Category: South Side

  • Your Carson Street Snow Globe

    1602 and 1600

    Carson Street on the South Side is reputed to be one of the best-preserved Victorian commercial streets in North America. Mere snow cannot deter old Pa Pitt from his duty of documenting the city around him, so here is a generous album of Carson Street buildings, most of Victorian vintage, with falling snow for added picturesque effect.

    1713 and 1715
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  • Goettler Building, South Side

    Goettler Building

    Carson Street on the South Side is known as one of the best-preserved Victorian streetscapes in North America. Father Pitt loves to photograph those Victorian buildings, with their lavish yet careful attention to detail; but in a spirit of contrarian perversity, old Pa Pitt also likes to point out the post-Victorian additions to the streetscape. This building was probably put up shortly before 1910 in a very modern style for its time. The front is unusually well preserved, with big display windows wrapping around properly inset entrances.

    Perspective view of the Goettler Building
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

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  • Station Square Station

  • Freight Office for the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie

    Freight office
    Freight office in 1968
    David Wilson from Oak Park, Illinois, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

    Back in 1968, the streetcar fan David Wilson from Oak Park, Illinois, USA, took this picture of a PCC car in front of the freight office for the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad. Except for looking cleaner, the building hasn’t changed much. Streetcars no longer pass in front of it, but they stop diagonally across the street at the Station Square station.

    Rear of the freight office
    Kodak EasyShare Z1285.
  • Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Station

    Night view of the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie station, Pittsburgh

    The Pittsburgh & Lake Erie could not quite get a foothold downtown, but it had the next best thing: a station right on the Smithfield Street Bridge, so that it was only a short walk from downtown to the P&LE trains—or a short trolley ride, since the streetcars ran on the bridge.

    P&LE station from the south
    Smithfield Street Bridge entrance to the station
    Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

    The entrance to the station was right at bridge level, with a grand staircase down into the grand concourse.

  • Monongahela Incline

    Nonongahela Incline

    The Monongahela Incline on a rainy day. The incline opened in 1870, but the ornate lower station was built in 1904; it was designed by MacClure & Spahr.

    Lower station
    Lower station with car approaching
    Incline cars passing
    Incline car
    Incline car arriving at upper station
    Lower station with two cars on incline
    Lower station
    Lower station
    Lower station
    Monongahela Incline
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Kodak EasyShare Z1285.
  • Textures of the South Side

    Houses on Sidney Street

    A street of Georgian rowhouses, all in identical red brick, is a beautiful sight. But there is something jazzy and invigorating about the endless variety of textures in the back streets of the South Side, even if individually some of the artificial sidings people applied to their houses in the twentieth century were never very attractive. The textures are probably best appreciated in black and white, so old Pa Pitt stuck some monochromatic film in his Retinette and went for a walk around the block.

    Houses on 17th Street
    1615 Mingham Street
    Houses on 18th Street
    Kodak Retinette with Kentmere Pan 100 film.
  • Glasshouse Apartments, Station Square

    Glasshouse apartments with skyscrapers in sunset light
    Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

    With skyscrapers in sunset light.

  • Burst of Color on the South Side

    Colorful building on 18th Street
    Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.
  • Houses on 24th Street, South Side

    Houses on 24th Street

    A row of houses in different styles, all of them typical of the South Side.

    117 and 118 South 24th Street

    We’ve seen these two tiny frame houses before. They date from the Civil War era, and unlike almost all the others of their type and age on the South Side they retain their wood siding. The one on the left is an odd shape: there is a kink in the South Side street grid at 24th street, so the alley does not meet the street at a right angle.

    121 South 24th Street
    Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

    This eclectic Victorian has a large dormer on the fourth floor, and another thing that is sort of a dormer, but not exactly, projecting from the roof and lining up with a slightly extended section, giving the house the effect of a three-storey tower.