Father Pitt

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Win Some, Lose Some

When he published his recent pictures of the Craig Street automotive row, old Pa Pitt promised his readers pictures of some of the other nearby buildings from the early days of the automobile. Yesterday he walked over to Melwood Avenue to get pictures of the old Chevrolet dealer and found that he hadn’t walked fast enough, because this is what it looks like now:

Yes, it has been demolished for another apartment tower. Doubtless this will bring rolling waves of prosperity, though not everyone in the neighborhood is happy about it:

On the bright side, the demolition revealed an old painted sign that probably had not been visible for more than a hundred years:

Father Pitt has not been able to read the names of the two superimposed companies. This wall had been obscured by the Chevrolet dealer since before 1923, so this sign dates from the first decades of the automobile.

August 20, 2022
St. George’s Convent, Allentown

German influence was strong in the German neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, and the particular German variant of Romanesque called the Rundbogenstil—round-arch style—can be discerned in many of our buildings. Few offer it in as ostentatiously German a form as this one, which was the convent for St. George’s parish school in Allentown. It seems to old Pa Pitt that the rhythm of the front is just about perfect, and the three elaborate double arches place the proper emphasis on the upstairs chapel.

The side was not really meant to be seen, so it is almost completely undecorated.

Addendum: The convent was built in about 1915; the architect was Herman J. Lang, who was also the architect of the church.

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August 20, 2022
Bee Movie

That pun works better in conversation than in print, but here is a movie of bees pollinating Hibiscus syriacus flowers, set to the music of Adolph Krantz. You can go to the Wikimedia Commons hosting page for the HD version.

August 19, 2022
Corner Store in Beechview

Pittsburgh neighborhoods used to be full of little corner groceries. Most disappeared when big chain supermarkets took over the grocery trade. But occasionally a neighborhood store succeeds; this one in Beechview moved into a storefront that was vacant for some time and seems to be making a go of it.

Of course it used to be that your average corner grocery was only four or five steps from a streetcar line. That is no longer true in most places, but it is still true in Beechview.

August 19, 2022
Civil-War-Era Survivors on Carson Street

Carson Street is famous for its Victorian commercial buildings, but here and there among the Victorian masterpieces, and the later fillers, are a few that we might call pre-Victorian. Even though they were built during the long reign of Queen Victoria across the sea, these buildings betray little of the style that we think of as Victorian. They are hardly architecture at all. They are built in the simple vernacular style that was current for decades in the early and middle nineteenth century—and had indeed been inherited from the eighteenth. They are identical to houses of the same era, except with the front of the first floor modified into a storefront.

Here are two of them. Both of them have been through various alterations over the years, but they are easily recognized by their peaked roofs with narrow projecting dormers, making them look almost like a child’s drawing of a house. From our 1872 map, it seems fairly certain that both of them were here in 1872, when East Birmingham was taken into the city of Pittsburgh; they probably date from the period of rapid development in East Birmingham during and right after the Civil War.

August 18, 2022
Porch of the Mellon Institute

Behind the world’s largest monolithic columns on the porch of the Mellon Institute.

August 18, 2022
Making Lemonade on the South Side

“When life hands you lemons,” as the old saying goes, and here is an example of someone making pretty good lemonade out of some very unpromising lemons.

Three years ago the old St. Adalbert’s Auditorium looked like this.

Obviously it had been abandoned, and desultory attempts at maintenance had ground to a halt. This in spite of the fact that the church right next door was still active, and indeed still is today.

But now the same developer who converted St. Casimir’s to condominiums has taken this building in hand, turning it into fairly expensive condominiums under the name “The Auditorium.”

A sign in front tells us that nine out of fourteen units have already been sold. Considering that the building was a gymnasium, auditorium, and fallout shelter built in the most undistinguished modernist style, this is a very good outcome for a building that had been a festering eyesore in the neighborhood.

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August 17, 2022
Beltzhoover Presbyterian Church

Since 1969 this has been the home of South Hills Baptist Church, but it was originally Presbyterian. It is a tidy and well-kept example of a small corner-tower church from the late 1800s or very early 1900s, modest but very tasteful, combining Romanesque style with the Arts-and-Crafts trend of the 1890s. Fortunately the current congregation has maintained it in beautiful and original shape.

August 17, 2022
A Walk on the South Side with a Black-and-White Camera

Corner of 16th and Sarah Streets.

It was not really a black-and-white camera; it was old Pa Pitt’s nineteen-year-old Samsung Digimax V4, a strange beast that was made for photography enthusiasts who wanted something that would fit in the pocket but still had most of the options of a sophisticated enthusiast’s camera. Father Pitt has set the user options to black-and-white. There is no good reason for doing so: obviously the camera collects color data and throws the colors away, and the colors could just as well be thrown away in software after returning from the expedition. But knowing that the picture must be black and white forces one to think in terms of forms rather than colors. So here are half a dozen pictures from a walk through the South Side Flats.

Building on 17th Street, probably from the 1920s.

The entrance to St. Adalbert’s Church.

St. Adalbert’s rectory.

Rowhouses on Sarah Street.

Front steps.

August 16, 2022
Pittsburgh Athletic Association, Oakland

The Pittsburgh Athletic Association, one of the prolific Benno Janssen’s most elaborate designs, as it was in 2000 before the recent renovation. Above, from across Fifth Avenue; below, from the grounds of the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial. Old Pa Pitt took these pictures with a Kodak Retinette, which comes close to his ideal of the perfect 35-millimeter camera.

August 16, 2022