Father Pitt

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Rowe’s Department Store, East Liberty

Here is a drawing of Rowe’s department store that was published in 1907, when East Liberty was booming as it became the business hub for rapidly developing East End neighborhoods. The building, put up in 1898, still looks much the same today, though it has been many years since it housed a department store. By choosing Alden & Harlow, the most prestigious firm in the city, as his architects, Mr. Rowe declared to East End residents that he would offer them as high a class of merchandise as they could find anywhere downtown.

The drawing came from a lavishly illustrated book published in 1907 by the Pittsburg Board of Trade—a book that, oddly, has two titles: Up-Town: Greater Pittsburg’s Classic Section/East End: The World’s Most Beautiful Suburb. Here is what the book tells us about Rowe’s:

C. H. ROWE CO.

To the residents of the East End the department store of C. H. Rowe Company, at Penn and Highland avenues, is a household word. Little can be said of it which every woman and child does not already know, yet no history of the development of the East End would be complete without mention of this enterprising company.

It was in 1898 that C. H. Rowe Co. began to relieve the residents of the East End of the necessity of going down town to meet any requirements they had in the matter of dress goods, undermuslins, white goods of every description, millinery, children’s outﬁttings, all that the feminine domestic economy required.

Such enterprise as the ﬁrm of C. H. Rowe Co. has shown has naturally received a hearty response from the residents of the East End. The aim of this section of the city is to provide every want that its citizens require. So far as the dry goods business is concerned that is what this company has done.

It takes a modern four-story establishment, with 58,000 square feet of ﬂoor space to accommodate the company’s stock of goods. It requires 125 persons in the dullest season to attend the wants of the customers of C. H. Rowe Company and many delivery wagons are employed in distributing the goods to such customers who prefer that accommodation.

The directors of the company include Messrs. C. H. and W. H. Rowe, D. P. Black, H. P. Pears and J. H. McCrady. James S. Mackie is the general manager.

It is little wonder with such attention to all the requirements of the East End public that C. H. Rowe Company’s store has become the veritable center of the East End trade, and that its growth is so much a matter of pride not only to the members of the ﬁrm but to the residents of the entire East Liberty community.

More pictures of the Rowe’s or Penn-Highland Building.

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July 21, 2025
Old St. Luke’s Church

Built in 1852 for a congregation established in 1765, Old St. Luke’s is a picturesque country church with a churchyard stuffed with Revolutionary War veterans. For some time it was abandoned and falling to bits, but over the past few decades careful restoration has gradually turned it into a picture-perfect wedding chapel. Much work has recently been put into the churchyard, with illegible tombstones supplemented by new granite monuments that duplicate the old inscriptions.

This plaque honors congregation founder John Neville, George Washington’s childhood friend and the man who, as tax collector for the district, found himself on the wrong side of the Whiskey Rebellion. His house at Bower Hill was burned by the rebels. The plaque was installed only when everyone who would have spat on it was dead.

This huge oak is probably as old as the congregation, and certainly older than the present building. It was recently recognized as a “witness tree”—a tree that has seen the whole history of the United States from the beginning. Wisely, the tree keeps its opinions on that history to itself.

Sony Alpha 3000; Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

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July 20, 2025
Ingram Public School

Press C. Dowler, who designed several other schools and public buildings in the Chartiers Valley, was the architect of this school, which was built in 1914. It is no longer in use, but the building is in good shape.

Throughout his long career, which went from Romanesque through classical through Art Deco to modernism, Dowler used simple materials to weave interesting geometric decorations.

Olympus E-20N; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

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July 19, 2025
Renovating the Natatorium Building, Oakland

The last time Father Pitt took a picture of the Natatorium Building, later the Strand Theatre, was ten years ago. Since then tenants have come and gone, and murals have appeared on the side. When old Pa Pitt walked past recently, some internal construction was going on, suggesting that the building is getting ready for its next adventure.

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

The architect of the original building, put up in 1907, was R. B. Melvin, who designed the high-class bathhouse with obvious references—especially in the arch over the entrance—to the Baths of Caracalla. Later, the building was remodeled as a movie theater by architect George Schwan.

