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  • A Stroll on McPherson Boulevard, North Point Breeze

    6755 McPherson Boulevard

    North Point Breeze is an eclectic mixture of every kind of housing from Queen Anne mansions to duplexes to medium-sized apartment buildings. A walk on just one block of McPherson Boulevard passes a jumbled assortment of styles. Since the neighborhood has not been rich in the past few decades, many of the buildings preserve details that would have been lost if their owners had been wealthier.

    We begin with a Shingle Style house that has lost its shingles but retains its angular projections and low-sloped roof.

    6755
    6753 McPherson Boulevard

    A narrow stone-fronted Queen Anne house with a square turret. For some reason the stone has been painted white. The porch pediment preserves some elaborate woodwork.

    Pediment with woodwork
    6745 McPherson Boulevard

    A brick house laid out like a narrow Pittsburgh Foursquare; its outstanding feature is the round oriel on the second floor.

    6736 McPherson Boulevard

    Here is a simple but large Pittsburgh Foursquare. Many of its distinctive details have been lost, but the round bay in the dining room must be very pleasant from the inside.

    6730

    An older foursquare with original shingles and elaborate woodwork.

    Dormer
    Gable with decorative woodwork
    Decorated bracket
    6730
    6728 and 6726

    A double house, probably from the 1920s, that keeps its Mediterranean-style tiled roof.

    6728 and 6726
    6723 McPherson Boulevard

    A small apartment building.

    6713 and 6715

    A matched set of duplexes with Mission-style tiled overhangs.

    6709 and 6711 McPherson Boulevard
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

    Finally, a double duplex that must have looked up to date when it was built. It probably had a tiled overhang along the roofline above the second-floor windows.


    Comments
    April 2, 2025
  • Magnolia


    Comments
    April 2, 2025
  • Wildberg Building

    Wildberg Building

    “Penn avenue always has been and seems to continue to be the Mecca of furniture houses,” wrote George Esterhammer in the Pittsburg Press in 1905,1 and indeed Penn Avenue between Ninth and Tenth was lined with huge furniture dealers on both sides for more than a century. (See Spear and Company, for example.) Mr. Esterhammer was the architect of this building, which was designed to the latest fireproof standards, including a 10,000-gallon tank on the roof and sprinklers throughout.

    Architect’s drawing of the Wildberg building

    “The fireproof floors will be covered with narrow white maple,” Mr. Esterhammer continued, “thus allowing to display to better advantage the beauty of carpets and rugs. The front on Penn Avenue will be of plate glass, Cleveland sandstone, buff brick and ornamental fire flashed terra cotta. The main entrance and the stories above are a special feature, highly ornamented and will, in the opinion of the writer, be striking and attractive.”

    The architect’s elevation was published with the article, so we can compare the building as designed to the building as it stands now. The crest has been lost, but other alterations have been minimal. The ground floor has been sensitively updated for a restaurant and storefront, but overall the building makes very much the same impression it must have made when it was new. “Altogether,” said Mr. Esterhammer, “Mr. Wildberg’s new building will lift up its head proud among its neighbors,” and it still does.

    Entrance
    Perspective view
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
    1. “Penn Avenue Improvement,” Pittsburg Press, June 18, 1905. The name is spelled “Easterhammer” above the article, but “Esterhammer” in the illustration caption and in other construction listings we have seen. He was a member of the Deutsch-Amerikanischen Techniker-Verband, and in their membership listings his first name is spelled “Georg.” ↩︎

    Comments
    April 2, 2025
  • College Hall, Duquesne University

    College Hall at Duquesne University

    The lower side of College Hall as seen from Locust Street. We also have pictures of the front of College Hall.


    Comments
    April 1, 2025
  • Spring Flower Show at Phipps Conservatory

    Pansy with stripes

    The Spring Flower Show is on at Phipps Conservatory for the next three weeks. When we have said that it is up to the usual standard, we have said all you need to know. Above, a pansy. Father Pitt didn’t catch its name, but it has personality.

    Bed of spring bulbs

    The beds in front of the entrance are a riot of spring bulbs.

    Bed of spring bulbs
    Himalayan Blue Poppy

    The fabulously rare and desirable Himalayan Blue Poppy (Meconopsis grandis).

    Meconopsis
    Broderie

    The Broderie and its wishing well, all dressed for spring.

    Wishing well
    Petunia

    Petunia × hybrida ‘Midnight Gold,’ a spectacular double petunia.

    Double petunia
    East Room

    The East Room.

    Delphinium

    A pastel Delphinium.

