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  • Beaux-Arts at the Waterworks

    Waterworks building

    This small but grand pumping station, or some sort of utility building, sits by the reservoirs behind the Waterworks shopping center. Thomas Scott was the architect of most buildings for the Pittsburgh water system in the era when this one was built, and this is certainly in his style, so we attribute it to him with some confidence. The windows that would have flooded the building with light have been blocked in, possibly for security reasons, but more likely because no one could see the point of maintaining glass windows when plywood covers the holes just as well.

    Waterworks building

    On city planning maps, the waterworks, the Waterworks shopping center, and St. Margaret’s Hospital are in the Lincoln-Lemington-Belmar neighborhood, which is otherwise on the other side of the Allegheny—one of those neighborhood-boundary absurdities that no real Pittsburgher would recognize. Pittsburghers would say they are at Aspinwall, although they belong to the city and not the borough of Aspinwall.

    Waterworks building
    Waterworks building

    Behind the encroaching jungle of vines and utility cables we can just make out a pair of classical dolphins—always the emblem of a water-related building—and a cartouche with the city arms.

    Waterworks building
    Olympus E-20N.

    Comments
    August 16, 2025
  • Moderne Apartment Building in Shadyside

    Apartment building with Moderne details
    Composite of two photographs from a Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Probably built in about 1940, this was the science-fiction apartment building of the future. Except for newer windows, it has not changed much.


    Comments
    August 16, 2025
  • Oakdale

    Shops on Noblestown Road, Oakdale

    Oakdale is a pleasant little borough in the western suburbs. The town was devastated by floods from the remnants of Hurricane Ivan in 2004, and some of it never recovered; but the back streets are full of pleasant houses, and the business district has business in it, and the population is growing.

    Shops on Noblestown Road in Oakdale

    The tiny urban core of Oakdale is a row of shops on Noblestown Road.

    5021 Noblestown Road, Oakdale

    This building, 120 years old this year, has kept its corner entrance.

    Corner entrance
    100 Clinton Avenue

    The odd polygonal end of this building probably had large showroom windows at one time.

    Old service station

    Finally, an old service station. Few old-fashioned service stations have survived without massive alterations, but this one still keeps its attractive little red-roofed hut with—once again—a corner entrance.

    Old service station
    Olympus E-20N; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Comments
    August 15, 2025
  • Three Houses with Turrets in Shadyside

    5810 Howe Street, Shadyside, Pittsburgh

    Here’s a house in an eclectic style made up of bits of other eclectic styles, but they all fit together well. The heavy arches picked out in darker brick remind us of the Rundbogenstil, a word we like to say as often as possible; but the irregular picturesque arrangement of parts takes inspiration from the style that, in defiance of history, was called Queen Anne.

    5810 Howe Street, Shadyside, Pittsburgh
    5810 Howe Street, Shadyside, Pittsburgh

    The turret has a well-preserved witch’s cap and a rim of foliage scrollwork.

    5810 Howe Street, Shadyside, Pittsburgh

    The oriel and the porch pediment are both decorated with grotesque foliage ornaments.

    Pediment with grotesque ornament, 5810 Howe Street
    5812 Howe Street

    The house next door is a duplicate, but reversed.

    5814

    Finally, a house that shares the same general shape, but is distinguished by its shingly top with curved surfaces and ornamental swags and foliage picked out in contrasting paint.

    5814 front elevation
    Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Like many Shadyside houses, this one has automobiles burrowing under the porch.


    Comments
    August 14, 2025
  • Parkstone Dwellings, North Point Breeze

    Parkstone Dwellings

    Built in 1922, the Parkstone Dwellings are the most astonishing double duplex in Pittsburgh. The architect was Frederick Scheibler, who had come through a period of prophetic modernism into a period of romantic fantasy.

    Left side of the Parkstone Dwellings
    Parkstone Dwellings
    Parkstone Dwellings

    The tenants upstairs are airing out their rugs. No, wait—

    Oriental-rug mosaic

    —that’s a mosaic!

