Father Pitt

Category: Shadyside

  • Cathedral Mansions and Haddon Hall in 1929

    Thanks to a kind correspondent, old Pa Pitt has an opportunity to prove himself right about one thing and wrong about something else. Being wrong is almost as good as being right, because it means learning something new.

    Our correspondent sent two pictures that appeared in an advertisement that ran in the Post-Gazette in 1929. The ad was for Frigidaire refrigerating systems, as used in prominent buildings in the city.

    First, the Cathedral Mansions apartments on Ellsworth Avenue.

    Cathedral Mansions in 1929

    Here Father Pitt was right. A little while ago, we ran this picture of Cathedral Mansions as it looks today:

    Cathedral Mansions today

    At that time we mentioned that we suspected it had lost a cornice. Father Pitt was right about that, as you can see from the 1929 picture.

    Now, here’s the one we were wrong about:

    Haddon Hall in 1929

    This building is now an apartment building called Hampshire Hall. As “Haddon Hall” it was a hotel with apartments. Here is what it looks like today:

    Hampshire Hall (formerly Haddon Hall)

    The obvious change is that modernist growth on the front. When he published these pictures, Father Pitt wrote, “It appears to be a glass enclosure for what was once an elegant verandah.” That is wrong. It seems to have been a replacement for the original dining room or lounge of the hotel. It was probably put there in about 1961: a newspaper ad from December 22, 1961, promotes the Walt Harper Quintet’s appearance at the “newly remodeled Haddon Hall Lounge.”

    Many thanks to our correspondent for the pictures, which give us new information about these two notable buildings. If anyone knows the architect of either one, but especially Haddon Hall/Hampshire Hall (which is in a distinctive modernist-Renaissance style), Father Pitt would be grateful for the information.

  • Berry Hall, Chatham University

    Built in 1895, this is one of several magnificent private houses that have come into the possession of Chatham University without drastic architectural modification. The exterior is in an exceptionally accurate Georgian style that would be right at home in Annapolis or Williamsburg.

  • Cathedral Mansions, Shadyside

    Cathedral Mansions

    A modernized form of classicism, or a classicized modernism, makes an attractive apartment block on Ellsworth Avenue at the western edge of Shadyside. It is mostly a group of rectangular boxes, but a few classical details—like the Vitruvian-scroll molding above the third floor—give it some character. Father Pitt suspects that it has lost a cornice; it might have been late enough to do without a cornice, but that Vitruvian scroll looks as though it ought to be echoing something at the top of the building, and slight signs of damage up there suggest that something was peeled off at some point.

    Addendum: Thanks to the research of a kind correspondent, we now have a picture of Cathedral Mansions in 1929, and it does indeed have a proper cornice.

    Another addendum: Another correspondent provides the information that the architect was John M. Donn, the Washington (D. C.) architect who also designed the Investment Building downtown. The information comes from an Iron City Sand and Gravel advertisement in the Pittsburg Press, Monday, November 22, 1926 (page 30).

  • Lindsay House, Chatham University

    One of several mansions that have become part of Chatham University, this tasteful Tudor house is comparatively modest against its neighbors the Mellons and the Reas.

    Addendum: We find from the June 1911 issue of The Builder that this was built as the President’s Home for the Pennsylvania College for Women. The architect was Thomas Hannah. Here are two pictures from the magazine:

  • Alumnae Memorial Window, Chatham University

    A window by Louis Comfort Tiffany, donated to the Pennsylvania Female College (now Chatham) in 1888. The figure is taken from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling: the Erythraean Sibyl, “here transformed into a symbol for women’s education,” as a plaque nearby says. This was an early work of Tiffany’s, believed to be his earliest in the Pittsburgh area. It was put away in about 1930 and sat in storage for seventy years, because who needed a window by Tiffany? In 2000 it was finally brought out of storage—old Pa Pitt imagines a janitor starting the ball rolling by saying, “Hey, can we get this thing out of the way?”—and restored for a place in the science building.

    Note that Shakespeare’s name appears twice in the pantheon of great figures every young lady should know. No one else gets that honor, and—though Shakespeare certainly is worth twice as much as any of the others to an English-speaking college student—one wonders who specified the duplication, or even whether it was intentional.

  • Redbuds at Chatham University

  • Rea House, Chatham University

    Rea house

    Another of the millionaires’ mansions that have become part of Chatham University. Built in 1911 or 1912 for steel executive James C. Rea, the Julia and James Rea House is now a student dormitory. Students tell us the rooms are “quirky” in a good way, with high ceilings and odd protrusions, because the house was divided with minimal disruption to the original architecture.

    Rea House

    A very short video on the Chatham Undergraduate Housing page shows us some of the interior.

    With a tree in front
    Up a long hill

    Addendum: The architects were MacClure & Spahr.

  • Clyde House, Shadyside

    This Renaissance house in Shadyside is now a residence for first-year students at Carnegie Mellon. The round dormer is unusual, but there was a brief fad for them around the turn of the twentieth century: see also the J. J. Matthews House.

    Addendum: The architect was Frederick Osterling. This is the sole survivor of a row of three houses Osterling designed; this one was for James H. Hammond. See Works of F. J. Osterling by J. Franklin Nelson, 1904.

  • Mellon Hall, Chatham University

    Front entrance

    Andrew Mellon’s summer home is now one of several millionaires’ mansions that belong to Chatham University. It is open for students who want a quiet place to study. Mr. Mellon, in addition to being absurdly rich himself, was also Secretary of the Treasury in the 1920s, and widely considered the most powerful man in Washington: they used to say that three presidents served under him (Harding, Coolidge, Hoover). He was one of the few competent and relatively honest members of Warren G. Harding’s administration, and for most of the 1920s he was often called the greatest Secretary of the Treasury since Alexander Hamilton. Then came the Great Depression, and he was not as popular as he had been.

    The house was built in 1897 for the Laughlins of Jones and Laughlin; Mellon bought it in 1917 and set about remaking it to his tastes, adding, among other things, an indoor swimming pool, supposedly the first private one in Pittsburgh.

    Great hall
    Grand staircase
    Fireplace
    Books and windows
    A different angle
    Looking through to the great hall
    Mantel decoration

    A mantel decoration.

    Sun room

    The sun room.

    The back of the house.

    The back of the house.

    Board Room entrance

    The swimming pool was adapted in 2008 for use as the Board Room, with a new handicap-accessible entrance that combined new construction with as much of the existing architecture as could be reused. The architects of the project were Rothschild Doyno Collaborative.

  • Chapel, Chatham University

    Chapel

    Old Pa Pitt happened to notice that there were very few pictures in Wikimedia Commons of Chatham University, one of the most beautiful college campuses in Pittsburgh or anywhere. That omission had to be rectified. There are now thirty-two more good pictures in the Chatham University category, and we’ll be seeing many of them in the coming days. This is the chapel, a fine Colonial-revival building from 1940.

    Spire
    From a distance

    On city planning maps, Chatham is in Squirrel Hill. The University calls this the Shadyside campus. We put it in both categories.