Father Pitt

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A Walk on North Avenue in Manchester

A few weeks ago old Pa Pitt took a wintry walk on North Avenue (which used to be Fayette Street back when it did not run all the way through to North Avenue on the rest of the North Side). He took piles of pictures, and although he published four articles so far from that walk (one, two, three, four), there’s still quite a collection backed up waiting to be published. Thus this very long article, which is a smorgasbord of Victorian domestic architecture with a few other eras thrown in. Above, a pair of Italianate houses. They both preserve the tall windows typical of the high Italianate style; the one on the right still has (or has restored) its two-over-two panes.

Many more pictures…

February 15, 2025
Elias Kauffeld Building, South Side

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

A particularly splendid mid-Victorian building from 1881, as we can see by the beehive date stone in the middle of the façade.

The architect would probably have told you that the style was Renaissance, but mid-Victorian architects were much freer in their interpretation of historical styles than the next generation would be.

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February 14, 2025
Fulton Bell Foundry

This building seems to date from before the Civil War, possibly the 1850s. It was designed in the very free interpretation of Italian Renaissance that was popular at the time; later architects would have studied their historical precedents more closely, and later architects than those would have repudiated historical precedent altogether.

The building originally belonged to the Fulton Bell Foundry, which made bells for decades in downtown Pittsburgh. It’s a remnant of Victorian Second Avenue. All the remnants of Second Avenue downtown are on the south side of the Boulevard of the Allies; the street was widened in the 1920s by tearing out the buildings on the north side.

The well-preserved carved stone lintels have been lovingly cleaned.

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

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February 14, 2025
Two Department-Store Warehouses by William E. Snaman
These pictures are from a year and a half ago, but old Pa Pitt just ran across them. You never know what you’ll find if you look behind the sofa.

Frank & Seder was never our biggest department store, but it was a pretty big store. Like all the other department stores downtown, it needed a big warehouse to hold the merchandise until it was ready to delight downtown shoppers. This colossus on the Bluff was designed in 1923 by William E. Snaman,¹ an architect who had already had a long and prosperous career and by this time in his life was specializing in large warehouses and other industrial buildings. The Boulevard of the Allies runs past on a course that is not perpendicular to the side streets, so that the front of the building is at an odd angle to the rest of the building.

Kodak EasyShare Z981.

Just a little later, Snaman was designing another warehouse on the North Side for Rosenbaum’s, another big downtown department store.² This is a slightly blurred picture from the window of a car stopped in traffic on the approach to the West End Bridge, but it will have to do for now.

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.
1. Source: The American Contractor, February 3, 1923: “Warehouse & Garage: $200,000. 7 sty. & bas. 88×200. 1819–23 Bluff st. Archt. & Engr. W. E. Snaman, Empire bldg. Owner The Frank & Weder [sic] Co., Isaac Sedar [sic], pres., Fifth av. & Smithfield st. Brk. Drawing prelim. Plans.” The building as it stands is five storeys. ↩︎
2. Source: The American Contractor, November 10, 1923: “Warehouse (add.): $500,000. 4 sty. & bas. 159×291. Brk. Beaver av. & Fayette st. Archt. & Bldr. W. E. Snaman, Empire bldg. Owner The Rosenbaum Co., Max Rothschild, pres., 6th & Penn avs. Revising plans.” The “addition” in this listing is most of the building, except for the three-storey section in front. It seems likely that Snaman was responsible for that, too. ↩︎
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February 13, 2025
Adding a Third Floor to the Painter-Dunn Company, Shadyside

This picture from The Builder, April, 1919, p. 28, shows the Painter Dunn Company building—identified as an Overland service station (it later moved up to Pierce-Arrow)—as it was built. The architects were the Hunting Davis Company, architects and engineers who specialized in industrial buildings. Later a third floor was added—probably supervised by the same architects, since it is as well integrated as it could be with the design of the original building, and Hunting Davis remained, through various exchanges of partners, one of Pittsburgh’s leading industrial architectural firms for decades.

The building is on Centre Avenue opposite Millvale Avenue, and after years of neglect it was beautifully refurbished for another century of use.

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February 13, 2025
Third Avenue

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

Looking eastward up the whole length of Third Avenue from Stanwix Street.

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February 12, 2025
Sciota Street, Bloomfield

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

A typical backstreet Bloomfield row of frame houses, showing almost every treatment working-class Pittsburghers can think of to apply to the exterior of an old house.

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February 12, 2025
Stony Romanesque in the Mexican War Streets

This stone-fronted Romanesque house on North Avenue is decorated with intricate carvings, and Father Pitt would guess that they were probably by Achille Giammartini, who was responsible for most of the best Romanesque decoration in Pittsburgh, and who also decorated the Masonic Hall just up the street.

Kodak EasyShare Z981.

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February 11, 2025
Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield

Carson Street on the South Side is reputed to be one of the best-preserved Victorian streetscapes in America. Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield may not come quite up to that standard, but it is probably second in Pittsburgh. The commercial district was built up in the 1880s and 1890s. Like Carson Street, it preserves many Victorian commercial buildings, along with a peppering of later styles. These pictures are all of the northeast side, because the sun was behind the southwest side.

A good example of the most basic form of Pittsburgh Rundbogenstil, the German hybrid of classical and Romanesque architecture that old Pa Pitt mentions every chance he gets because he likes to say “Rundbogenstil.” In the 1800s, before it became the most Italian of our Italian neighborhoods, Bloomfield was mostly German.

A Second Empire building from the 1880s.

This building dates from the 1890s. It probably had a date and inscription in that crest at the top of the façade, but later owners obliterated the evidence.

We saw this 1924 building before at dusk; here it is in bright sunlight. The bright light gives us a chance to appreciate the decorative details with a long lens.

Kodak EasyShare Z981.

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February 10, 2025
Allegheny Unitarian Universalist Church, Mexican War Streets

R. Maurice Trimble designed this charming little church, which was finished in 1909. It is still in nearly original condition, and still owned by its original congregation.

Kodak EasyShare Z981; Sony Alpha 3000.

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February 9, 2025