This would be a very ordinary double house if it were not for the way the front entrances are placed in a sort of modernistic tower, turning a simple brick box into a fantasy of the Home of the Future.
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Werner Building, East Liberty
Frederick Sauer was the architect of this ornate commercial palace, built in 1908. It is covered in white enameled terra-cotta ornaments that give it a sense of opulence above its budget.
We also have some earlier pictures of the Werner Building and some remarks on its history.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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Northeast Fountain, Allegheny Commons
There are not enough fountains in Pittsburgh, and too many have vanished or been allowed to decay. This one was restored in 2019, and it is now a favorite spot for hospital workers from Allegheny General across the street to sit and relax on their lunch breaks.
Old Pa Pitt has written elsewhere about how much he hates the cliché of slow shutter speeds for moving water. In these pictures, he made sure to use no shutter speed slower than a thousandth of a second.
Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans F/1.4 35mm lens; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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Royal York Apartments, Wilkinsburg
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.”
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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East Liberty Presbyterian Church
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.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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Harry White Building and Mrs. C. B. M. White Building, Indiana
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.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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Lowrie Street, Troy Hill
Sony Alpha 3000. The tiny lots and narrow streets of Troy Hill forced many of the buildings to grow tall and narrow.
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Abandoned Apartment Building on South Avenue, Wilkinsburg
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
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. - Gazette, February 17, 1905, p. 13. “Architects A. Dudgeon & Son have plans nearly completed for an $18,000 flat building for J. M. Lesher in South avenue, Wilkinsburg.” Plat maps show the building, called the Eleanor, owned by J. M. Lesher in 1915. ↩︎
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Row of Houses on East End Avenue, Park Place
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.
Sony Alpha 3000. 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.
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Ann Drea Apartments, Edgewood
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.
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS; Kodak EasyShare Max Z990.
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