Trying out a new camera. Actually, it’s twelve years old, but it just arrived, and twelve years old is newer than most of old Pa Pitt’s cameras.
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Hillsdale School, Dormont
Frederick Osterling designed this school for the mushrooming borough in 1912. The building itself grew rapidly, with additions in 1914, 1916, and 1918, all in a matching style. According to the book Dormont by the Dormont Historical Society (one of the Images of America series by Arcadia Publishing), at some point in the second half of the twentieth century, high winds destroyed the original roof, and the building was given an up-to-date flat roof and a new front entrance with this fine late-Art-Deco sign.
In 1996, the school closed, and in 1999 the borough government moved in, so that this is now the William & Muriel Moreland Dormont Municipal Center. The Dormont Historical Society has a small museum here, open one day a week.
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Wilhelm Geauf House, South Side
Many fine rowhouses like this one adorn the South Side, but once in a while we find one where the owners who restored the house have looked up its history and encapsulated it on a plaque. This is one of them, so we know that the house was built in 1891 for Charlotte and Wilhelm Geauf, and that the building cost $3,000 on a lot that cost $2,000. Note the fine parlor window—always the best opportunity for showing off in a rowhouse like this—and the richly textured brick cornice.
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Rowhouses on Sarah Street, South Side
Sarah Street was the prime residential street of East Birmingham (the part of the South Side between 17th and 26th Streets), and it retains some of Pittsburgh’s most distinguished rowhouses. The one above is a splendidly eclectic mix—a bit of Italianate, a bit of Gothic, a bit of Second Empire. Note how much effort has gone into making interesting patterns in the bricks.
Here is another house in a similarly eclectic style. The parlor window is treated almost identically, but the upper floors vary the theme considerably.
This is not strictly a rowhouse, since it is detached from its neighbors by a narrow alley on each side; but since it is connected to those neighbors by a pair of gates, it is as near a rowhouse as makes no difference. This is a fine example of the Italianate style in a city house, and the owners have had some fun picking out the ornamental details with an unusual but effective paint scheme.
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Trinity Window in Trinity Episcopal Cathedral
The large window at the rear of the cathedral. At the apex is the Shield of Faith, the emblem of the Trinity. In the center is Christ ascending, with the legend “He is the King of Glory.” Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John watch and record, each with his traditional symbol (man, lion, ox, eagle).
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Century Building
The Century Building on Seventh Street was built in 1907; the architects, according to its National Register of Historic Places data, were Rutan & Russell This is a composite of several pictures, which is the only way to get a whole view of the façade from across the narrow street.
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Engine Company 10, West End
When classical architecture meets Art Deco in a government building, they form a style old Pa Pitt likes to call American Fascist. He calls it that because it’s similar to the streamlined classicism favored by Mussolini and Hitler, and because its favorite ornament is the fasces, as we see right at the top of the façade of this firehouse, which is now a police station. For some reason the fasces declined in popularity as an ornament on American government buildings after the Second World War.
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German Savings Deposit Bank, South Side
This is now the Carson City Saloon, because everything on the South Side eventually becomes a bar. But the whole building shouts “bank.” It’s built from classical elements like a Venetian Renaissance palace.
Addendum: The architect was the prolific Charles Bickel.1
The date stone tells us that the bank was put up in 1896, with palm fronds signifying victory, and anti-pigeon spikes signifying “We hate pigeons.”
This ornamental ironwork is meant to evoke the balconies on a Renaissance palace, without actually being useful as a balcony.
- Source: Record & Guide, February 26, 1896, p. 169. “Architect Charles Bickell [sic] has plans for a banking house for the German Savings and Deposit Bank, at Carson Street. The structure is to be 43 x 64.5 feet, one-story brick, terra cotta and stone, composition roof, and all the latest bank improvements, and cost $100,000.” ↩︎
