Father Pitt

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All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Brighton Heights
Disclosure: old Pa Pitt took some utility cables out of some of these pictures. Fans of Pittsburgh utility cables will have to look elsewhere today.

A beautiful Gothic church from the 1930s. It is typical of Episcopal churches in Pittsburgh: small but rich, Gothic in style, with a steeply pitched roof that makes up more than half the height of the building. The architects were Ingham & Boyd.¹

The wooden wheelchair ramp is not the most elegant solution to the problem of access, but it does its job without permanent damage to the building.

Loaves and fishes.

The pelican, a symbol of Christ. In medieval zoology, the pelican was known for feeding her young with her own blood. Modern zoology disputes the data, but as symbolism the legend is irresistible.

Vine and pilaster capitals at the main entrance.

According to the church site, the neatly kept lawn was once the site of a parsonage.
1. Source: “Episcopalians Planning North Side Edifice,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, March 30, 1930. Also, “Big Six Who Shaped Face of Pittsburgh To Be Honored for Outstanding Work,” Pittsburgh Press, January 13, 1952, where it is listed among Ingham’s works, along with other Ingham & Boyd projects. Thanks to David Schwing for these clippings. In an earlier version of this article, Father Pitt had admitted ignorance of the architect, but the discovery of the attribution is not surprising, since Ingham & Boyd did several other churches in a very similar style. ↩︎
July 12, 2023
Saint Nicholas Orthodox Church, Homestead

Many other Eastern churches have gilded or painted domes, but these domes are genuine made-in-Homestead stainless steel. Saint Nicholas Orthodox Church has its own Wikipedia article. It is a Ruthenian, or Rusyn, or Carpatho-Russian congregation that belongs to the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese, a group of Ruthenian churches that left the Roman Catholic Church because the American bishops refused to allow them to keep their Eastern Rite traditions, notably married clergy. (The problem was later addressed with a separate Ruthenian Greek Catholic hierarchy for North America—too late to prevent this particular split.) The building itself was begun in 1936, but, what with one thing and another, it was not completed until 1950.

It was a day of sun and clouds, so we have pictures in very different lighting.

July 12, 2023
Brunot Island

Brunot Island, or Brunot’s Island, or Brunots Island, because the Board on Geographic Names “does not recognize the use of the possessive apostrophe,” as Wikipedia puts it (Father Pitt would be willing to explain it to them if they would like to make an appointment), is the first island in the Ohio downstream from Pittsburgh. It was once the home of Dr. Felix Brunot, who built an estate there in the late 1700s, and saw it washed away in a flood in 1811. Now it is home to the Brunot Island Generating Station, and it is inaccessible except by water, by railroad, or by a private pedestrian walkway for the workers at the power plant. These views were taken from the north shore of the Ohio.

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July 11, 2023
The Peoples Building, McKeesport

The richly detailed Peoples Building deserves owners and tenants who will love it, and we hope it can find them. It has at least been stabilized by its current owner, and it looks like an attractive place to have an office.

These entrances want clocks, but the elegance of the gleaming white stone is unimpaired.

This classical roof ornament was clearly meant to be right in the middle of the Fifth Avenue side, but it appears that the building was expanded by two more bays not long after it was built.

The McKeesport Community Newsroom site gives us A Peek Inside the Peoples Building, showing us a wonderful time capsule that it would almost be a shame to disturb. If old Pa Pitt were a billionaire, he would buy the building, preserve all the contents as they are, and call it a museum, and then not care whether anyone actually paid the 50¢ admission fee, because he would be a billionaire.

Addendum: The architects were Mowbray & Uffinger, New York specialists in bank buildings.

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July 11, 2023
Adding Five Stories to an Eight-Story Office Building in Pittsburgh

We’ve mentioned before that the Jones & Laughlin Headquarters Building was expanded upward by five floors almost a decade after it was built. It seems that the expansion was planned and provided for from the beginning, which explains how the architects, MacClure & Spahr, managed it so neatly. The Engineering News for January 18, 1917, gives us the technical details of how it was done, and includes a picture of the back of the building with the construction in progress.

