Father Pitt

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Rodler Hotel, Mount Oliver

Pittsburghers who remember the days of steel doubtless remember when every working-class neighborhood had its own collection of small hotels like this. Outsiders wondered why working-class Pittsburgh was so devoted to the hospitality industry, but the explanation—according to former hotel owners—was very simple. A certain quirk in Pennsylvania’s notoriously quirky liquor laws made it very hard to get a liquor license for a bar, but very easy to get one for a “hotel.” Thus anyone who aspired to the exalted station of neighborhood-bar owner might smooth his way considerably by purchasing a building with a few dusty upstairs rooms that could, in theory, be rented to travelers if any ever showed up. Meanwhile, the real business of the neighborhood bar went on just as if the “hotel” part of the building had never existed.

Mount Oliver itself is an interesting phenomenon. Half of Mount Oliver is an independent borough, completely surrounded by the City of Pittsburgh. It was the lone holdout when the little boroughs on the back slopes of Mount Washington were absorbed into the city. The other half of Mount Oliver is in the city, forming a neighborhood of its own: the street signs at major intersections (though calling any streets in the neighborhood “major” is a bit of a stretch) identify the neighborhood as “Mount Oliver Neigh”—the only bilingual English and Equine signs in the city.

Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS.

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August 23, 2015
Old Hazelwood Branch of the Carnegie Library

The original Hazelwood Branch, built in 1890, was abandoned in 2004 in favor of a larger building on Second Avenue. Since then this fine building has been vacant, as far as Father Pitt knows. It is just a short stroll up Monongahela Street from the John Woods House, and an enthusiastic preservationist might be able to get a good deal on both of them at once.

Before he even went looking for the architects, Father Pitt was fairly sure that they must have been Alden & Harlow, Andrew Carnegie’s favorite architectural firm and the architects of numerous other Carnegie libraries, including the big one in Oakland. Old Pa Pitt’s instinct was correct. This is a typically tasteful and substantial Alden & Harlow design. Their branch libraries always feel welcoming: they are proud ornaments to their neighborhoods, but never overwhelmingly ostentatious. They seem to embody Andrew Carnegie’s ideal that no workman, however humble, should ever feel that the neighborhood library is too good a place for the likes of him.

August 22, 2015
Holy Spirit Parish, Millvale

Originally St. Anthony’s, a German Catholic church; it became Holy Spirit in the 1990s parish reorganizations, when St. Anthony was merged with St. Anne. The building was put up in 1914, with substantial alterations after a fire in 1936.

One of the surreal things about living in a movie-friendly place like Pittsburgh is that one sometimes finds oneself dropped into a fictional dimension. When Father Pitt stopped to take a picture of this church, he found that the building adjacent was not the parish school, but rather the Crockett County Sheriff’s Department; and there was a sign on the wall that connects the church with the school welcoming him to “Blackburg, Kentucky, The Portal to Shay Mountain, where coal mining is our heritage and Wild Boar & Buck legends live on.” So when, in a year or two, you happen to see a movie that takes place in Blackburg, the seat of Crockett County in Kentucky, you will know that the place is actually Millvale, and the illusion will be spoiled. Sorry about that.

Addendum: The architect was John T. Comès, possibly Pittsburgh’s most prolific architect of Catholic churches.

August 21, 2015
John Woods House: You Can Buy the Most Significant House in Pittsburgh

An update: Old Pa Pitt is delighted to report that this house has been beautifully restored and is now serving as a pub.

The John Woods House is one of the small number of eighteenth-century buildings left in the city of Pittsburgh. (Father Pitt will not tell you exactly how many there are, because every published number he sees is demonstrably wrong, and he suspects there are more than we realize; there are quite a few in the suburbs and countryside around Pittsburgh.) It was built in 1792, and Father Pitt will go ahead and call it the most historically important house in the city: not only is it the only vernacular stone house from the 1700s left between the rivers, but John Woods was the man who drew the street plan for downtown Pittsburgh in 1784. Before that, Pittsburgh had already been built and destroyed more than once, but it was the Woods Plan that became the permanent layout of the Golden Triangle. As if that were not enough history, tradition says that Stephen Foster composed some of his most famous songs here (the piano from this house is now in the Stephen Foster Memorial), including “Nellie Bly,” inspired by a servant girl who worked for the Woods family.

