It is utterly absurd that anyone would think of running a street up into this deep and narrow ravine cut into the South Side Slopes; but this is Pittsburgh, and we make absurd adaptations to an absurd topography. How long before those enthusiastic wild grapes swallow those helpless little frame houses?
The Allegheny City Stables were built in 1896. If you enlarge the photo (click on it), you can just make out the old sign over the main door:
D.P.W. 8th DIV.
BUREAU OF HIGHWAYS & SEWERS
It’s right across North Avenue from Allegheny West, then the richest neighborhood in Allegheny. Perhaps this was one of the encroachments that induced Allegheny West society to move in a body to Sewickley Heights, where their descendants still live today.
Now, 123 years later, Allegheny West is once again the finest neighborhood on the North Side, and its desirability is spilling across North Avenue. The stable is being renovated and turned into loft apartments, like every other old industrial building.
(And if you notice a familiar picture at the Wikipedia article, it’s because Father Pitt added it himself to show the current state of the building.)
The South Side Slopes give us excellent views of the Oakland skyline. We’ve already seen the point of view from St. Michael’s Cemetery; now here is the view from Mission Street a little to the east and halfway down the hill. Click on the picture to see a good bit of detail.
On the National Register of Historic Places as an outstanding example of modernism, this 1957 building by the Pittsburgh firm Dowler & Dowler (that’s Press C. Dowler and William C. Dowler) has been turned into luxury apartments, like everything else downtown. It also houses the City Charter High School.
Mission Street on the South Side Slopes looking westward toward St. Josaphat Church. The crowds of frame houses practically right against the street are typical of the neighborhood. By the standards of the Slopes, however, this is a luxuriously broad street.
This building is remarkably well preserved mostly because it belonged to a company that stayed in the same business until 2005 without ever outgrowing its limited premises. The Hipwell Maufacturing Company’s most famous products were metal HIPCO flashlights, the kind that used to be ubiquitous before plastics took over. But the company (according to this page) was an important innovator in the electrical business, inventing the single-cell batteries that power our flashlights and digital cameras and toys and a thousand other things we never think of until we have to buy batteries again. It was also involved in the early stages of telephones and electric toy trains.
Today the building is lovingly preserved as—what else?—loft apartments, as well as a banquet hall called HIP at the Flashlight Factory.
Butter-and-Eggs or Toadflax (Linaria vulgaris) is a kind of wild snapdragon that came from Europe as an ornamental and made itself weedily at home. These plants were growing out of sidewalk cracks on the South Side Slopes. Note the two different color phases: one with bright orange centers, the other a more uniform primrose yellow.
This seems to have been the masterpiece of its architects, the Chicago firm of Egan & Prindeville; indeed, the only other work of theirs mentioned in their Wikipedia article is a cathedral in San Francisco that burned in 1962. If they have to be remembered for only one work, though, this is one to be proud of. It was built in 1906, but—like all great cathedrals—it is really only beginning to take shape more than a century later. It takes a heap of liturgy to make a church a cathedral, and chapels and decorations continue to be added by successive bishops.
The Rectory is designed in a matching but more restrained Gothic style.
Addendum: According to the article “Designing in God’s Name: Architect Carlton Strong,” the rectory (built in 1926–1927) was designed by Thomas Carlton Strong, who also designed Sacred Heart Church in Shadyside.
This fine old firehouse on Arch Street, a city-designated historic structure, is exactly what you think of when you think of a firehouse. It’s been empty for some time, but its Central Northside neighborhood is growing more and more fashionable among restoration fanatics, and scaffolding inside suggests that the old firehouse will not be empty much longer.
Map The firehouse is on the southeast corner of Arch Street and Jacksonia Street. Behind it is the aptly named Fireman Way.
A woman feeds geese from the bridge over Lake Elizabeth in West Park. The old city of Allegheny was laid out with green space all the way around the town center—green space that mostly survives (though the southern section of it was long ago sacrificed to the railroad) as some of our most inviting urban parkland.
