Father Pitt

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St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, Manchester

Here is another entry in our expanding catalogue of churches with the sanctuary upstairs. Now the Northside Church of God, this church, built in 1890, is a typical rowhouse-neighborhood church, making the most of its small lot. The mansard roof over the tower section looks later; it is possible that a tower or spire was damaged and replaced.

We can just make out the not-quite-obliterated name “St. Paul’s” above the date.

This cornerstone was obviously added later, and the most probable explanation is that it marks the date when the church passed out of the hands of the Lutherans.

October 21, 2022
Renaissance Palace in Squirrel Hill

Pittsburgh has many Millionaires’ Rows, and one of them is along Aylesboro Avenue in Squirrel Hill. This house is typical of the rectangular Renaissance-palace style that was popular for large houses in the early 1900s.

October 21, 2022
Red Line Car in Gateway Station

A 4200-series Red Line trolley arrives in the Gateway subway station.

October 20, 2022
Fall Colors in Bird Park

Fall colors today in Bird Park, Mount Lebanon. Sassafrass (Sassafrass albidum) is especially colorful right now, with some trees turning red and orange shades and others bright yellow.

October 20, 2022
Civil-War-Era Frame Houses on Jane Street

Each one of them has had its individual adventures, but it seems fairly certain that this row of half a dozen frame houses with narrow dormers dates from before 1872. Together they form something of a manual or catalogue of things that can happen to a frame house in Pittsburgh over the course of a century and a half.

October 19, 2022
Clouds

Reflected in the glass of Tower Two-Sixty.

October 19, 2022
Fall in the City

October 18, 2022
Chartiers Hill United Presbyterian Church in 1999

The congregation was founded in 1775 by John McMillan; this building was put up in 1840. These pictures were taken with an Argus C3 in 1999. Three years later, while renovation work was in progress, the whole tower end collapsed.

The lens on Father Pitt’s old C3 didn’t like being pointed toward the sun, so we have a bit of glare in this picture; but it does show us the old front before it collapsed. It was replaced with a new front, somewhat different but in sympathy with the building, as we see in this picture from 2015.

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October 18, 2022
Round Bank in Squirrel Hill

From the “form follows function” era of the middle twentieth century comes this round bank. Round is probably the most impractical and anti-functional shape you could come up with for a bank, but modernism sacrificed function for a striking effect much more often than Victorian classicism did. This was built in 1965 for Mellon Bank. It now belongs to Citizens Bank, which bought Mellon’s retail branches when Mellon merged with Bank of New York and decided not to deal with grubby working-class people anymore.

Addendum: The architect was Pittsburgh-based Harry Lefkowitz.

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October 17, 2022
Hill Top United Methodist Church, Allentown

A Romanesque church whose immense chimney dwarfs its stubby little tower, this is probably the only church in the neighborhood still serving its original congregation.

October 17, 2022