This building immediately struck old Pa Pitt as a Geisler & Smithyman sort of building, and in this case his instinct was correct. It was built in 1929, and Geisler & Smithyman were indeed the architects. The Geisler of the firm was the venerable Charles R. Geisler, who lived in Beechview and scattered medium-sized apartment buildings all over the Pittsburgh area.
If you are looking for a distinguished church building, here is one for sale, and in very good shape. It was built in 1906 as Zion Evangelical Church; the architect was Chauncey W. Hodgdon.1 For many years it was the Albright Methodist Church.
The building had more than one narrow escape from death. It was owned by the Methodists who also had the cathedral-sized First United Methodist Church right next to it; since this church was redundant, they proposed to sell it to a developer who would demolish it and build something profitable. When a city historic designation made that more difficult, the church sat abandoned and decaying for several more years, exchanging the fast death of redevelopment for the slow death of neglect. But about three years ago it was restored, including cleaning off the decades of accumulated soot.
This was the tower when old Pa Pitt passed by in 2008; he published this picture under the heading “The Vanishing Black Stones of Pittsburgh.” We may add this building to the list of previously black buildings whose blackness has vanished.
Or at least mostly vanished.
In the background we can see the massive lantern of First Methodist.
Originally a store with upstairs living quarters. The corner location made a side entrance for the living quarters possible.
French Moderns, at the Frick Art Museum through October 11, brings an impressive collection of Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, and more to Pittsburgh. There are even a couple of Academics thrown in to show us what the moderns were rebelling against. Here is a selection from the show.
Hollywood Place is a plan of narrow little rowhouses built in 1892–1893 in California-Kirkbride, or Calbride as it’s usually called in the neighborhood. There were originally 137 houses, but many have vanished over the years. Today the plan is part of the Old Allegheny Rows Historic District.
The 1890 plat map shows the tract, before the houses were built, as the property of D. Herbert Hostetter, the patent-medicine king. The houses, “built in rows after the Philadelphia plan” (as one newspaper put it), were built for Herbert DuPuy, whose wife, Amy Hostetter, had inherited the property. In 1903, they were swapped for other properties to Frank McCann.
Most of what old Pa Pitt knows about this plan comes from the National Register nomination for the Old Allegheny Rows Historic District (PDF), and we quote the relevant paragraph:
In the early 1890’s the housing market in Pittsburgh boomed due to a tremendous industrial expansion. According to one newspaper report, the type of housing most in demand was small, modestly priced, rental houses. In order to meet this demand, Herbert DuPuy, a noted Pittsburgh industrialist, made plans for a large speculative housing development. The development was to be constructed on six blocks of undeveloped land north of California Avenue that his wife. Amy Hostetter, had inherited. The construction of the DuPuy development began in 1892 and was referred to as “Hollywood place”. When completed, Hollywood place was to consist of 300 to 400, four-to-six-room, row houses. According to contemporary newspapers, the development was based on the “Philadelphia Plan”, apparently a term used to describe planned communities of row houses. DuPuy’s project included architecturally-resplendent houses on the larger streets and modest residences on the alleys. The houses were done in a Victorian vernacular style with sheet metal architectural detailing, and porches on the larger buildings made from standard pieces of millwork. The completion of the project was hindered by the Panic of 1893 and the Homestead Riots near Pittsburgh. Only 137 of the proposed 300-400 row houses were constructed. The scale and style of the “Hollywood place” row housing is unique in Pittsburgh. The development features a number of interesting and varying architectural elements, but at the same time has a mass-produced appearance that is different from the more random developments along Brighton Place.
Here is an epitome of the neighborhood: two houses neatly restored and beautifully kept, one house condemned.
It looks as though some effort was made to restore this house, too, but the effort ran out of steam.
Some of the houses have been put back together on a low budget, with stock parts like the home-center front door on this house.
In spite of the gaps, this view of the sidewalk of Sedgwick Street shows us something of how these streets must have looked when all the houses were standing.
The decorations on these houses were more elaborate than usual for small houses, and the architect must have enjoyed himself planning them.
Note also the carved wood of the window frames in this house, where the decorations have been emphasized in mint green and gold.
The gaps where houses have disappeared can be taken as opportunities for delightful little gardens.
These houses on Morrison Street have been restored to a very high standard.
The long gap on Morrison Street gives us a chance to look at the side of one of the houses, and we can see that it is generously deep. There is more room in these little houses than you would think.
The houses in the eastern section of the plan were built to a simpler design; they may have come later in the development.
Sunlight pours into the long passageway that connects the Steel Plaza subway station to Grant Street.
A few Victorian houses on the edge of Manchester.
The one at right was originally a double house, now apartments.
These two are also divided into apartments, though we wouldn’t know it from the front.
We’ve seen the E. M. Butz house before; now here it is again captured on film in glorious black and white.
When Tasso Katselas designed the annex to the May Building (which was designed by Charles Bickel), modernism was not just fashion—it was dogma. Fashions have changed and dogmas have relaxed, and the annex is being remodeled to be less aggressively different from the original building. We’ll have more pictures as the remodeling takes shape.
The thick and high evergreens leave just enough gap to make the entrance to an enchanted world. So it seems from the street, and the garden beyond the mystic gate does not disappoint us.
Dover Gables is still a bit of a mystery to old Pa Pitt; no one seems to have pinned down the architect. The combination of simple Tudor-style rows of houses with lush landscaping crams the greatest load of picturesqueness possible into a tiny patch of land.
We have more pictures of Dover Gables from three years ago.
This was a warehouse and looks like a warehouse. It was built for Rosenbaum’s, one of the big department stores downtown; the architect was William E. Snaman, who had made a specialty of the department-store business.
As a building it is not a great work of art: it is one of those buildings that, as Philip Friedman said of his own works, “are admittedly far less esthetic achievements than economic realities.” But it is a bit of Pittsburgh history that will disappear at some point, as its neighbors have already done.
These piles of rubble mark the graves of two warehouses—one of which belonged to Donahoe’s grocery, and therefore might also have been designed by Snaman, since he designed the Donahoe’s building downtown. They have been demolished to make way for the immense Esplanade development, which is scheduled to eat up this building as well.
Some of the original casement windows, usually the first things to go when a building is renovated, are still in this building.
It would be hard to make a case that the Esplanade development will not be a better use of this land than a plain old warehouse, or even that this would be a good building to restore for apartments or offices. It will not be much regretted when it is gone; but as one of the last relics of a once-mighty department store, it is worth remembering with these pictures.
