Frank Vittor was the sculptor of this memorial, in which Victory is striding forward with a laurel crown to honor the people of Braddock who served in the First World War. It was installed in front of the Braddock library in 1923, and from this angle it looks almost brand new.
The base of the monument had six bronze panels with the names of all who served, including this dedication panel with the names of the dead.
These pictures are very large, so all the names will be legible if you enlarge the photograph.
We suppose the names between Hurley and Marx were melted down into cheap booze. Old Pa Pitt has always wondered what scrap-metal dealers think when a man in a battered pickup truck rolls up with a big chunk of names in bronze. Apparently they think, “Well, he certainly must have come by this honestly.”
Colonel James Anderson was the kind gentleman who opened his personal library to working boys on Saturday afternoons at his house in Manchester. One of those boys was Andrew Carnegie, who never forgot; and if you had mentioned Carnegie as the founder of free libraries in western Pennsylvania, Mr. Carnegie himself would have corrected you: “No, that was Colonel Anderson.”
Carnegie himself commissioned this monument to go with his library in Allegheny, because, as he said, “when fortune smiled upon me, one of my first duties was the erection of a monument to my benefactor.” For the sculptor he chose the best: Daniel Chester French, who was already famous for the Minute Man in Concord (Massachusetts), and would later contribute the colossus of Lincoln in the Lincoln memorial. The architectural parts of the monument were designed by Henry Bacon, who would later design the Lincoln Memorial itself. The monument we see today is a duplicate: the sculptures are original, but the original base was destroyed along with the rest of the center of old Allegheny when urban renewal came to Allegheny Center. The Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation succeeded in raising money to rebuild the base as Bacon designed it.
The monument shows the same approach to honoring a distinguished citizen that French would later take in the Westinghouse Memorial. Instead of an impressive statue of the subject, French represents his accomplishments in bronze. Here the bust of Colonel Anderson sits on top of the monument, but the main subject is a a young blacksmith’s apprentice who has paused in his work and is sitting on his anvil, absorbed in a book. That pause from manual labor to enter the realm of literature was what Colonel Anderson made possible.
Here is the artist’s mark in the bronze: “DANIEL C. FRENCH Sc.” (for “Sculpsit”) “1903.”
A bronze plaque duplicates the original inscription. Pedantic instincts force old Pa Pitt to point out that placing the whole inscription in quotation marks was unnecessary; but if it had to be done, the quotation marks around “working boys” should have been single.
Of all the hundreds of lions on buildings downtown, the Romanesque lions that guard the county courthouse are the most distinctive. They used to be at street level, but the lowering of the Hump, the awkward hill that used to make navigating downtown even more difficult than it is now, left them stranded far above pedestrians’ heads.
It is greatly to the honor of Pittsburgh as a cultural center that two of our most prominent bridges are named for famous writers. The Sixteenth Street Bridge, built in 1923, was named in 2013 for David McCullough, a writer who made history interesting to thousands who thought they weren’t interested in history. (The other one is the Ninth Street Bridge, named for Rachel Carson.) The architectural parts were designed by Warren & Wetmore, the same firm that designed Grand Central Station in New York.
The life of Christ is depicted in relief at the main entrance to East Liberty Presbyterian Church. We believe the sculptor was John Angel (but we would be delighted to be corrected). Above, the Nativity.
The baptism of Christ by John the Baptist.
The Sermon on the Mount.
The Commission to the Disciples.
Christ washing the disciples’ feet.
The Last Supper.
“Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Parables and miracles of Christ are illustrated in the smaller panels below.
When the new Post Office and Federal Building was designed in 1889 (it opened in 1892), the sculptor Eugenio Pedon, who had the franchise for decorating federal buildings, contributed two identical groups of allegorical statues to go over the entrances: Navigation, Enlightenment, and Industry. When the building came down in 1966, the groups were rescued and split up. One set of Navigation and Enlightenment ended up here at Allegheny Center, where they’re known as the Stone Maidens.
The old Post Office and Federal Building. If you enlarge the picture, you can see the Pedon statues above the entrance at the fourth-floor level.
Navigation. If the faces and bodies seem disproportionately elongated, remember that we are meant to be looking up at them from far down in the street; the sculptor adjusted his perspective accordingly.
Enlightenment. The twin statue of Enlightenment ended up at the corner of a Rite Aid parking lot on Mount Washington. Below we see her trying to hold back the clouds of darkness, which goes as well for her as it always does.
