Large city parks often have picnic shelters, but it is not common for the shelters to be so elaborate. This one was built in 1902–1903, during the reign of Edward Manning Bigelow, the father of Pittsburgh’s system of boulevards and parks. The architect was young Harry Summers Estep, who would soon earn his place as a prominent architect with the McKeesport Masonic Temple.
A slightly later bloomer than the common dooryard lilac, the compact Korean Lilac (Syringa pubescens subsp. patula) is also more intensely scented.
The top of Penn Station seen from the Bigelow Boulevard bridge over the Crosstown Boulevard.
The potato bug was encouraged to remain to provide a sense of scale.
This building is probably the work of Sylvanus W. McCluskey, a Lawrenceville architect. Our source spells the name “McCloskey,” but that is within the usual limits of Linotypist accuracy. From the Pittsburg Post, October 9, 1900:
Another apartment house is to be built in the Sixteenth Ward. It will stand on a plot at Nos. 4517 and 4519 Liberty street, Bloomfield, and will be owned by Michael McKenna. It will be a three-story brick building with storerooms on the first floor. Architect S. W. McCloskey designed it and has awarded the contract for its erection to Frank McMasters. Work on it will be started at once. The building without the interior finish will cost about $15,000.
This building on Dinwiddie Street stands at the end of the Fraser rows, but it could hardly be more different in style. From old maps it appears to have been built after 1910, replacing an earlier three-storey house on the same lot. It is hard to pin down the style, but the baroque crest, complete with urns, is an outstanding feature.
Edward Stotz was the architect of the building for Epiphany Church, with considerable interior work done by John T. Comès. It was built in 1903 to replace the old St. Paul’s Cathedral downtown as the downtown parish church after Henry Frick made the Catholic Diocese an offer it couldn’t refuse, and Epiphany served as the temporary cathedral for three years while the new St. Paul’s was going up in Oakland.
When the Lower Hill was demolished for “slum clearance,” Epiphany and its school were the only buildings allowed to survive. Thus Pittsburgh accomplished, here and at Allegheny Center, what Le Corbusier had failed to do in Paris: we created a sterile modern wasteland punctuated by a few ancient landmarks pickled in brine.
These Romanesque columns and arches strongly remind old Pa Pitt of organ pipes.
Christ stands at the peak of the west front.
On Christ’s right hand, St. Peter with his key.
On Christ’s left hand, St. Paul with his book.
An angel with plenty of anti-pigeon armor prays for worshipers as they enter.
The school is built in a simpler Romanesque style that links and subordinates it to the church.
Officially the Lower Hill has ceased to exist. It is counted as part of downtown in the city’s administrative scheme. But it has never been integrated into downtown, and indeed was forcibly cut off from downtown by the Crosstown Boulevard—a bad mistake recently ameliorated somewhat by building a park on top of the boulevard. With the new FNB Financial Center and other developments, there is some hope that this neglected wasteland may become city again. Meanwhile, Epiphany, now part of Divine Mercy Parish, still serves downtown worshipers, and perhaps will be there for new residents as the neighborhood grows and changes.
These two houses facing West Park on what used to be Irwin Avenue both have interestingly complex histories. The one above has a detailed history by the late Carol Peterson, so here we will only mention the things that led to its appearance today and encourage you to see the Peterson history for more details. It was built in about 1870 as an Italianate house. In 1890 Augusta and Jacob Kaufmann of the Kaufmann Brothers department store bought the house. It was given a third floor, and the whole house was made over in the Romanesque style with Queen Anne overtones.
The house next door was probably built at about the same time as its neighbor. Without the help of Carol Peterson, we can only report what we observe. It was also built in the Italianate style, and it looks as though the third floor is an addition here as well. But the addition may have been made earlier than the alterations to its neighbor, since the tall windows were done in the same Italianate style as the ones below the third floor. The round bay in front was finished off with a mansard roof, showing the influence of the Second Empire style that was popular here before Romanesque became the big fad.
As the storm clouds rolled in, old Pa Pitt was taking a walk in Mount Washington on a couple of blocks of Virginia Avenue. The neighborhood is an interesting phenomenon: it has always been comfortable but never rich (except for Grandview Avenue), so most of the houses and buildings have been kept up, and most of the renovations show the taste of ordinary working-class Pittsburghers rather than professional architects or designers.
We begin with one of the oldest businesses in the neighborhood: the Wm. Slater & Sons funeral home, which fills an odd-shaped lot that gives the building five sides or more, depending on how you count. Slaters have been on this corner since at least 1890. It is very hard to tell the age of the building, because it is really a complex of buildings that grew and evolved over decades, and each part of it has been maintained and altered to fit current needs and tastes. For example, on a 1917 plat map, the back end of the building is marked “Livery,” indicating that W. Slater had a stable there.
This building diagonally opposite from the Slaters has an obtuse angle to deal with. Its Second Empire features are still in good shape above the ground floor, and the storefront has been kept in its old-fashioned configuration of inset entrance between angled display windows.
Here is a house built in the 1880s, also in the Second Empire style, with mansard roof giving it a full third floor. The house has been kept up with various alterations that obscure its original details (the porch, for example, is probably a later addition), but it is still tidy and prosperous-looking.
It is hard to tell what this building was originally, but Father Pitt would guess it was more or less what it is now: a storefront with living quarters upstairs. The front has been altered so much, however, that it would take a more educated guesser than Father Pitt to make an accurate diagnosis.
This apartment building has also been much altered; the windows in front, for example, were probably inset balconies
The interesting Art Nouveau detailing of the brickwork reminds us of the work of Charles W. Bier, a prolific architect whose early-twentieth-century work earns him a place among our early modernists, though he turned more conservative after the Great War.
At this point in our walk, the windows of heaven were opened, and the rain was upon the earth, and we retreated to our ark.
