Father Pitt

Category: South Side

  • First Ruthenian Church, South Side

    First Ruthenian Church

    This church was built as the First Ruthenian Church (a Presbyterian church for Ruthenian immigrants), and later became a Byzantine Rite church. Now, like many other things on the South Side, it’s a bar.

    Addendum: The architect was Chauncey W. Hodgdon, whose churches were usually in the Gothic style, but who adopted a mixture of classical and Byzantine for this very unusual congregation.1

    1. Source: “More Work for Builders Made by the Architects,” Pittsburgh Daily Post, September 15, 1912, p. 36: “Bids will close early in the week on the erection of a one-story brick and stone church building, to be built on the Southside for the Ruthenian Church, of the Presbytery of Pittsburgh. Architect C. W. Hodgdon prepared the plans for the structure, which will be 32×66 feet, costing $25,000.” ↩︎

  • Second-Empire Dormers

    Dormers

    Dormers with carved and painted decorations on a Second-Empire-style house at Jane and 28th Streets, South Side.

  • Reliefs on the P&LE Terminal

    We seldom look up as we pass the station on the Smithfield Street Bridge, but at the top of the building, directly over the main entrance, is this lively locomotive relief.

  • Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad Terminal

    This station (architect William George Burns) was made as splendid as possible to show that the P&LE was serious competition to the big railroads. Its front entrance opened directly on the Smithfield Street Bridge to be as convenient as possible to downtown without actually being downtown.

  • View from the South Side

    A composition in cables and roofs, with the Bluff in the background and the U. S. Steel Tower behind that. This picture was taken in September of 2019, but not dredged out of the archives until now.

  • Alley Houses

    Carey Way on the South Side, between 18th and 19th Streets.

  • Station Square from Across the River

    A large panorama (click on it to see it at full size) of Station Square in the winter as seen from across the Monongahela. The bluff of Mount Washington lowers behind, with the Monongahela Incline at the left of the picture.

  • Purple Dead-Nettle in Late Winter

    Purple Dead-Nettle (Lamium purpureum) growing from the stone wall under a railroad overpass at the back of the South Side Flats. In this sheltered position, it was already blooming in early March.

  • Tunnel Park on a Misty Evening

    Tunnel Park in the SouthSide Works isn’t very picturesque, especially in the winter; and yet anything can be picturesque with a layer of mist added.

  • Statues on St. Adalbert’s Church

    Some of the statues that adorn the 15th Street front of St. Adalbert’s, beginning, of course, with St. Adalbert himself. The church and its art are in need of restoration, which is to say in need of money.

    It was very kind of the sculptor to give these figures a book to read while they stood there for all eternity.