In the boom years after the Second World War, new housing couldn’t be built fast enough to satisfy the demand. Architects were busy, and modernism was the rage. The Mark Twain and the Stephen Foster brought clean modern lines to Neville Street and doubtless filled up as soon as they were opened to eager renters.
The Diamond or Market Square is our most fussed-with public space. Here we see it being completely reconfigured fifteen years ago, and that reconfiguration is now being completely reconfigured. This view of Pittsburgh has changed more than most in the past decade and a half; two landmark skyscrapers, the Tower at PNC Plaza and Tower Two-Sixty, have risen on spots once occupied by low buildings in the background.
A typical view of Oakland: cranes as far as the eye can see. The building going up in the near distance will be student apartments.
These two identical fantasy-Tudor apartment buildings at the corner of Morrowfield and Shady Avenues were built in 1929. Father Pitt does not know the architect, but they are very similar to apartment buildings built at the same time in Mount Lebanon and associated with Charles Geisler. Since Geisler worked on other buildings in Squirrel Hill, he is a likely candidate.
We have the technology to take those utility cables out of the picture, but in this case not the patience.
Stanley Roush, the county’s official architect, designed this building to hold the offices that were spilling out of the Courthouse and the City-County Building as Pittsburgh and its neighbors grew rapidly. It was built in 1929–1931, and it is an interesting stylistic bridge between eras. Roush’s taste was very much in the modernistic Art Deco line, but the Romanesque Allegheny County Courthouse, designed by the sainted Henry Hobson Richardson, was a looming presence that still dictated what Allegheny County thought of its own architectural style. Roush’s compromise is almost unique: Art Deco Romanesque. We have many buildings where classical details are given a Deco spin—a style that, when applied to public buildings, old Pa Pitt likes to call American Fascist. But here the details are streamlined versions of medieval Romanesque, right down to gargoyles on the corners. Above, the Ross Street side of the building; below, the Forbes Avenue side.
One of the entrances on Forbes Avenue.
Moses with the tablets of the Law. His beard obscures the Tenth Commandment, so go ahead and covet anything you like, except—if you are Lutheran—your neighbor’s house, or—if you are Catholic—your neighbor’s wife or house. Counting up to ten is harder than it looks when it comes to Commandments, and you may need to refer to Wikipedia’s handy chart to find how the numbering works in your religious tradition.
The bridge in this medallion looks a lot like the Tenth Street Bridge, which by pure coincidence was designed by Stanley Roush.
Decorative grate with an Allegheny County monogram.
Some very expensive columns, smooth and classically proportioned but with elaborate Deco Romanesque capitals.
We have more pictures of the decorations on the County Office Building, including those gargoyles we mentioned.
October is the month when major corporations pink up the night in honor of breast-cancer awareness.
Very few people pay any attention to the Manor Building. It would be a large building except for the fact that it lives against a backdrop of much larger buildings, so its blackish bulk—which was originally blue—makes little impression in the postcard view of Pittsburgh from Mount Washington. But it has an interesting history.
The building was announced in 1955; the design was by Wyatt C. Hedrick of Fort Worth.1 The owner was the Pennsylvania Railroad, which was investing heavily in real estate. Executives noticed that Pennsy stations often sat on valuable land in expensive business districts. Why should all that value go to waste when you can build upward and profit from rentals? “Utilization of the air rights over railroad property where the property is strategically located in Downtown areas is becoming more prevalent,” the Press reporter noted when this building was announced.
That was what was going on here. For a long time the Pennsylvania had had a small commuter station here—the Fourth Avenue station. It was at the mouth of the tunnel that is now used by the subway. The station itself was a small building and a couple of platforms, but the land had become very valuable. So the plan was to build three floors of parking garage, and then ten floors of offices above the garage. There would still be a station in the basement. It should have been a profitable scheme.
From the beginning, however, there seemed to be a curse on the building. “It suffered one delay after another while being built,” said a Post-Gazette story in 1961.2 “Then, after finally being completed in 1958, it was tied up for a year by litigation involving the contractor.”
By the time it was ready for renters, the building was notorious. People called it the Blue Elephant—and nobody wanted to move in.
Not until 1961 did the building overcome its jinx and begin to fill up. After that it prospered. By the next year, it was completely filled.
So there you have the story of the Blue Elephant, and now that you have heard it, perhaps you will notice the building the next time you pass it on the Crosstown Boulevard or go under it on the subway. Then you will forget it again, because it does not make much of an impression on the skyline.
This fine corner-tower church, whose cornerstone was laid in 1911, was designed by O. M. Topp and Charles M. Hutchison.1 The plan was probably made in 1906, when a small chapel was put up with the intention of building the larger church when there was enough money. This is one of the very rare cases, incidentally, where the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation is wrong. The PHLF plaque has the church designed by F. Hoffman & Co.; but F. Hoffman & Co., was a Wilkinsburg contractor (probably the one that got the contract for the building), not an architectural firm.
The congregation is gone, but some attempt is being made to restore the building as a Center for Civic Arts. Old Pa Pitt wishes the Center good fortune, because this fine building deserves to have a future, and Wilkinsburg deserves art. As we can see from this old postcard from the Presbyterian Historical Society collection, the building has hardly been altered at all:
The congregation prospered, and in 1928 a large educational wing was built—now abandoned and in bad shape. The architect was Lawrence Wolfe, with O. M. Topp—by then one of the grand old men of Pittsburgh architecture—listed as “associate architect.”2
