Father Pitt

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The Liberty Theater As It Was Built
Update: Once in a while old Pa Pitt has a chance to boast about his architectural instincts, and here is one of those occasions. In the original article, he wrote that he suspected Edward B Lee of having designed the remodeling of the theater into an office building. He was right. Source: The American Contractor, December 15, 1923: “Store & Office Bldg. (remod. from theater): $150,000. 5 sty. & bas. H. tile. Liberty av. & Strawberry Alley. Archt. E. B. Lee, Chamber of Commerce bldg. Owner The Fidelity Title & Trust Co., Wilson A. Shaw, chrm. of bd., 343 Fourth av. Gen. contr. let to Cuthbert Bros., Bessemer bldg.”

The original text of Father Pitt’s article follows.

Edward B. Lee was the architect of the Liberty Theater—or Theatre, as theatrical people often insist on spelling it—when it was built in 1912. These pictures were published in The Brickbuilder in 1913, so they show the theater as it was when it was new. Either the theater failed or the owners decided it would be more profitable as an office building, because only eleven years later, in 1924,¹ it was remodeled into the Baum Building, and it still stands today.

The shell and outlines are the same, but quite a bit was changed externally. Old Pa Pitt suspects that Lee was the architect of these changes, too, and they were accomplished so elegantly that we would never know the building had not been planned that way from the beginning.

These small drawings (orchestra, first balcony, second balcony) show the aggressive adaptations Mr. Lee had to make to the irregular shape of the lot—a common difficulty for buildings on the southeast side of Liberty Avenue, where the two grids of the irrationally rationalistic eighteenth-century street plan collide.

Detail over the entrance. These decorations disappeared when the building was converted to offices.

Corner detail. The cornice and pilasters survive, but the elaborate terra-cotta decoration between the pilasters vanished in 1924.
1. In the original version of this article, Father Pitt had given the date as 1920, following a city architectural survey. The listing from the American Contractor proves that the date was actually no earlier than 1924. ↩︎
August 27, 2023
First English Evangelical Lutheran Church, Sharpsburg

It is sad to report that the last Lutheran congregation in Sharpsburg has thrown in the towel. (There were once three Lutheran churches: this English one and two German ones.) The good news, however, is that Sharpsburg is becoming a trendier neighborhood, and it will be worth adapting this distinctive building to some other use. It is a sort of Jacobean Gothic with more than a whiff of Art Nouveau.

August 26, 2023
Hunt Armory, Shadyside

This block-long palace is a startlingly imposing building to run across in the residential back streets of Shadyside. The dwellers in the houses surrounding it must feel a glow of confidence knowing they are well protected should the Prussians invade. The building was designed by the W. G. Wilkins Company, also responsible for the Maul Building and the Frick & Lindsay Company Building (now the Andy Warhol Museum). It opened in 1916.

August 25, 2023
Row of Commercial Buildings, Carson Street at 23rd, South Side

Seen from the Birmingham Bridge, this row of Italianate storefronts retains most of its Victorian magnificence, although the newer windows blight the one on the end.

August 25, 2023
No. 1 Firehouse, Sharpsburg

An old firehouse converted to a commercial building on Main Street in Sharpsburg. It still has its bell.

Sharpsburg, including St. Mary’s Church, reflected in the windows.

August 24, 2023
Clapp Hall, University of Pittsburgh

In 1956, twenty years after Charles Z. Klauder’s Cathedral of Learning opened, Clapp Hall opened its doors. It was designed by Trautwein & Howard, the successors to Mr. Klauder, but it was no longer possible to make an academic building in the ornate Gothic style that had been Klauder’s specialty. Instead, the architects gave us a restrained late-Art-Deco modernist Gothic that fits well with Klauder’s buildings but doesn’t embarrass postwar sensibilities too badly. The entrance is at an angle to the rest of the building so that the Cathedral of Learning is perfectly framed in the doorway as you walk out.

Below, three views of the Fifth Avenue side:

The Tennyson Avenue side has a similar face:

August 23, 2023
Bellevue Methodist Protestant Church

This elaborately stony Gothic church is small but rich; it seems to represent an American Christian’s fantasy of the Middle Ages. It is no longer active as a church, but the building is kept in good shape by the current occupants, “The Center of Bellevue.” The gargoyles on the tower are distinctive and impressive.

This was the Methodist Protestant church, as the inscription informs us. Bellevue’s Methodist Episcopal congregation built just across the border in West Bellevue, now Avalon, where the congregation still meets in what has become known as the Greenstone Church.

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August 23, 2023
St. Joseph’s Church, Sharpsburg

Father Pitt featured one picture of this church a couple of months ago, but he returned to get a few better pictures, including the composite one above, which took some effort. We repeat the information from the earlier article:

Now Madonna of Jerusalem Church of Christ the King Parish, which also includes the St. Joseph Church that once lived in this building but handed it over to Madonna of Jerusalem in 1960. This building was finished in 1874, but it was built around an earlier school from 1869. It is a typical nineteenth-century Pittsburgh Gothic church, with the buttresses and crenellations we expect from the style.

August 22, 2023
31st Street, Strip

Here is one of two streets in the Strip that exist mostly under bridges. Two blocks away, 33rd Street is entirely under a railroad bridge.

August 21, 2023
Bellevue Christian Church

Here is a little Arts-and-Crafts Romanesque church that had money at the wrong time. The modern addition (probably 1960s or early 1970s) is not sympathetic to the church behind it. The elaborate modernist window in the front probably replaced an earlier decorative window; perhaps the church had a fire. If a member of the congregation has any information, old Pa Pitt would be grateful for it.

August 20, 2023