrian art magazines that found their way to Pittsburgh we may mention Frederick Scheibler, Kiehnel & Elliott, and Edward Weber.
Here is an interesting demonstration of how many Catholic parishes developed in the first half of the twentieth century, and a reminder of how ecclesiastical priorities have changed. Father Pitt does not know the whole history of this building, and perhaps a parishioner could fill us in. But the main outline is this:
The cornerstone tells us that the building was put up in 1925. But it tells us that this was the parish school—and indeed, if we look at the picture at the top of the article again, we can see that the lower level was built first. Many parishes built a school building first, and worshiped in a space in the school until they could afford to build a sanctuary. In Brookline, for example, Resurrection parish built its parish school first and worshiped in the gymnasium until the main church could be constructed. The Lutherans a couple of blocks away did the same thing: St. Mark’s still worships in the building that was intended to be the Sunday-school wing, with a much grander church that never went up next to it. It was taken for granted that the children would be educated, and in Catholic parishes it was taken for granted that there would be a parish school to give them their daily education; if priorities had to be set, the school went up first, because it was easier to adapt a school for worship than to adapt a church sanctuary for schooling.
In this case, the sanctuary was built on top of the original school, which was probably the plan from the beginning. We can therefore add this to our list of churches with the sanctuary upstairs, although, because of the steep Pittsburghish lot, the corner entrance is only seven steps up from the sidewalk.
The belfry is one of the most picturesque aspects of the building.
Now Emmaus Deliverance Ministries. Designed by John Lewis Beatty, this late-Gothic-style church was built in about 1925. (The cornerstone has been effaced, which old Pa Pitt regards as cheating, though he understands that a new congregation likes to make a new beginning.)
A Gothic church must maintain a delicate balance: it wants to be impressive, but it also wants to be welcoming. The simple woodwork over the entrances (this one is the basement entrance) gets the balance right: it fits well with the style of the building, matching the angle of the Gothic arches, but it sends the message that we’re just plain folks here.
O. M. Topp (the O is for Olaf) was the architect of this rich little church, now a nondenominational church. He had a typically Pittsburghish lot to deal with, and he made the most of its peculiarities, so that one feels as though one has suddenly stumbled into a medieval European village.
The Allegheny Observatory, begun in 1900, is getting some restoration work. The architect was Thorsten E. Billquist, the sort of name one wishes one had invented.
Three pictures taken with a Russian Lubitel twin-lens-reflex camera in January of 2000. Very little has changed in 21 years. Above, the Byzantine Catholic Seminary, a building that is a strange mix of modernist and classical elements with an onion dome.
The Byzantine metropolitan’s residence. In the Latin Rite, Pittsburgh is not even an archdiocese, but in the Byzantine Rite, Pittsburgh is the seat of an archeparchy covering eleven states.
A typical Observatory Hill house on Riverview Avenue, one of the neighborhood’s most attractive streets.