And you can buy this house right now—probably for an absurdly low figure. The URA owns it, and would be happy to get rid of it to someone who wants to fix it up. As you can see, it has been stabilized, but it really needs someone who can make it a house again.

Since the collapse of the steel industry, Hazelwood has suffered some drastic decline; but it is on the way up again. Father Pitt has talked to some of the Woods House’s neighbors on Monongahela Street. They are friendly people. You would like them. Nearby, urban homesteaders are fixing up houses and growing crops. An adventurous person with a bit of money has the opportunity to be part of a neighborhood revival, and to rescue an irreplaceable piece of Pittsburgh history.

Here are some other eighteenth-century buildings in Pittsburgh whose pictures Father Pitt has published:

The Fort Pitt Blockhouse

Martin’s Cabin

The Old Stone Tavern

Cameras: Canon PowerShot A590 (hacked) and Canon PowerShot S45.

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August 20, 2015
Minersville Cemetery Comes Back from the Dead

Father Pitt wrote this article for the Pittsburgh Cemeteries site, but he thought his readers here might be interested as well.

For literally decades it has been a small local scandal: the once-beautiful Minersville Cemetery, a German Lutheran burying ground in the Hill District, was overgrown with weeds and vandalized, and no one would step forward to take care of it.

Now, at last, a group of Lutheran volunteers has taken on the cemetery. With the help of a bit of money from the cemetery’s upkeep fund and some more from Pittsburgh Area Lutheran Ministries, they have cleared the weeds, righted as many of the monuments as possible, and built a fine new iron gate to keep contractors with pickups from driving in to dump their garbage. (Pedestrians without garbage are still welcome.) The cemetery is beautiful again, an oasis of quiet repose in the middle of Herron Hill.

Some work still to be done: toppled and broken monuments gathered on one of the cemetery drives.

August 18, 2015
Hiland Presbyterian Church, Ross Township

Camera: Olympus E-20n.

Just north of West View, this church was built in 1836, with additions in 1914 and 1936. In the large churchyard are the remains of many early settlers, including some veterans of the Revolutionary War.

Father Pitt decided to make an atmospherically dark and mysterious churchyard picture, but below is a similar shot in brighter light.

Camera: Canon PowerShot A540 (hacked).

August 17, 2015
Old St. Luke’s

Father Pitt never needs an excuse to offer yet another picture of Old St. Luke’s, one of our most picturesque country churches. The current building dates from 1852, but the congregation goes back to colonial times, and was the epicenter of the Whiskey Rebellion.

Camera: Canon PowerShot A590 (hacked).

August 14, 2015
Dragonfly

A dragonfly rests on a wooden step. A moment after this picture, it took off hunting again.

Camera: Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3.

August 13, 2015
Lowrie Street, Troy Hill

Camera: Olympus E-20n.

The narrow streets of Troy Hill are lined with rows of little houses with every kind of siding in every color, and unexpected views of the downtown skyline pop up here and there. This is the section of Lowrie Street across from the Voegtly Cemetery. Since the neighborhood changes so little over time, Father Pitt thought it might be fun to fiddle with the colors a little to make this picture look like an old Anscochrome slide.

It is a measure of the comprehensiveness of the Internet that old Pa Pitt is not actually the only human being on the Web who remembers Anscochrome.

August 11, 2015
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Highland Park

Completed in 1909, this typical Gothic church was designed by Philadelphia architects Carpenter & Crocker, who also designed Holy Cross Episcopal Church in Homewood and at least one of the Fifth Avenue mansions in Shadyside.

Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS. The composite picture above is about 25 megapixels if you click on it.

August 11, 2015