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July 18, 2025
A Few Houses in Ingram

Ingram, a pleasant little borough in the Chartiers Valley, has a typically Pittsburgh assortment of house styles, from working-class frame houses to grand mansions. Here are just a few houses snapped at random while old Pa Pitt was taking a short stroll near the Ingram station. Above and below, a stately foursquare whose large lot makes room for a curved wraparound porch and sunroom.

A Dutch Colonial that preserves its wooden shingles.

What appears at first glance to be another foursquare is actually a duplex, although it might have been built as a single-family house.

A tidy cottage that probably dates from the 1920s. Note the fat tapered Craftsman-style columns in front.

Olympus E-20N; Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

A huge, rambling center-hall house. Father Pitt suspects that the corner projection, which now has a flat roof, originally supported a square turret.

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July 17, 2025
St. Mary Memorial Protestant Episcopal Church, Oakland

It feels like a little old country church in the middle of the city—and indeed, when this church was built in 1899, it was in the middle of a wide open space, with only two other houses on this block of the newly constructed McKee Place. By 1910, the block had filled in with apartment buildings and other accoutrements of city life, but the gated front yard of this church still leaves an impression of village serenity.

The church has been a school more recently, and now appears to be turning into apartments.

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July 16, 2025
Butterfly Weed and Little Black Bees

Tiny black bees (probably some species of Chelostoma, but the entomologically inclined are earnestly invited to correct us) enjoying flowers on two slightly different shades of Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa).

Fujifilm FinePix HS10.

July 15, 2025
Restoring a Commercial Building in Beechview

About twenty years ago, there was an aborted attempt to revitalize the business district of Beechview—aborted because the developer absconded with the money and went back to his native Brazil, whence, according to the Brazilian constitution, he could not be extradited. So neighborhood gossip tells us, at any rate. The project had got as far as partly restoring this building, and a thriving restaurant occupied the ground floor for a while. But then the furnace broke, and the landlord was gone, and the building was tied up in legal wrangling and became uninhabitable. Meanwhile, much of the business district more or less revitalized itself, with a big Mexican supermarket and a number of interesting ethnic restaurants moving in.

Now, at last, the restoration is beginning again, and this time it seems very thorough. It’s an attractive building that deserves a long future. Old Pa Pitt hopes his readers will pardon these hasty cell-phone pictures, taken as he happened to be passing by without his usual big bag of cameras.

Although Father Pitt has no evidence other than the style and the location, he suspects the building was designed and built by local architect and contractor William J. Gray, who was responsible for the Boylan Building on the opposite corner of the same intersection and for a now-vanished building on one of the other corners—and quite possibly for the building on the fourth corner as well.

These arches framed inset balconies for the upstairs apartments. It looks as though they are to be filled in, which may be necessary to make the building rentable, but will take away a distinctive feature.

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July 15, 2025
Allons, enfants de la patrie…

Canon PowerShot SX150 IS.

The French Flag flying for Bastille Day, but the buff Kittanning brick tells you it’s flying in Pittsburgh. Bastille Day comes just ten days after our Independence Day, and it’s a good day to remember that Pittsburgh was French before it was English, and that there would be no United States of America without Lafayette, de Grasse, and the other French heroes of our revolution.

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July 14, 2025
First Presbyterian Church, Ingram

Built in about 1898, this church was designed by James N. Campbell,¹ and it displays all the usual quirks of his style, including the corner tower with tall, narrow arches and the half-round auditorium made into the most prominent feature of the building: compare, for example, Beth-Eden Baptist Church in Manchester. It has been a Masonic hall for quite a while now. There are, however, still Presbyterians right across the street: the First United Presbyterian congregation was there, and the two denominations merged in 1959.

In this case the Masons have not blocked in most of the windows the way men’s clubs usually do when they take over a building. An old postcard from the Presbyterian Historical Society collection shows that the basement windows have been filled with glass block, and the open tower has been bricked in. But the stained glass is still intact through most of the church.

Olympus E-20N; Samsung Galaxy A15 5G.

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July 13, 2025