It is one of old Pa Pitt’s endearing quirks that he likes to take pictures with a bus coming toward the viewer.
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Home Land Building, Mount Lebanon
Uptown Mount Lebanon is one of the best Art Deco neighborhoods in the Pittsburgh area, and this building—otherwise a rather severe late-classical style—stands out for its bright Art Deco marquee.
Addendum: The architect was Charles R. Geisler, according to a listing in a local architectural magazine. Source: The Charette, Vol. 7, No. 2 (February 1927): “185. Chas. R. Geisler, 205 Ferguson Building, Pittsburgh, Pa. Contract for Stephenson [sic] & Williams Apartment and Office Building was let to Fred K. Becker, Dormont. Approximately $80,000.00. Plans out on reserved plumbing, heating, tile and composition work.”
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Deco Gothic in Mount Lebanon
Though old Pa Pitt has not yet found any documentary evidence, he identifies this building with some confidence as an old neighborhood movie house. The marquee, the Hollywood Gothic fantasy terra-cotta front, and the shape of the building (it is fairly long from front to back) all suggest a movie theater of the silent era.
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Stanley Photoplays
The Stanley was the most magnificent theater ever built in Pittsburgh, and as the Benedum Center it continues to be one of the busiest. It was built to designs by the Hoffman-Henon Co. of Philadelphia at the very end of the silent era, opening in 1928. The old animated sign on the Penn Avenue side is lovingly maintained.
Maurice Spitalny directed the house orchestra here in the late 1930s and into the 1940s. His brother Phil was more famous nationally for his all-girl Hour of Charm Orchestra, but Maurice had a long and successful career. He wrote one song that everyone in America has heard: “Start the Day Right,” which is used in at least a dozen different Warner Brothers cartoons.
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Clark Building
The Clark Building, designed by the Hoffman-Henon Co of Philadelphia, was built in 1927 at the same time as the Stanley Theater by the same architects. This late-Beaux-Arts skyscraper has for a long time been the center of the jewelry district downtown, with at least a dozen jewelers in the building (“over thirteen,” a sign on the building says, meaning, what, fourteen?) and more within a block or so.
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River Vue Apartments
The former State Office Building was designed by the firm of Altenhof and Bown (also responsible for the 1964 Federal Building on Grant Street; otherwise they seem to have specialized in schools). There was some grumbling when the state sold the building to private developers to be turned into luxury apartments, since space had to be found for the state employees, and some analyses suggested that the state would spend far more on leasing space than it would have spent on renovating the building. But it is certainly a first-rate location for apartments.
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Chandelier at the Benedum Center
The chandelier at the Benedum Center, which began life as Pittsburgh’s most splendid movie palace, the Stanley.
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Terra Cotta on Liberty Avenue
This splendid building, faced with ornate reliefs in terra cotta, is one of those odd-shaped buildings created by the colliding grids of the 1785 street plan for the Triangle. The iron-and-glass awning is particularly artistic, bringing a touch of Art Nouveau to the streetscape.
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Breezeways of the South Side
This is certainly one of old Pa Pitt’s most esoteric subjects. In rowhouse neighborhoods, there are often tunnel-like passages through to the rear yard of a house, with the upper storeys built over the passage. These outdoor passages are called “breezeways” in Pittsburgh; in other cities they may be called gangways or alleys. Sometimes the passage runs through one house; sometimes it is shared by two houses. We see examples of both in this little collection.
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