Ghost signs preserve history otherwise forgotten. Who remembers the Famous Biscuit company? In this case, the sign also preserves another bit of history that might escape the casual observer. It faces east on Forbes Avenue, thus serving as a memorial of a time when Forbes Avenue Uptown was a two-way street.
The space across the alley from the rear of Fifth Avenue High School, Uptown, is now a parking lot, and on New Year’s Day it was a deserted parking lot. Thus, with a wide-angle lens, old Pa Pitt could get this picture of (almost) the entire rear of the school, which was designed by Edward Stotz. It sat abandoned for three decades, but now, like every other large building in the city, it has been turned into loft apartments.
An art photograph by W. W. Zieg from Pictorial Photography in America, 1922. This was the train shed of the Union or Pennsylvania Station, back when it had a huge and magnificent train shed.
A Christmas tree from six years ago in the Phipps Conservatory Winter Flower Show of 2014.
Above: Japanese Barberry (Berberis thunbergii) under a Christmas snow. Below: English ivy (Hedera helix).
Reliefs over the entrance to St. Bernard’s in Mount Lebanon. You can recognize Peter instantly by his keys, and Paul by his bald head, the sword that beheaded him, and the scroll on which he is scribbling a letter to some faraway congregation.
The west front of this church, with its outsized towers, was inspired by York Minster; it makes the church look a good bit bigger than it actually is. The hilltop location makes it a landmark visible from miles away. The congregation, a descendant of the early-settler congregation that established the St. Clair Cemetery across Scott Road, now belongs to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, a young denomination founded in 1980.
Addendum: According to the September, 1931, issue of the Charette, the magazine of the Pittsburgh Architectural Club, the architects were “O. M. Topp and T. L. Beatty associated.”
Begun in 1942, this church is more elaborate than many cathedrals. The architect, William Perry, grew up in Dormont, and he seems to have realized that this was a chance to leave a magnificent legacy in his own back yard.
