Father Pitt

Would you like to see a random article?
Of course you would.

Brutalist Spiral on Smithfield Street

This concrete spiral on the Smithfield Street side of the Smithfield-Liberty Garage is certainly a striking addition to the streetscape. Whether it is a good addition may be left to other critics. Father Pitt’s own opinion is that it would be welcome on a street of other modernist buildings, but it harmonizes poorly with its Victorian neighbors.

Old Pa Pitt sometimes wonders what the architect told the client when he presented the plans. “It’s like a Guggenheim for cars,” he imagines the architect saying.

One response

October 11, 2019
Keenan Building

The Keenan Building in bright early-morning sunshine, seen from Sixth Avenue.

3 responses

October 10, 2019
Decoration on the Liberty Theater

The classical building at Liberty Avenue and Strawberry Way was built originally as the Liberty Theater in 1913. It lasted only ten years as a theater before being converted to office space as the Baum Building.

October 10, 2019
Sidewalk of Jane Street

The last block of Jane Street on the South Side Flats (as opposed to the resumed Jane Street on the Slopes side of the tracks) feels delightfully private, lined on the north side with charming Second Empire rowhouses facing an old herringbone-pattern brick sidewalk. The colors of the houses and flowers shine out all the brighter in the gloom of a rainy day.

Map

October 8, 2019
Dormont United Methodist Church

The year 2013 was a bad year for older churches in Dormont: three of them—the Presbyterians, the Baptists, and the Methodists—gave up trying to maintain their fine old buildings with diminished congregations. The Presbyterians sold their building to a suburban megachurch; the humbler Methodists sold their building to Buddhists who used it as a temple. But the Buddhists, after having painted the building in this attractive bright yellow and red, have given up as well; and as of October 2019 the building is for sale again.

Map

October 7, 2019
Tabernacle of the Union Baptist Church

The curiously angular Gothic of this 1881 church might have pleased a congregation that wanted a building that looked like a church, but not one that looked too medieval. Like many other churches in the most crowded Pittsburgh neighborhoods (including several on the South Side), it adapts to its tiny lot by placing the sanctuary on the second floor, leaving the ground floor for Sunday-school rooms and social halls.

Map

October 7, 2019
Heinz Chapel

More pictures of Heinz Chapel, the last major work of Charles Z. Klauder, who designed the whole Gothic city of buildings at the heart of the Pitt campus.

October 7, 2019
Front Doors of the South Side

The famous Victorian front doors of the South Side are featured on posters and in picture books on coffee tables all over western Pennsylvania. There is an endless variety to the woodwork on these South Side rowhouses. Old Pa Pitt was out walking on the South Side and decided to concentrate on doors: here is the collection he made in just half an hour’s stroll. Click on any picture to enlarge it.

Many of these doorways have decorative stained-glass transoms over the door, often with the address worked into the glass:

Of course, no collection of South Side front doors would be complete without a Kool Vent awning on an alley house:

October 5, 2019
Tower of St. Bernard’s, Mount Lebanon

The tower of St. Bernard’s peers over the trees in Mount Lebanon, brought to you in old-postcard colors thanks to the Two-Strip Technicolor plugin for the GIMP.

October 5, 2019
Four Gateway Center

The gleam of early-morning sun warms the chilly modernist elegance of Four Gateway Center. This 1960 modernist tower is one of a number of contributions to our skyline by Harrison & Abramovitz, whose most notable (which is to say inescapable) work in Pittsburgh is the U. S. Steel Tower.

October 5, 2019