Separate ownership does funny things to rowhouses. This row of four would have matched originally; some owners have doubled down on the Victorian style, and some have done what they could with modern materials, leading to interesting effects along the property line.
Pittsburgh developed in octopus fashion, with long arms of urbanization following rivers and railroads, but much open country between the arms. Findlay Township, at the western end of Allegheny County, is still rural in many places. Here is a farm with cornfield and orchard.
A street of Georgian rowhouses, all in identical red brick, is a beautiful sight. But there is something jazzy and invigorating about the endless variety of textures in the back streets of the South Side, even if individually some of the artificial sidings people applied to their houses in the twentieth century were never very attractive. The textures are probably best appreciated in black and white, so old Pa Pitt stuck some monochromatic film in his Retinette and went for a walk around the block.
Benjamin Henry Latrobe, much more famous for his work on the United States Capitol, was Pittsburgh’s first resident professional architect. This is his only remaining work here, and the only original 1814 building left from the Allegheny Arsenal.
This plaque was originally on the gatehouse to the Arsenal grounds.
A memorial put up by the Daughters of 1812 appears to have had a bronze relief, probably stolen many years ago.
The Arsenal is most famous in history for exploding during the Civil War, killing dozens of the workers, many of whom were children. We note that the building where the powder was stored did not explode—an indication, perhaps, that the architect knew his business.
DESIGNED BY BENJAMIN H. LATROBE; BUILT BY CAPTAIN ABRAM R. WOOLLEY ON LAND PURCHASED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FROM WILLIAM B. FOSTER. SERVED AS AMMUNITION PRODUCTION CENTER DURING INDIAN, MEXICAN AND CIVIL WARS. THIS TABLET COMMEMORATES AT LEAST 79 CIVILIAN WORKERS—MEN, WOMEN AND MANY CHILDREN—KILLED IN THREE MYSTERIOUS EXPLOSIONS, SEPTEMBER 17, 1862.
Old Pa Pitt would add that the explosions were not as mysterious as all that. It was an arsenal. The place was devoted to manufacturing things that explode, using explosive materials. Everyone knew that Dupont & Co. had been supplying powder in leaky barrels, probably reused in spite of the specific requirement not to reuse them. Everyone knew there was explosive stuff dusting the ground here and there. The only mystery was which of several possible causes set off the first spark, and that mystery will probably never be solved.
The remains of the dead were buried in a mass grave in Allegheny Cemetery, where an expensive marble memorial was put up. The marble eroded into illegibility by the 1920s, and it was replaced with a new monument with a bronze plaque that will last a few more centuries if it is not stolen and melted down.
Today the powder magazine sits in the middle of a pleasant urban oasis called Arsenal Park. Instead of explosive materials, it has rest rooms.
The current building is only a century old, but the congregation of Montours Church—also spelled Montour’s or Montour, depending on where you look—was founded in 1778, and the adjoining cemetery is full of Revolutionary War veterans.
A modern chapel built in 1978 is as tall as it is long, with a striking window at the far end.
A bell cast in Cincinnati in 1888 sits beside the church; it probably came from the older building that the 1924 church replaced.
“Van Duzen & Tift Cincinnati.”
“Buckeye Bell Foundry 1888.”
Designed by Washington (D. C.) architect Philip Morison Jullien, the Fairfax was one of the grandest apartment houses in Pittsburgh when it opened in 1927. It certainly isn’t our biggest apartment building now, but it still makes a strong impression as you walk past on Fifth Avenue.
