A modernistic apartment building in a good state of preservation. Father Pitt sees nothing Yorkish or royal about it in particular; the same building could have been called the Monte Carlo or the Emperor Montezuma or the Thomas Jefferson with just as much stylistic appropriateness. But the name is important in selling the idea of the building to tenants: you will be able to say, “I live at the Royal York,” and that sounds much more impressive than “815 North Avenue.”
Like a great European cathedral, East Liberty Presbyterian Church, which Ralph Adams Cram considered his masterpiece, is too huge and complex to take in all at once. We can only appreciate some of the details, and then come back later for more. Here are some views from various spots in East Liberty.
This fine example of provincial Rundbogenstil stands on Philadelphia Street, the main business street in the town of Indiana, and we have no need to ask when it went up, because the date 1910 is picked out in large numbers made of contrasting bricks.
Five years later, another White building went up a few doors up the street in a similar style:
This one had a higher budget: not only was it larger, but it also had stone trimmings and large art-glass windows (later replaced with glass block). Note the apparently original storefront on the right-hand side.
Old Pa Pitt doesn’t know how Mrs. White was related to Harry White. But that they were related is obvious, both from the matching styles and from this keystone on the Mrs. C. B. M. White building, which bears a monogram with the initials HW.
The tiny lots and narrow streets of Troy Hill forced many of the buildings to grow tall and narrow.
Old Pa Pitt takes it as one of his missions to record things that may vanish soon, so that posterity will have some visual memory of them. This apartment building is abandoned, and it had been given some unsympathetic remodelings before it was entirely given up on. Nevertheless, it was an attractive if ordinary building, and it could be made attractive again if Wilkinsburg became a trendy neighborhood. Right now it survives because no one has the money and the will to tear it down.
Addendum: Thanks to our correspondent David Schwing, we can identify the architects as Wilkinsburg’s own A. Dudgeon & Son. The building was called the Eleanor; it was built in 1905.1
Here is a row of houses obviously all put up at the same time and designed by the same hand. In typical Pittsburgh fashion, they are all made of brick, but no two are the same color.
This house, which looks as though it is about to get some restoration work, has lost half its porch, but otherwise preserves most of its features in original condition.
A modernistic apartment building that probably dates from the late 1930s or early 1940s. Except for the replacement of the entrance and the newer windows, it is in very good shape.
Three buildings of St. Ambrose parish (now part of Holy Wisdom parish) are lined up along Haslage Street on tiny lots. We begin with the church, built in 1894, when the parish was going by the Latin version of the name. (If the atmosphere in these pictures seems a bit murky, that is because they were taken on one of the recent days of Canadian smoke in the air.)
The church has been crusted over with so many additions and alterations that it is hard to imagine what it looked like when it was built. It seems, however, to have been a typical small Romanesque church of the late 1800s, with the usual decorative brickwork and an outsized tower in front. Father Pitt did not succeed in finding the name of an architect.
These chimneys and the cross-bearing crest were obviously meant to be seen, but they are now almost completely invisible behind later construction.
The next building to be put up was the convent, in 1911. It was designed by Edmund B. Lang,1 who (along with his brother Herman) designed many buildings for German Catholics.
Finally, in 1928, the school was built. The architect was William P. Hutchins,2 who matched his design to the round arches and crenelated brick ornamentation of the church.
This was the first telephone exchange for East Liberty: it was already here by the time the 1890 Hopkins plat map was compiled. It was built for the Central District & Printing Telegraph Company, which was soon absorbed into the Bell system.
The building has lost a cornice or crest in the front, but otherwise is well preserved.
The style is what old Pa Pitt likes to call Rundbogenstil, because Rundbogenstil is fun to say: it combines classical details, like the arches from the Baths of Caracalla in the third-floor windows, with decidedly unclassical decorative details in terra cotta and stone.
A fine classical bank adapted as the headquarters of the Indiana County Tourist Bureau. The interior is well preserved, except for a partition behind the teller counters that obscures some of the intended symmetry of the design.
