Father Pitt

Would you like to see a random article?
Of course you would.

St. John’s Lutheran Church, Bloomfield

This is on 40th Street in the end of Bloomfield that sticks like a thumb into Lower Lawrenceville. It is another of those city churches where the sanctuary is on the second floor, as we often find in dense rowhouse neighborhoods where the church must make the most of a tiny lot. Like many of those churches, it is now apartments.

Addendum: According to a city database of historic buildings, the architect was Frederick Sauer, famous for attractive and competent Catholic churches and the strange flights of whimsy he built in his back yard in Aspinwall.

One response

July 13, 2022
Second Empire Row, South Side

A modest but distinguished row of Second Empire houses on 22nd Street. Note the patterns in the roof tiles.

July 13, 2022
Bellefield Presbyterian Church, Oakland

This was built in 1896 as the First United Presbyterian Church; the architect was William Boyd, who gave the congregation the most fashionably Richardsonian interpretation of Romanesque he could manage. It was more or less in competition with the original Bellefield Presbyterian, of which only the tower now remains. But in 1967 the two congregations merged. They kept this building, renamed it Bellefield Presbyterian, and abandoned the old Bellefield Presbyterian up the street, which was later demolished for an office block.

One response

July 12, 2022
Bethany Evangelical Lutheran Church, Dormont
Built in 1924, this church seems typical of the slightly modernist Gothic of the period: the pointed arches and the stonework are still there, but the details are spare, and the forms are relatively simple.

Addendum: The architect was O. M. Topp,¹ the favorite of Lutherans for a generation.
1. Source: The American Contractor, December 30, 1922, p. 43: “DORMONT, PA. Church: $35.000. 1 sty. & bal. 45×90. W. Liberty, nr. Dormont av. Archt. O. M. Topp. Jenkins Arcade. Owner Evang. Luth, Congr., Rev. L. O. Burry, 3091 Texas av. Stone or brk. Drawing prelim. plans.” ↩︎
One response

July 11, 2022
Peoples Trust Company of Pittsburgh, South Side

This modest but tastefully classical bank was built in 1902. Notice how the front composition of larger arch flanked by two smaller arches is rhythmically repeated on the side.

One response

July 10, 2022
Rectory of Holy Rosary Church, Homewood

After the flamboyant Gothic of Holy Rosary, this stately Renaissance palace is quite a contrast.

One response

July 9, 2022
Top of the Arrott Building

The top of the Arrott Building, rendered in old-postcard colors by the Two-Strip Technicolor script for the GIMP.

July 8, 2022
Carey Way, South Side

In Pittsburgh, a “rowhouse” is generally any house that shares a wall with its neighbors. But there are rowhouses in a stricter sense: rows of houses built all at once, as more or less one building divided into individual residences. One such row is in the 1800 block of Carey Way, a row of modest Italianate alley houses all put up at once. If he had to guess, old Pa Pitt would date it to the 1870s. One of its remarkable features is its breezeway. Most breezeways in Pittsburgh are narrow passages between houses, but this row has one breezeway in the middle big enough to drive a wagon through. That is probably the point: it leads to a courtyard from which deliveries of coal and other staples could be made to the backs of all the houses. Under separate ownership, the houses have ceased to be entirely identical, but their common origin is still apparent.

July 8, 2022
Carriage House in Elliott

Old Pa Pitt is delighted to report that, since this picture was taken in the summer of 2000, this almost perfectly preserved carriage house has been restored and refurbished into a habitable building, with glass in the upper windows and other such modern conveniences (see the pictures below). Nevertheless, he reports it with a tiny bit of regret. There’s a fascination frantic in a ruin that’s romantic, and restoring the building inevitably takes it one more step away from its origin. Certainly it was good to restore it; the only alternative would have been to let it continue to decay and eventually vanish. But Father Pitt is happy that he was able to preserve this picture from the time when it had never been anything other than a carriage house.

An update: According to old maps, this seems to have been built in the 1880s; it appears in 1890 but not in 1882.

Note the perfect little I-house to the left of the carriage house.

July 7, 2022
Wilson Drugs, Penn Main

The district around the intersection of Penn Avenue and Main Street is commonly called Penn Main; it’s on the border of Lawrenceville and Bloomfield, and functions as a secondary commercial spine for both neighborhoods. Because the streets do not meet at a right angle, the buildings on the corner are various odd Pittsburgh shapes. This attractive commercial building is an irregular pentagon. Wilson Drugs, one of the diminishing number of independent neighborhood drug stores in the city, seems frozen in 1948, in spite of its electronic displays.

July 6, 2022