The Clark Building was built in 1928 at the same time as the Stanley Theater (now the Benedum Center) around the corner, and designed by the same architects—the Hoffman-Henon Company, which specialized in theaters but could also turn out a pretty good skyscraper in a sort of modernized Beaux-Arts classical style. The upper floors are apartments, but the lower floors are still, as they have been for many years, the center of the jewelry district downtown.
This neat little church was probably the first church to be built in the new neighborhood of Beechwood, which was later renamed Beechview when it was taken into the city of Pittsburgh. It has been well refurbished for a Spanish-speaking congregation. Some of the original stained glass is gone, and the tower is bricked in, but on the whole it looks much the way it looked more than a century ago. We also note the aggressive slopes for which Beechview is notorious.
Beechview itself was laid out in 1905, so this would have been one of the earliest buildings.
Beechview’s streets changed their names when the neighborhood entered the city, because Pittsburgh didn’t need yet another set of numbered streets. Sixth Avenue is now Methyl Street; Pennsylvania Avenue is now Hampshire Avenue.
From an old postcard (the back bears a 1906 postmark), this picture gives us a good idea of the scale of freight traffic on the Monongahela. The first Point Bridge was built in 1877 and replaced in 1927; the second one was closed in 1959 but stayed up for eleven more years.
A particularly fine Queen Anne style house on Morewood Avenue. The big roof reminds old Pa Pitt of turn-of-the-twentieth-century German architecture.
Charles Bickel was quite at home in the Romanesque style, and he prospered in a city that had gone mad for Romanesque after Richardson’s County Courthouse appeared. The Ewart Building was put up in 1892. Old Pa Pitt was attracted to this morning view by the pattern of reflections on Liberty Avenue.
Two fine commercial buildings on Liberty Avenue. The large windows on the second, third, and fourth floors of No. 903 suggest workshops, which generally had the largest possible windows to take advantage of natural light.
Every once in a while old Pa Pitt slips in a picture taken with a cheap phone. This is one of them; he mentions it to point out that, within their limitations (this one demands bright light for acceptably sharp pictures), even cheap phone cameras can produce good pictures. The camera you have with you is always better than the one in the camera bag at home.
Colonial Place, off Ellsworth Avenue, is one of those little one-street enclaves in Shadyside that shut out the world as much as they can to create a tiny insular community. The architect here was George S. Orth, who also designed a couple of prominent millionaires’ mansions in Allegheny West. The landscape design by E. H. Bachman was just as important, and the sycamore trees he specified have matured into elegant sculptures as attractive when the leaves are off as they are in full leaf.
Smallman Street in the Strip changes over time, but it keeps its traditional link with the food business. The Strip became the wholesale-food district because the Pennsylvania Railroad unloaded the culinary treasures of the earth here. Today those treasures arrive mostly by truck.
The glory of Smallman Street is the broad plaza from 16th to 21st Streets, leading to St. Stanislaus Kostka, the mother church of Polish Catholicism in Pittsburgh, and one of Frederick Sauer’s most distinguished works.
George Estep was one of the founders of the borough of Duquesne and was burgess—the equivalent of mayor—twice. He was elected to the council in the first elections held in the new borough, and immediately began squabbling with the other members, leaving a trail of court cases all the way up to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and beginning a political tradition that has been lovingly preserved in Duquesne to the present day. His lush growth of beard distinguishes him in the group portraits of Duquesne founders.
This photograph has never been published before, as far as old Pa Pitt knows, and he thanks the family for preserving it for us.
