Though credited to Eggers & Higgins in most guides to Pittsburgh architecture, the Le Corbusier–style cruciform-towers-in-a-park design was the work of Irwin Clavan. According to Franklin Toker, “The design of these cruciform towers represented a tug-of-war between the traditionalists Eggers and Higgins, former partners of John Russell Pope (Eggers was also a major force in building the Pentagon), and the more progressive Clavan, who in the same years designed cruciform-tower housing estates in New York on the model of Le Corbusier’s 1922 towers-in-the-park scheme for Paris. Between seven and fifteen cruciform towers were originally projected, in traditional brick and limestone. At the last minute the designs were respecified for stainless steel, but scarcities during the Korean War required that chrome-alloyed steel be substituted.”1
Old Pa Pitt does not know whether the last-minute substitution of steel was a matter of cost or aesthetics, but it made all the difference in the world. Like most big cities, Pittsburgh is littered with postwar brick cruciform apartment towers. They are not missed if they go away. But the glimmering steel face of the Gateway Center towers makes them unique and attractive. They catch the light and throw it back in constantly shifting patterns throughout the day. The steel lifts these towers out of the bland and forgettable, and we should appreciate how lucky we are to have it.
These little stores with living quarters above were built in the 1880s, but the buildings are not much different from thousands that went up throughout the nineteenth century, and indeed they have their stylistic roots in the eighteenth century. They all preserve their properly inset shop entrances, so that doors do not hit passing pedestrians in the face.
This old bowling alley has some interesting history. It was built in 1929 with two floors of duckpin bowling. After conversion to ten-pin bowling, it petered out in the 1990s, but not before it had been used as a location in the movie Kingpin, starring Woody Harrelson. Father Pitt has not seen that movie, but according to Wikipedia it has a reputation as somewhere between bad and mediocre, and it was number 2 on someone’s list of Woody Harrelson’s best films.
The building itself is interesting. Though the ground floor has been altered, the second floor, with its arcaded balcony, is eye-catching and makes a strong impression on the streetscape of Brownsville Road.
Ginkgo biloba is a tree often planted for its beautiful form and its resistance to the thousand natural shocks that trees are heir to in the city. In the fall, its leaves turn a brilliant golden yellow, and then within a very short time they all fall and carpet the ground with gold. These trees were just beginning to push the eject button in the South Side Cemetery in Carrick.
The Shadyside half of Bayard Street is lined with fine houses in a variety of styles. We ambled down one block on a sunny November day, taking pictures of the patterns of light and shadow on the sunny side of the street.
A reader named Tom Slack writes to ask about Pierce Street. “There is a street in Shadyside I’ve always been fascinated with—the block of row houses on Pierce Street—I wondered if you knew anything about the history.”
Old Pa Pitt is always happy to hear from readers, and he was ready to send this one to his article about Pierce Street, with apologies for not knowing any more than is in the article. But he could not find his article on Pierce Street. He distinctly remembered having been to Pierce Street just to photograph those houses, and the pictures turned up when he searched the vast Father Pitt archive. But here it is more than two years after those pictures were taken, and still no article!
Well, we can take care of that right now. Father Pitt regrets to say that he does not know much about these houses, but here is what he does know.
Pierce Street—formerly Parker Street—is a tiny street, two blocks long, that branches off the end of College Street. The rowhouses in the 5800 block are on listed by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation as a historic landmark, and the PHLF tells us that they were built in 1891–1892. Old maps tell us they were owned by A. W. Mellon. This teaches us the valuable lesson that every little investment helps if you want to become the richest family in the world.
From the Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, March 18, 1891: “At Baum Grove, near Roup station, Allegheny Co, about fifty dwellings will be erected by A. W. Mellon, of Pittsburg.” Roup Station was just at the west end of Parker Street. A few of the houses on the southeast side of the street have disappeared, replaced by a parking lot. But the block-long row on the northwest side is still intact.
The houses look tiny from the front, and by any standard they are small houses. Like many of these Pittsburgh terraces, though, they are deeper than you might think. Moreover, they make clever use of the space they do have, as we see in this view of the alley behind one of the rows, where projecting oriels add a few more square feet to the upper floors while still leaving room for rear exits and trash cans.
There is a little mystery about the street name. The street was called Parker Street before the houses were built, and after as well, until the great street-name rationalization after Pittsburgh absorbed the city of Allegheny, when duplicate street names were eliminated. (Renamed streets were usually given a name that began with the same letter, as happened here.) But when the houses were built, a street sign was built into the corner house identifying the street as “College Place.” Father Pitt does not know whether the street was ever renamed, or whether Mr. Mellon expected to be able to wangle a renaming for his new little development and was disappointed. The commercial building at the corner of Ellsworth Avenue and College Street was built at the same time, also on A. W. Mellon property, and it bears an identical stone block identifying College Street as “College Ave.”
The main business streets of Coraopolis are Fifth Avenue, Fourth Avenue, and Mill Street, a very narrow street that crosses the other two. (There is also a Main Street in Coraopolis, but, in Pittsburghish fashion, it is not the main street.) Let’s take a stroll down Mill Street together. We’ll take two cameras with us, one digital and the other loaded with black-and-white film.
We’ll start at the Coraopolis Savings and Trust Company building, a splendid bank designed by Press C. Dowler, who gave us a number of grand classical banks. Right across Fifth Avenue is…
This plain but dignified doorway leads to the upstairs offices, which were a prestigious address for local businessmen. The architect W. E. Laughner had his office here.
Across the street is a substantial commercial block with a corner entrance.
Now we come to a building with tangled layers of history, but enough remains to show us the style of the original.
This bricked-in arch has a terra-cotta head for a keystone. Note that the original building was faced with Roman brick—the long, narrow bricks you see outside the arch—and not just Roman, but yellow Kittanning Roman brick.
This building next door used similar Kittanning Roman brick. The storefront has been altered, but long enough ago that it has an inset entrance to keep the door from hitting pedestrians in the face.
At the intersection with Fourth Avenue we meet the old Hotel Helm,1 with its distinctive shingled turret. It probably bore a cap when it was built.
From here Mill Street leads past the train station and the Fingeret building, both of which we’ve seen before. At Second Avenue—as far as we’ll go for now—we come to…
…the Hotel Belvedere, which was probably a cheaper place to stay than the Hotel Helm. It still preserves its shingled gable, though the rest has been sheathed in three colors of fake siding.
Three identical houses with all the signature quirks of the Queen Anne style: turrets, odd angles, curved surfaces, oriels, shingles, and every other effect that can be applied to a city house to make it more picturesque.
Even though it has lost some decorative details over the years, Castle Stanton still drops jaws of passers-by who find themselves in unfamiliar territory here on the border of East Liberty and Highland Park. It looks like a 1920s Hollywood set: we expect Douglas Fairbanks dressed as Robin Hood to leap from an upstairs window and land on his feet after a series of spectacular acrobatics.
This advertisement from the Pittsburgh Press, September 21, 1930, shows us some of the pointy bits that have since been removed.
This Hollywood front hides an unexpected secret, which will be revealed if we walk around to the side of the building.
Now we see the outlines of an older Queen Anne mansion, converted to an apartment house by the addition of a Hollywood-fantasy front facing Stanton Avenue.
