Category: Squirrel Hill

  • Chapel, Office, and Gatehouse at the Homewood Cemetery

    Tower of Homewood Cemetery Chapel

    Albert Spahr of MacClure & Spahr designed the chapel, the administration building, and the gatehouse for the Homewood Cemetery in a Perpendicular Gothic style. (Mr. MacClure had already died, but his name remained at the head of the firm.) The effect is to make us think of our ideal image of an English village.

    Office and chapel
    Chapel
    Chapel
    Chapel with trees
    Tower entrance to the chapel
    Inscription: Anno Domini MCMXXII
    Lantern
    Flower and foliage
    Hinge

    The doors have impressive iron hinges and pulls.

    Door pull
    Tower clock

    Here is an extraordinarily rare thing: a tower clock that is keeping accurate time.

    Office

    The administration building.

    Office
    Office entrance
    Gatehouse

    The gatehouse appears to have been expanded by a third on the right; the seam is only just visible in the front, but much more obvious in the rear.

    Rear of the gatehouse
    Rear of the gatehouse

    Cameras: Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans f/1.4 35mm lens; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

  • Chandelier in the Manor Theatre, Squirrel Hill

    Chandelier in the Manor Theatre

    Though the Manor has long been subdivided into four small theaters, part of the original ceiling remains in the lobby, and this chandelier, according to staff at the theater, is an exact replica of the original.

  • Mellon Bank, Squirrel Hill

    Mellon Bank

    One of several round banks Mellon Bank built in the modernist era. It is still a bank, now belonging to Citizens Bank, Mellon’s successor in retail banking.

    Roofline
    Canon PowerShot A540.

    We also have a less abstract picture of the whole building.

  • Arts-and-Crafts Terrace in Squirrel Hill

    Terrace on Denniston Street

    Old Pa Pitt enjoys pointing out the many ways architects and builders have answered the terrace question. “This method of building three or six houses under one roof shows a handsome return on the money invested,” said an article about a terrace of houses in Brighton Heights, but the investment pays off only if tenants are willing to move in. The later Aluminum City Terrace development in New Kensington, designed in a starkly modern style by Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, had a hard time attracting tenants in spite of cheap rents and an acute housing shortage, because locals thought it looked yucky.

    The terrace question, then, is this: How can we build economical housing that is nevertheless attractive enough to seem desirable to tenants?

    This terrace obviously had a higher budget than many, so it answered the question with fine design, elaborate decoration, and good materials. The materials were good enough that they have survived intact more than a century: these houses on Denniston Street, twenty-four of them in four rows of six each, were put up before 1923, but they still have their tile roofs and other decorative elements.

    Two houses in the tarrace

    Probably because of the steep hill they occupy, these houses have unusually generous front yards—generous enough for a whole container vegetable garden, for instance.

    Looking up at the houses
    Along the row
    Sony Alpha 3000.
  • Fountain in Richard B. Mellon’s Garden

    Fountain of light pink westerly granite, R. B. Mellon Estate

    Courtesy of the New England Granite Works, a picture of the fountain in the Mellons’ Walled Garden shows us a little of what the garden, now part of Mellon Park, looked like when the Mellons lived there. The sculpture on the fountain is the work of Edmond Amateis, and the fountain has been beautifully restored for the delight of visitors to the park.

  • Niches on the College of Fine Arts Building, Carnegie Mellon University

    Henry Hornbostel designed the front of the Fine Arts Building with niches that display all styles of architectural decoration, and more practically give students a place to sit between classes. The niches have continued to accumulate sculpture in styles from all over the world. The whimsical figures in the Gothic niche may have been done by Achille Giammartini.

    Figure in first niche
    Figure in first niche
    Foliage with critters in first niche
    Lion eating an unfortunate Gothic figure
    Figure in first niche
    Figure in first niche
    Second niche

    In the classical niche, the three orders of Greek architecture: Corinthian, Doric, Ionic, demonstrated with correct proportions.

    Third niche
    Fourth niche
    Sculpture in Indian style, with Egyptian column
  • College of Fine Arts, Carnegie Mellon University

    Creare over the entrance

    The front of the College of Fine Arts in sunset light. Above, the word CREARE (“to create”) inscribed above the entrance by decorative sculptor Achille Giammartini.

    College of Fine Arts, Carnegie Mellon University
    Entrance
    Entrance decoration
    Ratio

    Reason.

    Cogitatio

    Design.

  • Carnegie Mellon University

  • Stairway in Baker Hall, Carnegie Mellon University

    Spiral stairway in Baker Hall

    Stairways can be good opportunities for architects to show off, and here is a stairway designed by Henry Hornbostel that defies imitation.

  • Some Details of Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall, Carnegie Mellon University

    Rotunda of Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall

    Of all the buildings on the Carnegie Mellon campus, Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall (named for Andrew Carnegie’s mother) probably makes the most jaw-dropping first impression. It was originally built in 1907 as a separate but related school, the Margaret Morrison Carnegie School for Women, where women would learn the skills women were fitted to learn. When it was discovered that women were fitted to learn everything, the school dissolved into the larger university.

    Henry Hornbostel’s design makes its opening statement with a grand and stripey rotunda that is impressive and welcoming at the same time.

    Entrance to Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall
    Polychrome ornament

    The polychrome ornament found throughout the campus is laid on lavishly here.

    Sconce

    One of the sconces in the rotunda.

    Side porch

    A side porch with some unusually intricate decoration that nevertheless does not look at all fussy.