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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
One response
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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.
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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.
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Clark Building
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.
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Beechview Methodist Church
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.
