Father Pitt

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Duquesne Baseball Team, 1892 or 1893

The borough (later city) of Duquesne was only three or four years old when this picture was taken, if the dating in family tradition is correct, but it already had a baseball team with spiffy jerseys. One of the players—possibly the boy on the ground in front with the dark jersey—is James W. Estep (1879–1948), son of George Estep, one of the founders (and later two-term burgess) of Duquesne, and it was James’ late grandson who provided us with this picture, for which Father Pitt is very grateful.

Old Pa Pitt knows nothing of the history of this team, and he would be delighted if any readers could enlighten him.

April 18, 2022
Harris Theater

This little movie house, built as the Avenue Cinema in 1931, became the Art Cinema in 1935; from the 1960s until the 1990s, it showed “adult movies,” which old Pa Pitt assumed meant that all the films were over 21 years old. But it had begun life as an art-film house, and in 1995 it resumed that role under the name “Harris,” after one of the founders of the movie-theater business—John P. Harris, who with his brother-in-law opened the world’s first movie theater, the Nickelodeon, which was on Smithfield Street (a plaque marks the site today). Movies had been shown in theaters before, but the Nickelodeon was the first to show only movies. The idea caught on with amazing rapidity, and “Nickelodeons” sprouted everywhere.

April 18, 2022
Daffodil in the Rain

April 17, 2022
Belgian Block

A surprising number of Pittsburgh streets are still paved with Belgian block, which Pittsburghers usually call “cobblestone.” (Real cobblestones are irregular round stones.) In some better neighborhoods, all the streets were paved with Belgian block. In other neighborhoods, more-or-less flat sections were paved with brick, which is much cheaper but very slippery when wet, and the more expensive Belgian block was reserved for steep slopes.

This pavement is on Elgin Street in Highland Park.

April 17, 2022
PCC Car and Schoolhouse, Bethel Park

This old school is now a community center for Bethel Park. In front is a Pittsburgh PCC car, the ideal Art Deco streetcar that dominated Pittsburgh transit for a generation, restored to its Pittsburgh Street Railways livery. (It was one of the last PCC cars to run in Pittsburgh, and had been repainted in the 1980s Port Authority livery.) Yes, we do have quite a few pictures of it, because old Pa Pitt is an unashamed fan of PCC cars, which always look to him like trolleys that would run on the planet Mongo in the old Flash Gordon serials. More modern, but less futuristic, trolleys still run on the Silver Line just a block away.

April 16, 2022
A Forest of Moss

If you look at it through a jeweler’s loupe, you find that moss comes in fascinatingly different forms. You also discover something of its habits, such as the way it traps tiny droplets of water.

April 15, 2022
Bicolor Grape Hyacinth

Muscari latifolium is not nearly as popular as the common grape hyacinth, M. neglectum, but it adds interest to an early-spring display.

April 14, 2022
Immaculate Heart of Mary, Polish Hill

William P. Ginther, an Akron-based architect who also gave us St. Mary’s in McKees Rocks, designed this magnificent church, but much of the labor was done by the Polish railroad workers who formed the congregation. The design is inspired by St. Peter’s in Rome; this church isn’t quite on that scale, but it certainly dominates the neighborhood, and it would make a fine cathedral.

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April 14, 2022
Fox Squirrel

Sciurus niger in Bird Park, Mount Lebanon. This is the largest of our tree squirrels, easily confused with the almost-as-big grey squirrel (Sciurus calolinensis), but usually distinguishable by a certain amount of brownish coloring, which the grey squirrel seldom has.

April 13, 2022
Whimsical Brickwork in Mount Lebanon

Here is another example of the odd whimsies that sometimes pop up as small apartment buildings. This is the storybook-cottage style that was popular for single-family houses in the 1920s and 1930s built up into a storybook castle. But the most remarkable thing about it is the deliberately random decorative brickwork. It reminds old Pa Pitt of something Frank Gehry would do.

This extreme randomness would probably not hold up the whole wall, so it is used only in the sort-of-half-timbered section above the entrance. But the rest of the brickwork was made as cartoonishly irregular as possible.

Some bricklayer had a lot of fun—or a lot of under-his-breath cursing—with this assignment. We note, however, that the balcony railings have been repaired. Perhaps they were originally wood, or perhaps the irregular brickwork proved less than sound.

April 12, 2022