    Delphinium closeup
    Display in the South Conservatory
    Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6.

    The display in the South Conservatory.


    Comments
    April 1, 2025
  • Store and Apartments by Louis Stevens, Carrick

    2551 Churchview Avenue

    This was an early commission for Louis Stevens,1 who would be best known in his career for houses and mansions for the rich and the upper middle class. It was built in 1911 on Churchview Avenue (then called Church Avenue, but renamed Churchview when Carrick was taken into the city of Pittsburgh), just off Brownsville Road. Four years earlier, Stevens had been studying architecture in Carnegie Tech’s night school. The front of the building has been muddled a bit, but the renovations were done in a halfhearted manner that allows us to appreciate the original composition.

    2551 Churchview Avenue
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
    1. Our source for the attribution is this map of Stevens’ works created by a Google Maps user, to whom many thanks. ↩︎

    Comments
    April 1, 2025
  • Byers-Lyons House, Allegheny West

    Byers-Lyons House
    Father Pitt will admit to having removed an ugly utility pole from this picture. Perhaps some day he will do an article about the utility pole and remove the house.

    Longfellow, Alden & Harlow, Pittsburgh’s most prestigious firm, were the architects of this Flemish Renaissance mansion, which is now Byers Hall of the Community College of Allegheny County. Of the surviving millionaires’ mansions in Allegheny West, this is old Pa Pitt’s favorite. It is impressively huge, but the details are inviting rather than forbidding. Even the huge iron gate in front seems to be there more to invite you in than to keep you out.

    Gate
    Arcade and entrance

    The arcade on two sides of a garden court forms a pleasant cloister in front of the house, rather than behind it, suggesting that the residents do not turn their backs on their neighbors.

    Byers-Lyons house
    Byers Hall
    Chimney
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    Are these the most artistic chimneys in Pittsburgh? They are certainly in the running, at any rate.


    Comments
    March 31, 2025
  • B. F. Jones Building

    B. F. Jones Building

    Built in 1881, this is the only remaining downtown work of Joseph Stillburg—as far as old Pa Pitt knows, but he still hopes for surprises. Stillburg was a very big deal in Pittsburgh in the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, but most of his buildings have disappeared. They were prominent buildings in their time—the Pittsburgh Exposition buildings, for example, and the Bissell Block—but they were replaced by other even grander projects as the land they were built on became even more valuable (or, in the case of the Exposition buildings, they were taken down for Point Park).

    This building is a symphonic fugue of perfectly balanced themes and rhythms woven into a composition that must have been strikingly modern in 1881. It has been restored and renovated with good taste, and it is ready for another century and a half of use.

    B. F. Jones Building
    Crest of the building
    Ornament
    Ornament
    B. F. Jones Building from the west
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Comments
    March 31, 2025
  • Tenth United Presbyterian Church, Dutchtown

    Tenth United Presbyterian Church

    This church has a complicated history. It was built as the Tenth United Presbyterian Church. In 1940, it was sold to the Catholic Diocese and became Mary Immaculate Church, the Italian parish in Dutchtown. It went through several parish mergers and names—Our Lady, Queen of Peace, being the most recent—before being sold again, and today it serves as Jonah’s Call Anglican Church. The original church is a typical Pittsburgh corner-tower Protestant church, but the Catholics made it their own with some fine sculpture, to which the Anglicans fortunately have no objection. The Catholic congregation also moved the main entrance, which had been in the tower; the old entrance made a good frame for the Blessed Virgin.

    Mary Immaculate
    Perspective view of the Mary Immaculate sculpture
    Maria Immaculata
    Tenth United Presbyterian Church
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    Comments
    March 30, 2025
  • Evangelische Imanuel’s Kirche, Dutchtown

    Evangelische Imanuel’s Kirche

    Built for a German Reformed congregation, Imanuel Evangelical Church later became a Methodist church, and then an art gallery. This is another city church with the sanctuary upstairs.

    Front entrance with inscription

    The inscription on the front tells us that the church was built in 1859 and rebuilt in 1889. Father Pitt does not know how extensive the rebuilding was, but he might guess that the ground-floor windows on the side, with their angular Gothic arches, were from the 1859 building. The carved stonework ornaments probably date from 1889.

    Dragon in Romanesque foliage

    Whenever old Pa Pitt looks into Romanesque foliage and sees somebody looking back at him, he suspects our master of Romanesque grotesqueries, Achille Giammartini.

    Dragon carving
    View across the Tripoli Street bridge
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

    The Parkway North just missed this building when it tore Dutchtown in two.


    Comments
    March 30, 2025
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