
Clearly this was built as a Protestant church, but the Orthodox congregation has been here for quite some time now. Here we see the west front in the warm rays of the evening sun.

Clearly this was built as a Protestant church, but the Orthodox congregation has been here for quite some time now. Here we see the west front in the warm rays of the evening sun.

Even on a splendidly Victorian street like Carson Street on the South Side, this building stands out as unusually ornate.

Old Pa Pitt uses various digital cameras that are cheap, old, or both; but when the desired effect is to make a foreground object stand out from the blurred background, it helps to have a DSLR. It helps even more to have a DSLR with a supplementary macro lens, which gives us a very shallow depth of field. The camera that took these pictures is an Olympus E-20n, which is old enough to vote and next year will be old enough to drink. But as long as it keeps taking pictures like these, old Pa Pitt will keep it in the camera bag.



Why shouldn’t a water-pumping station look like a Roman basilica? It’s what the Romans would have done. This substantial building was designed by William Smith Fraser, and it has its own appropriately substantial Wikipedia article. Unfortunately the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority has thought it necessary to brick up the windows, so that what used to be an airy temple of technology must be like a tomb inside now.

There is still at least one architect in Pittsburgh who can work in the Gothic idiom with modern materials. His name is David J. Vater, and he designed this building on Dithridge Street (which opened in 2007) and the Ryan Catholic Newman Center around the corner on Bayard Avenue. His listing on Porch.com has this to say about his firm: “Based in Pittsburgh, David J Vater Ra is an architectural firm that provides bathroom design, site planning, and master planning as well as other services.” The fact that bathroom design is mentioned first suggests that the demand for grand Gothic institutional buildings is low.

This house in Schenley Farms has had a thorough cleaning and looks just built. It has also lost a large and perhaps obstructive tree. Compare the picture above to the one below, which Father Pitt took in 2014:

Addendum: This house, known as “Ledge House,” was designed by Henry Hornbostel. It was the home of Arthur Hamerschlag, for whom Hamerschlag Hall was named.