Father Pitt

Category: South Side

  • South Side Presbyterian Church

    To Father Pitt’s eyes, the remarkable thing about the interior of this church is how Presbyterian it looks. Later Presbyterian churches in Pittsburgh are Gothic cathedrals, or miniature versions for smaller congregations, since the Presbyterians were overwhelmingly the moneyed class in the late 1800s; but this church was built in 1869, and retains the flat-ceilinged simplicity of traditional Presbyterianism. As in several of our churches in crowded city neighborhoods, the sanctuary is on the second floor, reached by either of a pair of flights of stairs in the front (one with an elevator chair for those who need it); the ground floor is the social hall and other rooms. The front was part of an expansion in 1893, built to a grander and wealthier taste.

  • St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church, South Side

    The South Side Church Crawl brought a good number of tourists to see a number of South Side churches. This is probably the church that says “South Side” to Pittsburghers in general; its distinctive domes are prominent from the Liberty Bridge, the McArdle Roadway, and across the river.

  • Art Deco Outbreak on Carson Street

    This Victorian storefront was given a strange Art Deco makeover at some point in the twentieth century. The makeover extended only halfway up, so the original Victorian style is perfectly preserved on the top two floors. East Carson Street on the South Side is one of the best-preserved Victorian commercial streetscapes in North America, but until very recently it was never preserved in any deliberate fashion—only by extraordinary luck.

  • South Side Market House

    Charles Bickel, a good and competent Pittsburgh architect most famous for Kaufmann’s department store, designed this building, but Father Pitt is not quite sure about the rest of its history. A market house was built here in 1893 and burned in 1914; it was rebuilt in 1915, but the exterior walls may have remained from the older building. Old Pa Pitt would love to hear from someone who knows definitely one way or the other. At any rate, it is one of only two original city markets left in Pittsburgh (the other is the East Liberty Market, now Motor Square Garden), neither of which is still used as a market. It sits in the middle of a tight urban square whose southern half is very much like some of the squares of London; the northern half spoils the illusion.

  • South Side Flats

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    This distant view from Mount Washington gives us a good notion of how densely packed the South Side is.

  • Christmas at the SouthSide Works

    Christmas tree at the SouthSide Works

    A Christmas tree decorates the town square at the SouthSide Works.

  • South Side Works Theater

    SouthSide Works Theater

    The South Side Works, an ambitious project to build an entirely new urban neighborhood, naturally needed a neighborhood cinema on the square. And the proper style for a neighborhood cinema is Art Deco, with lots of neon and other noble gases.

    SouthSide Works town square at night

  • Pigeon and Bessemer Converter

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    A pigeon perches  on a Bessemer converter preserved at Station Square.

  • Schiller Glocke Gesang und Turn Verein

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    On the whole, the South Side Flats were East European and the Slopes were German. But a large neighborhood like the Flats has room for diverse microneighborhoods, and we find this “Schiller’s Bell Singing and Athletic Society” on Jane Street. The building is now turned to other uses, but the inscription remains. Pittsburgh and Allegheny used to be full of German singing societies; the Teutonia Männerchor in Dutchtown is the most prominent remnant.

    South-Side-Schiller-Glucke-Gesang-und-Turnverein-02

  • Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Station

    The old Pittsburgh and Lake Erie station, now the centerpiece of the Station Square entertainment district, with the Monongahela Incline in the background.

    Although the angle is distorted here by a telephoto lens, the building is not rectangular. A satellite view reveals the odd shape.

    A view of the interior, now a restaurant called the Grand Concourse, is here.