    Mosaic
    Parkstone Dwellings
    Sony Alpha 3000; Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    The Scheibler Treasure Hunt blogger had the good luck to stumble on an estate sale here back in 2013, so you can run to that site for interior shots of one of the Parkstone Dwellings.


    Comments
    August 13, 2025
  • Spanish Mission Style on Brookline Boulevard

    802 Brookline Boulevard

    Yesterday we looked at the Spanish Mission style in Dormont. One of the adjacent city neighborhoods, Brookline, is also stuffed with Spanish Mission commercial buildings along Brookline Boulevard. Again, we look for tiled overhangs (although often the tiles have been replaced with asphalt shingles) held up by exaggerated brackets.

    Brookline Theatre

    This building was the Brookline Theatre, a silent-era neighborhood movie house.

    Brookline Theatre
    758–800 Brookline Boulevard
    Windows and tiled overhang
    758–800
    936–932
    Slated overhangs

    The building above and the one below both bear dates of 1926, and they share some similar design ideas—though the one above has slated instead of tiled overhangs.

    Tiled overhangs
    972 Brookline Boulevard
    944
    944
    824
    Olympus E-20N; Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    An abstract and geometric form of the style, but the overhang was probably tiled originally, and it probably had brackets before it was rebuilt.


    Comments
    August 12, 2025
  • Spanish Mission Style in Dormont

    1431 Potomac Avenue

    A tiled overhang and exaggerated brackets to hold it up: these are two markers of the Spanish Mission style that was fantastically popular in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Dormont in particular filled up with apartment and commercial buildings in that style, like this one at Potomac and Glenmore Avenues, which was built in 1923. Here’s a small collection of commercial buildings in the Mission style on Potomac Avenue and West Liberty Avenue, the two main commercial streets of the borough.

    1436–1434 Potomac Avenue
    1436–1434 Potomac Avenue
    Wasson Building
    Wasson Building
    1419–1421 Potomac Avenue
    2883 West Liberty Avenue
    2893 and 2895 West Liberty Avenue
    West Liberty Avenue
    Nikon COOLPIX P100; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

    Comments
    August 11, 2025
  • Church of the Atonement, Carnegie

    Church of the Atonement
    Utility cables were removed from this picture, because Father Pitt could not remove them from the street.

    With almost complete confidence, old Pa Pitt attributes this Episcopal church to Ingham & Boyd. It speaks the same dialect of Gothic as some of their other churches, and they are known to have designed the parish house that was built just before the church. However, Father Pitt has not yet found the documentary evidence that would remove the “almost” from his statement.

    Cornerstone of the Church of the Atonement

    The cornerstone was laid on October 5, 1930. At the same time, one stone taken from the foundation of Old St. Luke’s in nearby Woodville was also laid in the foundation of this church, to tie it to the pre-Revolutionary tradition of Episcopalianism in Allegheny County.1

    Door of the Church of the Atonement
    Foliage ornament
    Lantern
    Cross on the roof
    Church of the Atonement
    Parish house
    Olympus E-20N.

    This parish house is known from several listings to have been the work of Ingham & Boyd,2 and it was built just a little before the church itself. The architects looked to vernacular Western Pennsylvania farmhouses for their inspiration. We do not know what inspired the designer of the modern vestibule.


    Comments
    August 10, 2025
  • Old Post Office, Carnegie

    Old post office in Carnegie
    Olympus E-20N.

    Oscar Wenderoth was director of the Office of the Supervising Architect, which was responsible for designing federal buildings all over the country. Even though he was in office for only about three years, from 1912 to 1915, those were very productive years, and the nation is littered with post offices that bear his name. This one is typical of the buildings put up under his supervision—respectably classical, with big arched windows to let light pour into the main lobby. The post office has moved into a much duller building down the street, but as the Carnegie Coffee Company this building is beautifully kept and a lively gathering place for the town.


    Comments
    August 9, 2025
  • Pumpkin Blossoms

    Pumpkin blossom

    You have to get up early in the morning to catch pumpkin blossoms at their peak. They’re spectacularly huge, but they start to wither as soon as the sun comes out. Here are two from a city garden that by this time of the year is mostly pumpkin vines.

    Pumpkin blossom
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

    Comments
    August 8, 2025
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