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Independence
Something like this might still be our flag but for some good luck and a great deal of help from the French. This colonial-era British Red Ensign flies at Point State Park near the Blockhouse.
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Houses on Sidney Street
Some typically elegant Victorian brick houses on Sidney Street between 23rd and 24th.
Side-by-side duplexes are often built to give the impression of a single elegant house; but over the years, separate ownership can destroy the illusion, as it has done in the left-hand pair, where one half has been modernized without regard to the appearance of the whole.
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Backstreet Bars
In the old days, every block in a dense rowhouse neighborhood like the South Side had its backstreet grocery and its backstreet bar. Most of the groceries are gone, but a surprising number of the bars survive. Above, Cupka’s Cafe, which has become well known for food as well. Below, Karwoski’s Tavern, which is mostly for drinking and not much for eating.
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Terra-Cotta Trim
Decorative trim on the Schiller Glocke Gesang und Turn Verein (map), a German singing club (now apartments) built in 1897.
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First Ruthenian Church, South Side
This church was built as the First Ruthenian Church (a Presbyterian church for Ruthenian immigrants), and later became a Byzantine Rite church. Now, like many other things on the South Side, it’s a bar.
Addendum: The architect was Chauncey W. Hodgdon, whose churches were usually in the Gothic style, but who adopted a mixture of classical and Byzantine for this very unusual congregation.1
- Source: “More Work for Builders Made by the Architects,” Pittsburgh Daily Post, September 15, 1912, p. 36: “Bids will close early in the week on the erection of a one-story brick and stone church building, to be built on the Southside for the Ruthenian Church, of the Presbytery of Pittsburgh. Architect C. W. Hodgdon prepared the plans for the structure, which will be 32×66 feet, costing $25,000.” ↩︎
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Second-Empire Dormers
Dormers with carved and painted decorations on a Second-Empire-style house at Jane and 28th Streets, South Side.
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Pittsburgh Firefighter’s Federal Credit Union
A small but very tasteful building on the most prominent corner in the West End. The lower floor has had a modernist makeover, but the upper floors retain the original carefully balanced symmetry.
