Father Pitt

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Ryan Catholic Newman Center, Oakland

David J. Vater was the architect of this building that went up just a few years ago in a shockingly neo-Gothic style. (Mr. Vater was also responsible for the Galliot Center for Newman Studies around the corner.)

This is a building that makes old Pa Pitt happy and sad at the same time. It makes him happy because someone in our present age was able to make an interesting and traditionally Gothic building out of modern stock materials. It makes him sad because so many of those materials look cheap.

It cannot be helped: this was a high-budget building by today’s standards, but today’s standards are so low that our high-budget buildings are bound to look cheap. Here is a point of comparison: when the City-County Building was built (1915–1917), Tiffany Studios got the contract for ornamental bronze in the building for $86,000. At that time, $4,000 would build a substantial two-and-a-half-storey house with five or six bedrooms for an upper-middle-class family with one or two servants. More than twenty upper-middle-class houses’ worth of ornamental bronze went into the City-County Building. We cannot have ageless buildings today because we refuse to spend the money for them.

The doors may be stock models from a catalogue, but the carved stone with Newman’s motto Cor ad cor (“Heart to heart”) is original.

Note the ornamental brickwork on that broad blank wall. Now note the broad blank wall and consider how completely our modern buildings—even Gothic ones—have come to depend on artificial lighting. There was a time when architects referred to windows as “lights” and considered how to place them so that the interior could be usefully illuminated.

October 9, 2023
St. Martin’s Rectory, West End

Our great ecclesiastical architect John T. Comès designed a fine church for St. Martin’s parish in the West End, but the church was demolished long ago. The rectory, however, remains, and it is a remarkable piece of work itself. We might call it Romanesque, or Art Nouveau, or Arts-and-Crafts, or perhaps even Rundbogenstil. Father Pitt is tempted, however, to call it Pre-Raphaelite. It reminds him of Pre-Raphaelite paintings; we can imagine it as a backdrop for figures by Burne-Jones.

The rich colors and deliberately handmade look of these ornamental tiles add considerably to the effect of the façade.

October 8, 2023
Smithfield Street Bridge

October 8, 2023
Engine House No. 39, Elliott

A small firehouse, utilitarian but attractive; it would be more attractive with its original cornice.

It should be a standard requirement that all buildings must have a bronze plaque installed at the dedication identifying the year of construction and the architect.

Is the Kropf of Kropf & Dickson the Henry M. Kropff who would later design Alder Court in Shadyside? If so, it appears that his name is unspellable in bronze; the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation plaque on Alder Court spells it “Kroff.”

October 7, 2023
Flamboyant Tudor in Schenley Farms
This was one of the original houses put up on spec in 1906 by the developers. The architect was Henry Gilchrist.¹
1. Our source is this map that matches the houses in Schenley Farms with their architects. Because Google Maps does not credit user-generated maps, old Pa Pitt cannot personally congratulate the compiler of this one, but he can at least express his gratitude anonymously. ↩︎
October 7, 2023
Fall Colors

October 6, 2023
Beth David Congregation, Hill

The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle identifies this as “The Oldest Jewish Building in Pittsburgh.” It is not really very old, but all the older synagogues have been destroyed. That article gives a fascinating summary of this building’s complicated history; old Pa Pitt will summarize the summary. It was built for a congregation of Russian Jews who broke away from the Beth Zedek synagogue and called themselves Beth David, House of David. They started building this new synagogue right away, but they ran out of money, merged with Beth Zedeck again, and formed a new congregation called Shaaray Tefillah; so that, even though the date stone says “Beth David,” no Beth David congregation ever used this building.

Shaaray Tefillah moved to Squirrel Hill in 1940, and this building became the Miller Street Baptist Church. That church closed a few years ago, and now we see the building being refurbished for some new use. Father Pitt does not quite approve of the new metal on the mansard roof; but slate would cost more than the building is worth, and that the building has a roof at all puts it ahead of too many historic buildings on the Hill.

The Star of David must have gone with the Jewish congregation, or possibly was removed by the Baptists.

October 6, 2023
Telephone Exchange, Squirrel Hill

A particularly grand example of the Renaissance-palace school of telephone exchanges. Father Pitt believes that all our Renaissance-palace telephone exchanges were probably done by the same architect, and some day he hopes to find out who it was. (Update: It was probably James Windrim, a well-known Philadelphian who had the Bell Telephone franchise in Pennsylvania for many years. He designed the 1923 Bell Telephone Building downtown, and is known to have worked on other telephone exchanges in our area.)

October 5, 2023
Neeld House, Beechview

Here is a slightly bedraggled house with an interesting history. Long before there was a Beechview, the Neelds owned considerable property on that hill—68⅔ acres in 1890, according to an old map. Neelds were here at least as early as 1862. They built a house here in the late 1800s, possibly as early as the 1870s. By 1915, the Neelds had sold off much of the property to the Beechwood Improvement Company (which had planned on calling the neighborhood Beechwood, but things happen), but they still kept the whole block bounded by Broadway, Neeld Avenue, Candace Street, and Shiras Avenue. In that year, C. W. Neeld commissioned William Snaman, a prolific architect of houses for the wealthy merchant classes, to remodel his house, and Snaman Tudorized it so effectively that we would hardly guess it had been older than 1915.

The orientation of that chimney on the left is a clue to the history of the house: it suggests that Snaman reoriented it, and the front was originally on the left side. We note that the address was given as “Candace avenue” in 1915, before Snaman got to work, whereas the front of the house now faces Neeld Avenue.

Neeld Avenue, by the way, is a good example of how confusing Beechview street names can be. It was Neeld Avenue in 1910. By 1923, it had become Narragansett Street. Today it is Neeld Avenue, though Father Pitt does not know exactly when the name reverted.

After the Second World War, the Neelds sold off most of the land in the block, retaining only enough for the house and garage. Ranch houses went up on Candace Street, and modernist apartment buildings went up on Broadway.

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October 5, 2023
Soldiers and Sailors Hall with Memorial Dog Tags

Each of the 7,053 dog tags represents one soldier fallen in the War on Terrorism, defined as all the battles since September 11, 2001.

October 4, 2023