Ever since Lord Elgin bought the Parthenon sculptures and other bric-a-brac on eBay in the early 1800s, there have been debates about whether the Turks had any right to sell them, and whether they really ought to be where they are (in the British Museum), or whether they ought to be back in Athens. The arguments are still going on, and the United Nations has tried to sort out the dispute to no avail.
But here they are in Pittsburgh, and no one has to have a fight about it, because these are plaster casts of the originals. They are almost indistinguishable visually from the original art, and they can be experienced in three dimensions like the originals, and you don’t have to cross the Atlantic to see them.
In the late 1800s, the world’s great museums had the idea that it would be good for people to be able to experience the great sculpture and architecture of the world in three dimensions, just as if it were in their own city. The craft of making plaster casts had been brought to a peak of perfection, and museums eagerly bought up these casts and formed large collections.
Then, as the twentieth century rolled on, the collections became mortal embarrassments. Art was valuable only if it was original, and plaster casts are not original. Only three of the great plaster-cast collections survive, and this is one of them. It is the only one that was never kicked out of its original home.
Museum curators are beginning to wake up to the value of these collections. From a visual point of view, the experience of viewing them is almost exactly the same as the experience of viewing the originals. An art student can sketch them from different angles, can observe how the shadows fall across the drapery, can crane her neck to look at the bits that aren’t visible in photographs.
Artemis.
Father Pitt is sure that someone, somewhere, can find a reason for being angry about these plaster casts. But for most sane people, here are some of the remaining glories of classical art for you to enjoy guilt-free and without a passport.
Hestia, whose usual epithet in Hesiod was Please Do Not Touch.Comments
Edward Ludwig Albert Pausch was the sculptor of this monument, which Wikipedia tells us is his most ambitious work. It is meant to show Washington at the age of 23, when he was failing to keep the French out of Pittsburgh—although since Pausch modeled the face on the Houdon bust sculpted in 1785, our young colonel looks a bit old and weary for a 23-year-old.
As equestrian statues go, this one is not Father Pitt’s favorite. It is probably a very good one, but it strikes old Pa Pitt as stiffly posed. The pile of vegetative debris that holds the horse up by the stomach does not help; it makes George look like he’s posing on a carousel pony. Most equestrian statues stand on their own four legs—but then most are made of bronze. This one is in granite.
The monument was given by the Junior Order of United American Mechanics, a fraternal order for people who could prove they weren’t Catholic. The Jr. O. U. A. M. was a big deal a century or so ago, and the local group’s splendid building in Oakland still stands at 3400 Forbes Avenue.
Edward J. Schulte was a master of the modern in ecclesiastical architecture. Wherever he went, all over the United States, he left churches that were uncompromisingly modern in their details, but also uncompromisingly traditional in their adaptation to Christian worship. St. Anne’s, which was finished in 1962, is a fine example of his work.
A date stone on the grounds.
The details are modern, but the form of the church is perfectly adapted to the ancient Christian liturgy. Too many modern architects expected the liturgy to adapt to the building, but Mr. Schulte obviously knew Christian tradition.
We might point to the baptistery as an illustration of what we mean.
It’s a strikingly modern building, bang up to date for the Kennedy administration. But in its form and position it reminds us of…
…the Baptistery of Neon in Ravenna, seen here in a photograph from A History of Architecture in Italy by Charles A. Cummings (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1901). Built in the late 300s or early 400s, it was originally an extension of a large basilica, just like this baptistery. The one in Ravenna is one of the oldest Christian buildings still standing; Mr. Schulte reached right back to Roman imperial days to find his inspiration.
The most striking feature of the church is a detached bell tower more than a hundred feet high.
The tower was donated by the United Steelworkers of America in honor of Philip Murray, the union’s first president. St. Anne’s was his home parish, and he is buried in St. Anne’s Cemetery.
A relief of St. Anne and St. Mary is accompanied by a quotation from Psalm 44 in the Vulgate numbering (Psalm 45 in the numbering used in Protestant and newer Catholic Bibles).
The (liturgical) west front of the church1 is a balaced composition in geometry and symbolism.
Some roof work was going on when old Pa Pitt visited. (Update: A parishioner informs us that the work was in the basement, including an elevator, which is doubtless why we saw workers on the roof.)
In traditional churches, the altar end is always referred to as “east,” even when it is not in the east by the compass. The end opposite the altar, where the main entrance is traditionally placed, is thus the west, and if—as in this case—the compass says the west front faces northeast, then the compass is entitled to its opinion. ↩︎