Adding Five Stories to an Eight-Story Office Building in Pittsburgh

An extension of five stories—planned at the time the structure was erected to its original height of eight stories—has just been added to the Jones & Laughlin Steel Co. office building in Pittsburgh. In the original construction the floorbeams of the ninth floor had been put in place and used to support a temporary roof, and the columns had been provided with splices to take the future extensions. When the addition was begun, holes were cut through the roof to enter the columns, and then these holes were housed around to keep out the rain. A stiffleg derrick hoisted the steel and then erected it.

To give access to the portion of the floor lying between the stifflegs, the loads were temporarily landed at the extreme swing of the boom. The boom was then passed back of a disconnected stiffleg and proceeded with the erection after the stiffleg had been replaced.

The old roof was wrecked as soon as the tenth-floor slabs and the new side walls of the ninth floor were in place. The floor was maintained in a fairly water-tight condition. It had originally been intended to require that the new roof be placed before the old was removed.

All materials other than steelwork, including concrete and débris from the old roof and cornice, were handled in the construction elevator at the rear of the building. Floors were built on the Witherow system, with removable steel centers on which were cast a beam-and-slab floor framing into the steel floorbeams.

McClure & Spahr were the architects, and James L. Stuart was the contractor.

So MacClure & Spahr had to design a building that would look finished at two different heights, which they managed with elegance and finesse. It is now the John P. Robin Civic Building, and the exterior is almost perfectly preserved.

July 10, 2023
Cy Hungerford Reacts to Coolidge’s Announcement

Calvin Coolidge announced that he would not run for a third term in typically laconic Coolidge fashion: “I do not choose to run for President in 1928.” Pittsburgh’s great Cy Hungerford imagines why he might not want that third term. This cartoon came from a microfilm copy of the Post-Gazette; we have made some adjustments to make it look more like what Hungerford originally drew.

July 10, 2023
Asbestos Siding in McKeesport

We often see diamond-shaped asbestos-cement siding like this in neglected neighborhoods, but seldom in such good shape. Note that this old house, which old Pa Pitt would tentatively date to the 1870s, has also preserved its fine Victorian woodwork in front. The original wood siding can still be seen under the porch roof.

The splendid Queen Anne mansion next door looks as though it needs a new roof, but is otherwise in a good state of preservation.

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July 10, 2023
C. M. Schwab Industrial School, Homestead

When a new generation of architects feels utter contempt for the work of the previous generation, this is the result. Fortunately, the contempt extended to ignoring the details of the original building, which are therefore preserved, except for the loss of the cornice. Like several other previously abandoned buildings in the historic center of Homestead, this one has now found another use.

The school was named for Charles M. Schwab, who was superintendent of the Homestead Works and later the first president of United States Steel.

July 9, 2023
First Baptist Church, Oakland

Designed by Bertram Goodhue in the Perpendicular Gothic style, this church emphasizes verticality. We also have pictures of the interior of First Baptist.

July 9, 2023
Horst & Mooney Garage, Brighton Heights

Now it belongs to a contractor, and the filling-in with concrete blocks and artificial siding is probably a fair sample of a Pittsburgh contractor’s taste. But the building is, on the whole, in an excellent state of preservation. It shows up on our 1923 map as the Horst & Mooney Garage, and we can probably guess what brand of cars it sold and serviced.

Update: Mr. John Hempel has pointed out that this was a Packard dealer in 1930. “In your fascinating Car Dealers page, Horst & Mooney may have been a Chev dealer more recently, but it was originally a Packard dealer. Pitt archives has a photo – just search Horst & Mooney.”

Many thanks to Mr. Hempel for pointing out the old photograph. Here is the picture he mentions, and the signs certainly leave no doubt about what cars this dealer was selling:

You can see a very-high-resolution scan at the Historic Pittsburgh site. Because the resolution is so high, we can see that the little decoration at the peak of the roof was there from the beginning:

It is possible that this is not meant to be a Chevrolet logo, but both the shape and the blue color seem hard to mistake.

So Father Pitt’s working hypothesis is that this was a Chevrolet dealer before it was a Packard dealer, but the well-to-do Brighton Heights clientele justified moving up in the world.

The 1930 photo gives us a good look at the original state of the building and confirms that, except for the filling-in of windows, it has not changed very much. As a bonus, we also get a good look at the California Methodist Episcopal Church and, right at the corner of the garage lot, a streetcar shelter.

July 8, 2023