What is there to see in one block of rowhouses on one back street on the South Side? Old Pa Pitt asked that question, and then got out a camera to answer it. Here are a few little details from the 2200 block of Sarah Street.
And, of course, because this is Pittsburgh…
Kool-Vent awnings.
This was the blast in a blast furnace: the machine that provided the air that rushed into the furnace to keep the chemical reactions going. Surprisingly, this one was not used in Pittsburgh: it was brought down from Sharpsville, a little steel town in Mercer County. But it was built by the Mesta Machine Company in West Homestead. Now it lives at Station Square, right in front of the Glasshouse apartments.
A very Pittsburghish view: a cluttered urban streetscape, seen under a railroad viaduct, with an entirely different neighborhood (in this case Oakland) on the inaccessible hill in the distance.
Remarkable mostly for its unremarkableness, this little house in the back streets of the South Side is a good demonstration of how to keep an old house (it might be 150 years old or more) tastefully up to date.
From the blocked-up Gothic windows and general shape, we can infer that this was a small church. But at some point not very recently it was converted to four tiny alley houses, made only slightly less tiny by the addition of what are probably kitchens on the back. (Update: For the history of the church, see “The Mystery of the Converted Church on the South Side.”)
Both could use a little spiffing up, but they are fine examples of the Victorian commercial architecture for which Carson Street is famous.
Little mineral stalactites dangle from the railroad overpass over 21st Street, South Side.
This building has had some adventures. Originally a typical Pittsburgh Romanesque commercial building, it had a radical renovation of the ground floor at some point in the Art Deco era (early enough that the entrances are still recessed from the sidewalk). Possibly at the same time, but probably later, the second and third floors were very inexpertly done over in an aggressively modernist style: the ornaments removed, the original tall windows replaced with much smaller windows, and the remaining space bricked up. Only the top remains more or less unaltered, though its ironwork date could use a bit of restoration, and the ironwork initials have left only their shadows.
This exceptionally fine Second Empire house sits at the end of a row, and therefore has two exposed surfaces for the architect to play with. Victorian architects did not like plain flat surfaces, and whoever designed this house lost no opportunity to vary the shape and texture.
